• WARNING: Tube/Valve amplifiers use potentially LETHAL HIGH VOLTAGES.
    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
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    the safety precautions around high voltages.

advances in tube amp design?

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And speaking of those old mags, and how little is new, just last night i ran across a schematic in one of them (RC Apr 47) for a fully differential 6SQ6>6L6 amp with optional inverse feedback that in recent threads has been termed partial feedback (ref Gary's PP 47 amp and Alex's RH amps)

Add some CCS to the cathodes & you have a modern amp (and maybe change the tubes in the front end to something most of us have actually heard off 🙂)

dave
 

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planet10 said:


I'm slowly selling off all my old Radio Electonics, Radio-Crafts, Radio News (1940s, early 50s mostl -- scanning anything i find interesting), and i seem to recall a news article on such a beast

dave


My uncle - who is a ham and from whom I inherited this hobby - had a stash of these magazines - some as old as 1930's. I wonder if he still has them. They used to have a ton of small "one tube regenerative" shortwave sets. If you know of an issue featuring a really good one let me know I might be interested in buying that issue(s). Someday I wish to build one, after I am done restoring a 3 tube regenerative Eddystone that is. Yeah Ham radio is my first love.
 
percy said:
My uncle - who is a ham and from whom I inherited this hobby - had a stash of these magazines - some as old as 1930's. I wonder if he still has them. They used to have a ton of small "one tube regenerative" shortwave sets. If you know of an issue featuring a really good one let me know I might be interested in buying that issue(s). Someday I wish to build one, after I am done restoring a 3 tube regenerative Eddystone that is. Yeah Ham radio is my first love.

I don't know much about ham stuff... a scan of the table of contents goes up with each magazine. You can follow them as i get them up -- usually 2 a week.

http://www.planetsofta.com/booklist.html

If your uncle has those old mags, grab them (or at least ask him to will them to you). They have all sorts of interesting stuff in them.

dave

BTW: if anyone finds a December 1954 Radio Craft the kid on the cover (no kid now i'm sure) is looking to get a copy of that issue.
 
Talking about david berning tube gear--i think his gear is outstanding.He was 1 that deffently did not go by the rules---he made his own rules with amp designs.

Right now i have a custom piece of gear that he had made for his self.It is his OTL circuit in a Luxman 5L15 lab
ref. series integrated.He told me someone had given him the luxman many years ago so he just took all the guts out and used the chassis.Everything is completly hand wired also with his tube phono built in.

It has no bass or treble--just straight through.This one produces 15wts a channel using 6L6--6v6--6k6--many different tubes---of course the watts change with each set of tubes. Being able to tube roll changes the flavour to a great degree.It's an auto baising circuit

It is a one of a kind amp.Sounds very clean and fast.

I'm somewhat new posting at the forum,but i have dropped by for years to read.

regards
 
All tube topologies were covered 40 years ago (even things as complicated as color television). All topologies that work better than newer, supercomplicated circuits (which again, were developed 40+ years ago) were covered over 70 years ago.

Au Contraire -

To the best of my knowledge, I've personally developed a couple unique tube circuit topologies never envisioned by another human being within the last 20 years - one of which I am currently using in a DC-coupled OTL amplifier almost every day, as in input to output gain at 0hz (no servos, no silicon devices in signal path, no significant dc offset/drift at output - you can see a photo of it in the photo section), and another which I used to prototype a transformerless input differential tube microphone preamp with 90+ db common mode rejection up to 1khz with a 3-4 db noise figure.
 
Rick, in your price range, you could probably swing one of Joe Curcio's kits. His 6DJ8 cascode diff amp with constant current source (CCS) and active regulation of the rails is an excellent example of modern tube amp design. I've got his circuit from Glass Audio running in a Stereo 70 chassis and it works well (though I did have to play with the compensation to get square waves to look good) and has been very reliable.

