• 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.

Matching tubes by Operating Temperature

No you are wrong again. Power tubes never use an anode resistor. I did not state a tube has an internal anode resistor. No power tubes have an internal anode resistors. I will not reply to your posts now.
Any tube has a plate/anode resistor, of course. Even power tubes do. How can you tell that the plate resistances in a PP circuit are equal without measuring? Especially in not too sophisticated output transformers the DC resistances of both primary halves aren't equal, hence plate voltages of 200 vs. 182 V, as Jan mentioned, aren't that unrealistic.

Ergo, Jan was right, you're wrong.

Btw, most important thing that counts in tube operation is the plate current. Why don't you just measure it if you're about matching tubes?

Best regards!
 
  • Like
Reactions: soulmerchant
Indeed. Manufacturers have had 100 years to put something about temperature into their datasheets and their complete silence on the topic says it all. The only reference I can think of will be to the possible forced cooling of transmitter tubes, but I'm guessing 99% of us don't run our own radio stations.
 
Maybe those who DO use a tube from an AM radio station just choose to broadcast at a lower than intended frequency. Note the glowing 833A in the background behind the Lexan "oops shield."

Thue 833A data sheet does discuss the heat in the metal / glass interface around the pins. That is the area of concern on large glass transmitter tubes. The coated plate is the getter and redness is recommended for proper operation. This tube was dissipating about 400 watts at idle and cools off when the guitar is cranked to way beyond eleven! One can guess the vintage of the photo by the CRT TV and computer monitor. It's from 2003.
 

Attachments

  • LesPaulTest2.jpg
    LesPaulTest2.jpg
    155.6 KB · Views: 55
  • 833_1.jpg
    833_1.jpg
    107.6 KB · Views: 56
I often find that a useful way of exploring a subject is to turn an argument on its head.

Rather than thinking that tubes are matched because they run at the same temperature, one can ask oneself why some of them were running at different temperatures.

If some of those factors add to the temperature and some of them reduce the temperature, then it may become apparent that a similar temperature might be possible not only by matching, but also by coincidence.

kind regards
Marek
 
  • Like
Reactions: rayma
It's all context. For high power amplifiers it is common to use what would normally considered a power tube as the preamp for the final tube.
You see even 300B's used as preamp/driver tube.
Whether you use a tube for a preamp or power amp output depends on the tube capabilities and the needed output power.
Tubes are normally designed for a specific purpose and the data sheet will mention that. But you, as a designer, can use it any way you want, if you know what you are doing. You can (and many do) use, say, a voltage regulator tube as an amplifier output tube.
Apart from the basic fact that if you don't have any anode impedance you have no signal output so that's a pretty useless circuit.
For an output tube in a headphone amp, an anode resistor might well be a good solution.
In larger power amplifiers you can do better with an inductive load (like in a single ended amp) or an output transformer in a P-P amp.
So, saying that power tubes do not have anode resistors is a very narrowminded view which greatly restricts your options.

A similar situation exists in the solid state world. For phono preamp input stages you normally want a transistor with very low Rbb for very low noise contribution. It just so happens that many power transistors have extremely low Rbb and it is not unusual to see a phone input stage using a large power transistor.

Dogmatism is never a good idea if you want to explore design space. Keep an open mind and venture into the world of audio design!

Jan
 
Output transformer is not an anode resistor.
Actually, I'd say what we now call a transformer is really no more than two wirewound resistors sitting on top of a magnet. If there were just one of them, we'd call it a choke.

Faraday invented the "transformer" in 1831. He called his invention "an induction coil". The term "transformer" only came into common usage much later in 1883 and is derived from the French.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • Like
Reactions: soulmerchant