John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part II

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diyAudio Member RIP
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In western Texas, in the USA, folks say that if you look far enough into the distance you can see the back of your head.

Thanks,
Chris
My colleague at UCLA years ago used to work for U. of Texas' McDonald Observatory, and said one night a very inebriated person was outside one of the domes shooting into the sky, and muttering "Star, your twinklin' days are over!"
 
Richard, thank you for the explanation. This definitely makes sense, I agree.

I also agree that especially instabilities in local (nested) parts of the circuit may be easily damped (or excited) by an oscilloscope probe. In my particular case, there was a heavy buffer at the output capable to drive 50 ohm load, with 50 ohm series resistor at the output. The measurement was made at the output, behind the 50R resistor. The most interesting was that one was not able to initiate oscillations by input signal or load change, but just by RFI impulse sent to the output.


When thees were taller, grass greener, and I used opamps, I always had 1-10K resistor on the oscilloscope probe tip.
 
diyAudio Member RIP
Joined 2005
When thees were taller, grass greener, and I used opamps, I always had 1-10K resistor on the oscilloscope probe tip.

That's a good technique, as most of the time one is not trying to see the ~500MHz waveform directly anyway.

I used to have the active FET probe from Tek which had itself bandwidth to 900 MHz and push-on attentuator tips that reduced what was already a pretty low capacitance. They were helpful. Grounding was via a little spring slipover prong.

The business of high bandwidth probes for really HF stuff is now quite developed and intricate (and expensive!).
 
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Best reading for control of interferance with can upset the normal operation of an amplifer/system can be found in the comprehensive technical volumes by Donald White Consultants: Electromagnetic Interference and Compatibility. Also, thier book on Shielding Design Methodology and Proceedures.

Other good sources of info are the IEEE standards and EU Directives on EMC.
Audio DIY problem solvers need to be aware that low Z and high Z circuits have to be handled differently... one produces electromagnetic interference and the other produce electrostatic interference, respectivly. Some situations can deal with both -- such as how a interconnect cable is constructed.... but you need to know the specifics of the system to be dealt with for the best solution. Its one of those variables that cause audiophiles to get varying results which drives lay and engineers crazy with inconsistant reports.
-Thx-RNM
 
When thees were taller, grass greener, and I used opamps, I always had 1-10K resistor on the oscilloscope probe tip.

It may help, but may not help as well.

Anyway, it perfectly cuts bandwidth. 1k + 20pF makes 8MHz lowpass, and I showed 250MHz oscillations :D:D:D
Grass greener, you are saying? :)
 
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My colleague at UCLA years ago used to work for U. of Texas' McDonald Observatory, and said one night a very inebriated person was outside one of the domes shooting into the sky, and muttering "Star, your twinklin' days are over!"

And good riddance too. Love it. UTexas was honored for a while with the presence of John Wheeler, who said that there is only one electron, which bounces back and forth between the beginning and the end of time. Also explains why all electrons look alike.

Thanks,
Chris
 
diyAudio Member RIP
Joined 2005
OT alert you can skip this

And good riddance too. Love it. UTexas was honored for a while with the presence of John Wheeler, who said that there is only one electron, which bounces back and forth between the beginning and the end of time. Also explains why all electrons look alike.

Thanks,
Chris
I narrowly missed meeting Wheeler's collaborator Feynman in 1965 when I attended the Summer Science Program at the Thacher School in Ojai. He was due to guest-lecture there and was called to Washington at the last minute. I heard that at a previous year's program a student had asked RPF to talk about the notion that a positron was an electron travelling backwards in time. Feynman said "Well yeah! That's my theory!":D

The eminent astronomer Jesse Greenstein, recruited at the last minute to replace Feynman for the one week, addressed the class and said how happy he was to be there. One little brat (and we were a nasty bunch of adolescent nerds) piped up: "Well, we wanted Feynman, but you'll have to do".

I reminded Harland Epps of this years later. He had forgotten (although he had chewed us out properly, immediately following), but noted that Greenstein had declined all invitations thereafter.

Greenstein had the unfortunate fate of missing the nature of QSOs as something other than faint blue stars with bizarre metallicity. Shortly thereafter Maarten Schmidt figured it out and made the cover of TIME. Schmidt was another guest of the Program that year, which amounted to 6 weeks of the most intense science and math I'd yet encountered. I came away from it deciding to do anything but, and focused on philosophy and music for a while.
 
Sorry, Bob! Another take on what happens in that TPC circuit, in this case dropping the input drive to create a output waveform well within possible real world music replay -- output waveform looks very clean, but look at what those emitter (and wrongly called collector in other post) currents are doing in the crossover region ...

Frank

Please excuse what might be an uninformed question but might not those aberrations you show be exactly what the amps FB demands to keep the o/p cct clean when the o/p devices are switching ?

If the glitches didn't appear in the i/p cct perhaps they would show up on the o/p trace.

Just a thought

mike
 
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