Myself, I'd resurrect a Stereo 70 with the diff cascode input, triode connected outputs and a passively stiffened ps using polypropylene caps for a low bucks outperformer.
 
6BK7 - now, this is a bit magical - mellower, slightly more distant, but some 3D soundstaging and it just has a certain something. Well worth a listen. This was used in Scott and McIntosh tuners in the front end, as was 6BQ7

What a coincidink! That's what I use in the differential cascode input of my dc coupled OTLs (this is *not* the unique circuit I referred to earlier).

Direct couple your outputs (the best way to go for performance) and the question is when you'll lose a speaker, not if.

As I mentioned previously, my OTL is wall to wall direct coupled and I've indeed 'lost' a couple speakers that it drove, but neither was the fault of the OTL - it was merely amplifying some .5 hz motorboating of a poorly conceived line level tube circuit that was driving it upstream. While I've had a few output tubes (6AS7G's) fail over the 17 year life of the amp, none have threatened the health of even the 4.5" woofers (1" vc, paper former) that it was driving & none have failed over the last five years.
 
Sounds like alot of fun--some nice stuff there.I wish i had what it takes to design gear,but i'm just one of the guys that keeps them in business.


thoriated said:


Au Contraire -

To the best of my knowledge, I've personally developed a couple unique tube circuit topologies never envisioned by another human being within the last 20 years - one of which I am currently using in a DC-coupled OTL amplifier almost every day, as in input to output gain at 0hz (no servos, no silicon devices in signal path, no significant dc offset/drift at output - you can see a photo of it in the photo section), and another which I used to prototype a transformerless input differential tube microphone preamp with 90+ db common mode rejection up to 1khz with a 3-4 db noise figure.
 
Hi -

Of course, I shouldn't have really posted that nobody has ever *thought* of the circuit topologies I implemented. I can't even say that what I've done was necessarily the best way to perform these functions. But what the hey. I'm too lazy/cheap to patent and sell them (assuming they would patent/sell)🙂

Btw, someone questioned whether cold cathode tubes would have any advantages for audio over solid state. I'm convinced they would, since vacuum tube interelectrode capacitances have negligible dielectric nonlinearities.
 
percy said:
since there are no advancements in tube amp design we might just talk about age anyway...🙂
wondering who is the youngest and oldest among us ?

Anybody less than 31 years old ? 😉


Hey! I am 30 untill next month! And only started to think about tubes 2 months ago. I hope I'll know as much as many of the boys here iun 20 years.

Cheers,

rada
 
Hi, having been weaned on tube circuits at the age of 10, I'm 52 this year and I'll never give up tubes where so many of my age cat have done so. A pity, because there's masses of talent out there.....I've come across so many people who have dumped their tube knowledge for silicon... although I know I'm well qualified to become of one of those old tube age tinkerers.
Naturally we develop our own circuits which become stalwarts........Keep burn'in.

richj
 
Hi,

I am 25, a junior electronics engineer. I am working on valves for 2 years. However, my job is not related to circuits. I hope the knowledge about valves wont be forgetten -I try to get more and more information, even from 50s books-, we should merge our current and slowly incresing knowledge with oldies.

MB
 
Hi there.........alot have asked me about improving the paraphase phasesplitter often used in p-p amps. Chris Bonavolts' site mentions this configuration has low thd.....Not so...I find typ 3-5% dendending on tube condition. However it has a nice gain. The orig circuit cribbed from the GEC 88-50 watt amp is typical (Duncan amps) and provides good performance. Studying the circuit of lower tube (or follower) of the phasesplitter the junction of the 2x 1M dividers is often shown with a 1M to ground. Strictly one doesn't need this resistor as the 0V return goes through the other resistors. The result is a far better balanced HF response.

The circuit shown is the modified I use so much in 3 stage amps. With 20dB NFB one should expect an overall amp thd of around 0.2%. As the circuit operates at a fairly high impedance, the layout should be symmetrical to ensure min HF phaseshift.

richj
 

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