F5 Turbo Builders Thread

So from what I have been reading most people are saying you need more than 4 pairs for 100w or greater. The paper Pass put together says that 4 pair for 100w can work. I have very large heatsinks from an industrial drive. They are 24"x9"x3" depth fins. In fact I'm planning on a stereo chassis with 2 of these heatsinks and a common 2kVA transformer. The transformer will be outboard with umbilical connection to electronics on the heatsink. Am I crazy??
 
So from what I have been reading most people are saying you need more than 4 pairs for 100w or greater. The paper Pass put together says that 4 pair for 100w can work. I have very large heatsinks from an industrial drive. They are 24"x9"x3" depth fins. In fact I'm planning on a stereo chassis with 2 of these heatsinks and a common 2kVA transformer. The transformer will be outboard with umbilical connection to electronics on the heatsink. Am I crazy??

Outside transformer is not good if you want good basstransients.
 
4 pairs will be fine for 100W. Heatsinking is the issue.
I run 4 pairs per side pushing 150W at 8ohm with no issue. However I do it with double the heatsink that you listed and I only get a 15-17C rise above ambient at the heatsink.

If you want to take the transformer away from the main chassis, thats fine, I would rectifiy it in that separate chassis, and as MASantos says, add a second smaller cap bank at the main amplifier chassis.
 
Outside transformer is not good if you want good basstransients.
I don't agree with the philosophy of locating the transformer in a remote chassis.

But that does not lead to bad performance for bass transients.
The dc conversion and dc caps will be located in the section with the amplifier boards. Connecting the xfmr with low gauge cables I would think should take care of any weak bass issues. There are examples of this particularly in the tube field.


Fit adequate supply rail decoupling for all the medium and high frequency transients.
Fit local second stage smoothing capacitance in the amplifier Chassis.
Do all the rectifying and rough smoothing in the transformer Chassis.

and just to prove my point
Pass Xs amps do this and there doesn't seem to be a problem. I would however preform dc conversion and smoothing in the transformer case and then have a second capacitor bank near the amplifiers PCB.
Dazed and 2pico also agree !

Erland,
where did you get your information?
 
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So take a look at my heatsink Dazed2. Yours is twice as big as this with 4 outputs on it. I thought mine would be plenty big! Maybe I'm wrong.
 

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OK I am bench testing a single channel. Everything going well no issues that I know of yet. A V3 model +/- 45vdc under load. I am trying to understand biasing this thing. I am biased at .3300vdc measured across a single source resistor of 1R0. There are 2 resistors in parrallel for .5 ohm per transistor. So that means I am running at .66amp per transistor. Isn't each transistor supposed to be biased at around 1 amp each? But I also am reading in forum it should be around .3-.4vdc across each source resistor. That doesnt add up to 1-1.2 amp per resistor either. Someone help explain the bias please. BTW heatsink temp at 118 deg.F after 2 hours and Bias holding steady.
 
118°F = 47.7°C
that leaves you with a bit of temperature to spare.

Reduce the bias voltage back to zero.
Add a third 1r0 to your existing to make 0r333

Now increase your bias towards 0.333Vrs checking your temperatures after a period of heatsoak.

The F5 and variants are a Push Pull design and does not current clip when it tries to leave ClassA. It just transitions into ClassAB.

If you set your bias to 1A then your F5t will have a maximum ClassA output of 2Apk for each output pair.
i.e. a 2pr will have a maximum ClassA output of 4Apk, a 3pr 6Apk.
When your load (speaker) demands more current the f5t just goes into ClassAB to meet that demand.