• 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.

Newbie here with a couple questions

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mackinthebox

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Joined 2010
#1
Im looking at getting a decent tube amp for the living room
I will eventually be running some high efficiency drivers, probably some selenium horns and mid bass drivers in a home made box, but thats for another section here on the forum 😉

I more than likely will be getting myself a Suppo Audio GV-1 EL84 amp
Lots of good reviews and it seems like a great place for me to get started

Eventually I will want to build myself a decent little amplifier for a subwoofer
Can anyone recommend a tube amp design that can push a subwoofer with about 20 to 30 watts of power?

Ive done alot of searching and reading on the forum but just cant seem to find the info im looking for. Please dont beat the newb too hard 😛

Thanks in advance 🙂
 
#2
A tube amp that can push a subwoofer can't be "little". Not even "decent". And certainly not for a first project. (somebody called Romy the Cat does this with 6S33S valves in SIngle Ended) You would be better off DIYing the "normal" amplifier first. You may well find that it sounds so nice, that you don't need the sub (and the associated headache) after all!

Hope I was not too hard...
 
#3
nah, not hard at all, and seeing other posts its what i expected in a first reply, LOL

ive seen some tube amps pushing 20 and 30 watts in kit form, theyre about 600 bucks for the kit.
The oddwatt was the kit that i am referring to.
I didnt like the look of the power supply as it actually used (from what I could tell) microchips of some kind, I would prefer not to do that...
the amp produced about 25 watts from what I was reading
the amp schematic looked basic enough but the power suplpy schematic threw me for a loop...
 
#4
I would agree, a tube amp for a subwoofer would be heavy, expensive and generally a waste of effort. In the subwoofer frequency range, amp tonality is much less important than in the rest of the audio band.

Also, subwoofers tend to be designed based on the assumption of being driven by an amp with a very high damping factor (DF). This puts tube amps at an additional disadvantage compared to solid state. Thus, I would recommend making an active subwoofer with a "plate amp."

If you have a craving to make higher powered tube amps (I know the feeling 🙂 ), by all means do so and use them for your main speakers. Big tube amps can have a hard-to-explain "effortlessness" to their sound even when playing far below their maximum power.

Just my two eurocents
Kenneth
 
#5
ok, so i will probably look into a hybrid amp then with a tube pre amp and solid state amplifier
Ive seen several kits for these on ebay lately and wanted to build one or two just for the experience and to see what it sounds like 🙂

thanks for the info!
 
#6
I'm maybe the biggest tube freak inna wurl, but for a sub, I would be using a chip amp or T-amp. More power much cheaper, and actually better fidelity for deep (and upper) bass content. I'm building a rig right now that will use tubes from ~90Hz up, and a T-amp for the sub, all open baffle. Panomaniac converted me to the open baffles.

Aloha.

Poinz
AudioTropic
 
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