Thanks. I saw another trick with the Aikido preamp power supply. For the HT supply, he adds series resistors to the rectifier diodes, which are fast and oversized. I seems the resistors diminish the switching noise/ripple since there are no bypass caps on the diodes. There is no huge H inductor, just caps and resistors. Well, it's only feeding (4) 12AX7s.
Speaking of series drops between caps, that is the way it's normally done with th HT guitar tube amps, so that by the time you get to the end of the CLC/CRC chain (the first tube stage) there is nothing left but DC, so to speak.
Ok, this is starting to look better. I can compensate for the drops by adding a few turns, and still get 35v out.
Incidentally, the whole reason behind this effort is to replace whatever is lost on the lower and upper guitar frequencies. I cannot give you scope outputs or values, but I know something is missing with the "status quo" amps, even the all-tube versions. We are compensating by adding all sorts of gadgets to reach the end, in addition to various methods of addition gain, and volume boosters. With this approach, even more noise and distortion is added, besides it being "artificial".
I am of the camp that even if you cannot define something on paper, or really see something on the scope, or even hear it with your ears, your brain does. This phenomenon is in the audio texbooks. It is briefly treated in the Handbook for Sound Engineers, as well as testimony in a few forums. I do not buy, "It doesn't matter since your signal is all distorted anyway." Agreed, most people cannot tell the difference between different pickups and amps (at least consciously), or whether the signals are processed through effects loops or not, but often the musician can, and that should not be discounted.
Back to the issue at hand, I realize that every change made to the sytem will affect the entire chain, and some experimentation is unavoidable. Since I have played before, I will rely on my subjectivity more than anything else. I certainly do not want to lose anything like "dynamics" as you say, so I will proceed with unregulated power amp supply. I need to check inrush with all this capacitance and deal with that, and tranny EMI shielding and interwinding capacitance shield which everyone agrees is good.
