• 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.

The Red Light District - another PP EL84 amp

Do we equate it to 100Watts per cubic foot for a mono amp? Or, is it capable of more power out if bridged and we have to use a conversion factor from two channel to single channel?

It already contains two Simple P-P boards and each board has its two channels paralleled for twice the power output. I have seen 60 WPC but I think the little EL-84's were on the verge of exploding, even though there was no glow. I had the plate voltage up to 430 volts. It remains to be seen if the thermal management scheme I concocted is capable of removing enough heat, or meltdown occurrs.
 
Tubes upside down in silicon oil in a "Fry Baby Jr" with the heating element removed and replaced with a 1KW Peltier effect cooler and forced air cooling?

No, just air, but I am putting a lot of faith in the chimney effect. I will post pictures next time I put it back together. The basic Simple P-P stuff in this amp has been completely reliable at twice the normal power output, but the sand based life forms keep dying. I'm thinking about replacing my simple mosfet screen regulator with a genuine vacuum tube. I was trying to save a few watts of heat, but the fet shorted and fed 430 volts to the EL84 screens. Fortunately this blew the line fuse.
 
How would this go, to give a little bit of bias control with LED's?
A silly idea or are there possibilities?
 

Attachments

  • LED with bias.GIF
    LED with bias.GIF
    2.9 KB · Views: 624
RDL - motorboating after having connected feedback

Hi,

I have rewired RDL and also changed OPT in my RDL. After reconnecting feedback the amp starts motorboating, LEDs start flashing. While disconnected sound is OK. The same occurs when I change OPT terminal as a fb source.

Any hint where to start with diagnostics?
 
That's interesting. Can you (with feedback disconnected) do a voltage map? I'd also double check the wiring around the screens and screen regs, especially the grounding.

edit: Just noticed the "secondaries float" comment. Like Tony pointed out, one side of the secondary must be grounded (run a wire back to the input stage ground point at the bottom of the cathode resistor). Then check with both polarities of the primary.
 
what i do with my amp build is to wire up the secondary side first......the plate leads are soldered lightly to tube pins....

there is a 50-50 chance you'd get it at first go....so that in case of motorboating, i simply reverse the plate leads, dressing it up and cutting for final soldering to tube pins....