• 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.

It's heeeeeere!- Valve Amplifiers 4th Edition

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#301
DualTriode said:
Richwalters

The book and DiyAudio article present usable tools to design and build a system with an overall Total Q of our choosing.
That is pretty clever I think.
DT
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Not really; loudspeaker system (whole system) specs vary so much...does one really know what one is listening to ?
However, with SE I dispute the amplifier intermodulation thd aspect with a tube amp system that has very little electrical damping for the speaker, hence very little cone control..F2 is nice sounding but the caveat is, both amp & speaker performance would have to be designed and matched accordingly to obtain a flat response without peaks, and also room placement.
..Also, this raises the issue of crossover networks, which would be required more so in a system without global nfb....

My amps go around...perhaps this is where we drift in different directions..all sorts of speakers get put on my amps, even electrostatics, so we have to differentiate the "end use"; solely private or hefty stage stuff.

The early amps never did have any global nfb stuff, and the loudspeaker loading/cabinet design was based on completely different arithmetic compared to todays small sizes.
Which does one prefer to listen to ? No two listeners have identical views...


richy
 
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#302
I just got my copy this week and gave my 3rd edition to a friend. Best part of the book - to me, anyway - is how nice and cleaned up a lot of the figures and typesetting are!

Also - on the topic of loudspeakers, is there a 'bible' on the topic like Valve Amplifiers?

That's another thing I like about the Morgan Jones book - covers most of what you need to know in one place. I also like how he takes a quantitative approach to most everything as opposed to the completely subjective crap that gets tossed around in the "autophile" (spelling intentional - "self loving") world. That's an approach I'd really like to see in a loudspeaker book as well.
 
#303
And just in time for my birthday comes the 2nd Edition of "Building Valve Amplifiers." One hopes that the release has gone more smoothly than it did for "Valve Amplifiers" 4th ed. I haven't gotten my copy yet, but I see from the table of contents that he uses the Bulwer-Lytton amp as a from-start-to-finish example of how to go from design to hunk of metal and glass. I'm quite interested to see that.
 
#306
I'm waiting for it to be available from Amazon here in the U.S.A and then I am going to purchase it with my Amazon gift card.. We still remember last year's fiasco and Amazon cancelling my order for Valve Amplifiers 4th edition after more than a few months wait. As a result my inlaws did not order me a copy for Christmas.. lol
 
#308
I really can't understand all the hype about this book and why it's considered as the "bible" of tube amplification. I bought (and still have) the 1st edition (1998) and was less than impressed by the (very biased) contents and style of the author. I never felt the need to buy the subsequent editions. Very overrated book, I.M.O

If you need really good reliable references and reading about tube amplification, just go there:

Technical books online

Scroll down to the Audio section and check the classic authors like Crowhurst, Briggs, Langham, Read, etc... All these books (and many more) are available for free download and you have a golden mine of valuable informations within your reach, written by the best experts in the field. None of these books claims to be the "bible" of tube amplification (if such thing exist) but the sum of their contents is very close to all you'll ever need to know about the subject.
 
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#311
Tubologic said:
I bought (and still have) the 1st edition (1998) and was less than impressed by the (very biased) contents and style of the author.
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You have to remember that Mr. Jones and SY are high ranking members of the "He-Man, SET Haters Club". 😉 Once you get past that, it's pretty good stuff. I own the 4th edition and find it a rather nifty volume.
 
#312
I have the first, third, and fourth editions of Valve Amplifiers as well as the first edition of Building Valve Amplifiers. I don't think the author ever considered that he was writing the 'bible' of tube audio. I quite enjoy his writing style even if I don't always agree 100% with his view point. I think these books are amongst the most useful in terms of learning good design and build practices and understanding what you are doing. It's accessible to a large % of its readers. I've never built a single one of his designs and probably never will, but I still feel they are worth the money I've invested in them. (I have learned a few things from reading the books.. FWIW I almost never build anyone else's designs for my own use.)

SY is right there is a world of difference between the first and fourth editions. If you object to his writing style that hasn't changed..
 
#313
SY said:
The 4th edition is about 3 times larger than the first, so your comparison may be out of date.
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1.8 times larger to be precise and I admit I've never read the 4th (expanded) version, but the author being the same I guess the substance and style would be similar (though expanded). I was somewhat disappointed by the 1st edition and found nothing I didn't already knew in this book. The only real advantage I can see in The M.J book is that all the various informations and data's are gathered and readily available in a single book, which is very convenient for beginners. Its' not allways recommended to rely on a single source as far as technical publications are concerned and there are many other books on the subject worth reading. These books are now available free and you should consider them as an addition, not a substitution to the M.J book. Reading them couldn't hurt, only expand your knowledge.
Still, I don't believe that such a broad topic (tube amplification, theory, design,building, and much more ...) can be properly covered in a single 630 pages long book written by one author, or in a very condensed and popularized form.
 
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#314
It's too bad that Jean Hiraga's "Initiation aux amplis à tubes" is so far out of print. It seemed a very good text for a beginner in the tube world. Clear and concise. Not nearly as exhaustive as Mogan Jones' book, but handy for newbs and a different point of view.
 
#316
For you guys who are now familiar with both the 3rd and 4th edition, would you consider the 4th worth the money for someone already owning the 3rd?? I'm not into building the designs in the book. I use the material to improve current designs and help future ones.
 
#319
I found the explanation of harmonic cancellation in the 4th edition useful. But aside from that I agree with the post linked to above. The 4th edition also has a readable schematic for the Crystal Palace Amp. In the 3rd edition it was spread across two pages and the schematic traces did not line up.

I just happen to be a book nerd, hence, needed to have both the 3rd and the 4th editions.

~Tom
 
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