• 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.

How do you develop/breadboard valve amplifier circuits?

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We are DIY so you could build your supplies.

I built this one for the bias function.

It supports is +/- 100Vdc.

The schematics for the Heath kit are available as well so it is possible to build an HV supply like it.
 

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There are some YouTube videos about bending and cutting old LP records (those $0.50 ones from the antique shops). No more than 200 degrees in the oven to soften them up, without turning them into toxic gases. Can bend or cut them while hot.

Form a cut up record into a fan, maybe can drop it over a metal fan blade of similar size to form it symmetrically and re-heat to form fit. Make sure the cut lines are accurately spaced for good balance.

Use the completed "fan" blade with a permanent magnet motor as a windmill.

Good breeze at the peak of the house roof on a small tripod. Charge a battery for peak power demand. Use a row of them along the roof peak for more power.

If it's just for novelty, then mount two or four tripod/fans on an LP player turntable and let the windmills spin around for steady power. Will need slip rings for the electrical channel though. Well, could just use another powered fan to blow them, but that would look toooo.. much like cheating.

Can also get pre-made two blade RC model airplane propellers of pretty good size.
 
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I encourage the use of LTSpice and PSUDII modeling whenever possible. It saves a LOT of trial and error breadboarding. Once I had modeled all the circuits of my 833 amps multiple times I went straight into my build, and it was successful the first time, with a few minor adjustments. The great thing about modeling is you can do really stupid things and not annihilate expensive components or start fires.


^^^
This.

I spend on the layout is to detrmine where the transformers go without incurring hum (or other nastiness).

If yuo have already a working tube amplifier then you can take a new output transformer and "hover" it around a working mains transformer to figure out the best orientation without inducing hum. Just hook up a mV meter to the primary winding of the OPT. (not all OPT pick up magnetic fields in the same way, been caught before)