• 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.

Looking for some good education

Wise people of the diyAudio Tube Forum... I'm looking for some good tube resources on the internet.

I'm an electronic tech, and well-versed in solid state, but have developed a love for the dark arts of the tube, especially in the stereo amplifier and preamp areas.

I have been looking on YouTube and found Skunkie, Tube Lab and Joy of Vinyl , awesome forums, such as this one, and some great web pages.

What other YouTube channels, or webpages would you recommend for stereo amp, preamp, and tube basics?

Thanks Dave
 
Start collecting amplifier circuit schematics and analyze them. Organize them into folders maybe by circuit type and/or output tube. Google Images is great for finding schematics, search for "push pull tube amp" "single ended tube amp" or add a tube number of interest. Also the schematics of 50' and 60's commercial tube amps are everywhere. Make yourself a growing library of schematics basically. Pete Millett has a slew of old tube textbooks on his site too.
 
Got to the link "Technical books online" mentioned above and download the entire text "Theory and Applications of Electron Tubes" by Herbert Reich. It's the best 37Mb you'll ever download. I started with this text when I was 14 (I'm now 60) and it was invaluable. It goes in to all the detail you'll even need and has all the math if you feel like going that deep. I just started by reading the text when I was young and learned a lot.
 
When you already know the tube basics, I recommend to try simulations.
The basic design errors can be avoided with this, before you actually work with high voltage.

One of the most used -free- program is the LTSpice.
There is the decades old topic in diyaudio.com

The mostly used sites for tube related Spice sims sources:
Normankoren;
Duncanamps;
Diyaudio;
Intactaudio;
Bordodynov;
More late nights coming my way!! Thanks for this, I never thought of simulated models. More fun!
 
Start collecting amplifier circuit schematics and analyze them. Organize them...
There was a large collection of 500 historic tube amplifiers on Lilienthal Engineering dot com.
Together with his analysis and comments.
Unfortunately this site is no longer online.
However Web Archive dot org still has copies of parts 1 ... 4. (Part 5 seems to be lost)

Hint:
download is slow, be patient;
then, in windows, store the entire web page;
after that you not only have a working copy of the web page on your hard disk,
but also a folder which contains all the schematics ...

100 Amplifiers – Part 1 , 1916 – 45​

https://web.archive.org/web/20190925211140/http://lilienthalengineering.com/100-amplifiers-chapter-1

100 Amplifiers, part 2 , 1945 – 54​

https://web.archive.org/web/2019092...fiers-chapter-1/100-amplifiers-part-2-1945-54

100 Amplifiers – Part 3 , 1955 – 59​

https://web.archive.org/web/2022032...00-amplifiers-chapter-1/100-amplifiers-part-3

100 amplifiers – part 4 , 1959 – 82​

https://web.archive.org/web/2016033...00-amplifiers-chapter-1/100-amplifiers-part-4
 
  • Like
Reactions: 2 users