• 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.

What do you think about this tube preamp?

Status
Not open for further replies.
It's from a magazine published in 2000.

I'm thinking to built it, but I need your opinion about it.
It's my first DIY tube project, so I need help.
 

Attachments

  • tubepre.gif
    tubepre.gif
    19 KB · Views: 423
High gain and negative feedback, high output impedance lowered by NFB.

I'm sure you don't need that 😉

With modern sources, that can drive a power amp directly, you need a preamp that's as much transparent as possible. If not, better to use a passive attenuator and connect the CD player to the power amp.
 
I think that you may be missing the point with the dotted connection.

It is an alternative to connecting the screen grid to the Ht.

If the grid is connected via the dotted line, and not to the HT, you have a triode.

Hope that this helps.

by the way the diagram is from Rainier Zur Linde's book, which I have lying around here somewhere.

kind regards

bill
 
Nobody seems worried about the exorbitantly high interstage and output coupling capacitors, forcing the use of electrolytics, which in the case of the interstage will probably have enough leakage current to influence the pentode working point.

2.2uF for the interstage and 44uF for the output coupling if I read correctly?!!

To take you to a -3dB cut-off at a low 5Hz interstage would need only 33NF, and likewise for the output, of 1uF. And that is without taking the further extending action of the feedback into account (I have just done a hurried calculation without determining how much feedback is left at say <20Hz.)

One does not always want to sound "wiser-than-thou", but I always wonder why when using feedback to get the RIAA characteristic, the designer does not also make use of an excellent opportunity to build in a low-cut attenuating characteristic below say 20 Hz. It calls for just about no extra components, and a cut-off of 16 - 20 dB/octave can easily be obtained. No turntable is perfectly rumble-free, there are also possibility of bumps that can dislodge the speaker cone, etc. (Rumble-wise, it makes no sense to me to pay several $100 extra for what can be achieved by $5 components.)

I have used 3 such designs in the past with great acceptance (one designed to replace the 1st stage in the Quad II control unit), but must hang my head in shame for not being able to post the circuits right now - PC problems. There have been a host of excellent circuits here in the past so I hesitate, but should there be any interest I will be happy to post them as soon as possible (in about a week). They respectively use an ECC83, ECC81 and ECF80 each, with different gains.

So being unable to "deliver" now, I would at least suggest that you cut down on those unnecessarily high capacitors if you want to use this circuit. Get within the region of available polyesters for several reasons.

Regards
 
Status
Not open for further replies.