• 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.

Tube preamp output to match 2.8 kOhm input impedance

Any preamp tube gain stages that could drive 2.8 kOhm impedance? Cathode follow, perhaps? I realize much simpler with an op-amp, just trying to see if this would be possible because ideally I'd like to keep my preamp all tube. Thanks.
 
Yes, you can do this with tubes. You definitely need a complete picture of that load including what capacitance is there, what voltage level is needed, etc.

A high gm cathode follower running a good chunk of idle current isn't going to be bothered by that kind of load.
 
Holy crap, 100nF is a lot of input capacitance.

You are basically going to need to build a tube headphone amp and use it as a preamp. 100nF is about 80 ohms of reactance at 20kHz, so a transformer coupled tube preamp seems like a wise choice.

...or is that 100nF the maximum permissible capacitive load on the amplifier?
 
> drive 2.8 kOhm impedance

"Drive".... how big? How clean?

After all we drive 8 Ohm loads, albeit usually with a transformer.

If you want 2.8V peak in 2.8k at <1%THD, you may want to think abut a small power tube. Or an optimized WCF. Yeah, headphone amps.

> 100nF is a lot of input capacitance.

It does not say Input capacitance. It is right after "3 ohms", which I hope is an Output spec.

I call Insufficient Data.
 
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FWIW, I read the power board as producing full power, when driven by a "standard" 2 VRMS CDP. Therefore, very little net gain is needed in the preamp.

The low μ (amplification factor) 12B4 is capable of driving the 10 Kohm IHF "standard" load, from its anode. The impedance ratio of a transformer varies with the square of the turns ratio. So, a 3:1 step down transformer coupling a 12B4's plate to the power board would "reflect" 9X the power board's I/P impedance to the triode. IMO, the numbers seem good.
 

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