• 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.

Just finished my new 300B amp

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in testing phase now
 

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Re: Zener Question

MIKET said:
To lower the b+ not to excede the rating on the depletion mode FET.
But a resistor will do the same with less noise and increasing the output impedance of the current source...

Zeners are one of the most noisy component in electronics...they produce lots of white noise.

Just one sugestion...
 
Re: Resistor sub for Zener

MIKET said:
I will give it a try and let you know what improvement if any is noted, I will keep you posted. I will try a6K 10W resistor for starters.
Another point in favor of the resistor is that the mosfet have great parasitics capacitances that shunt power suplly noise to the anode of the input tube...and the resistor help to isolate this parasitic path...😉

Good luck and keep in touch!!🙂
 
When you try the dropping resistor also try putting the resistor between the CCS and the plate of the triode. This helps isolate the capacitance of the CCS from the triode.

Are you using a single mosfet CCS or cascading a pair to improve the CCS performance?

Based on shunt capacitance, the performance of 2 cascaded mosfets is only about 180 times better than a single mosfet. 😀 The shunt capacitance of the cascade verison is .177pf verses 32.4pf for the single mosfet. These numbers are for Supertex DN2540 mosfets.

I have a graph of impedance versus frequency and capacitance numbers of the Supertex parts plus several of my designs on my webpage. Look in the CCS performance measurments link. Graphs are at the bottom of the page.

In the "CCS's and signal current controll" link is a schematic for the cascade mosfet circuits. I was calling them cascode but this configuration is not really a cascode. I have an application note from Siliconix that uses cascade as the term for the configuration where the gate of the upper mosfet is referenced to the source of the lower mosfet. I'll be updating the references as time permits

Gary

Gary P's DIY page
 
I see you have stabilized the bias voltage. That will cause the bias current in the 300B's to vary a lot with the mains variations. In my opinion it's better to let the bias supply vary with the mains, that will give you a crude compensation.
High voltage zeners drift a lot with temperature as well.

I would also go with a resistor instead of the zeners and have it between the CCS and the plate.
 
Hi there.......I'm looking.......That power supply is certainly going to kick when the juice is switched on...The 160uF photoflash in the bias circuit is -bit-of-a-slam tactic ? Why such a high value ?

You don't mention the o/p stage bias resistor value....

Parallel zeners ? A zener with the lowest spec "on" voltage will try and rob the others against the spread of the forward dynamic resistance... too unpredictable and not really ideal. Some with higher tolerance may not even be conducting or only just.
It looks if the fets might stew around 5W dissip....I can't quite make out the values on my screen........I'm still working on it...

rich
 
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