• WARNING: Tube/Valve amplifiers use potentially LETHAL HIGH VOLTAGES.
    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
    performed by someone who is thoroughly familiar with
    the safety precautions around high voltages.

help needed 1st tube diy

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Hello,

I am thinking about building a very simple mono tube amp, for hooking up a walkman radio or small cd player directly. It would be my first diy tube project and I want to start as simple as possible, not being worried about sound quality, but more concerned with the amp being a learning process.

The problem is: I am having a hard time finding schematics or plans for such a simple amp. I have a few tubes around already from various old amps and radios that I would like to use if possible.

They are 12AU7, 12AX7A, 12BA6, 12BE6, and fifty or so 6BJ6 7 pin tubes that I pulled out of an old organ.

Any schematics, links or advice would be appreciated.

Thanks
 
Hello gelder

How 'bout a small, simple 2 stage class A SE amp?
Do you have any 6AQ5's or 6BQ5's and the like, i.e. small power beam tetrodes/pentodes? The 6BJ6's you have would be useless in an audio amp as they are remote-cutoff (variable µ) RF pentodes. There should be a few references to an amp such as this on this forum somewhere. Maybe someone here has a link to one or two. I'll try and dig around and see what I can come up with to get you started.

Cheers
Wayne 😉

EDIT: 12BA6, 12BE6 also would be of no use in an audio amp although you pulled them from an organ. They were used because of their 'special' characteristics.
 
If you've been scrounging VTs fromold radios, you ought to have some 50C5s, 35C5s, 25C5s, or 50L6s. If you have some of these, then take a look at This Thread.

Unforch, the 6BJ6's don't look too good for audio useage. These guys are "remote cutoff" VTs that are more useful as small signal RF voltage amps. They may, perhaps, linear up at very low plate voltages. Still, there are better small signal pentodes for audio amps.
 
I just wanted to say thanks for the suggestions.

Searching the site I think I have found a couple of easy projects to tackle and some good looking kit ideas. I like the Bottlehead stuff and may try to tackle one of their kits, it sounds like their instructions are well written and easy to follow.

Thanks again.
 
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