Hello Vasilis.
I wish you much joy and fun in building a tube amplifier - welcome! I think I
would start with Morgan Jones book Valve Amplifiers ed. 3. It's worth reading
it cover to cover just to start with (including essential safety instructions
for all valve equipment) then, if you have Excel, it's worth taking out all the
equations and copying them into Excel into a spreadsheet kept for that purpose.
You need all the ohms law calculations in all versions, and also output valve
calculations/ transformer, resistors in combinations, frequency turnover of
cap/resistor combinations. then you want all the calculations for an individual
stage - gain, current, voltage etc. You should be using these calculations all
the time. You may already have electronics knowledge - I don't know, in which
case you will know all this. When you start building, Morgan's book will help
with questions that come up - the second volume of ed. 3 also deals with
construction.
You should subscribe to:
www.diyaudio.com and
www.audioasylum.com
In these two forums you will get expert help which you won't get on this
newsgroup, a much better place to discuss your build, and in general a much
better class of people - helpful and courteous towards valve users. Both sites
have excellent and comprehensive search facilities, and you can search for
individual valve types (mainly on the asylum in the 'tubes' section) or
topologies and technical stuff (mainly in the tubesDIY section) or SET (on the
SET section). You can also do a seacrh of all forums. If you want schematics,
enter 'schematic' (more likely to get results than 'circuit diagram') and your
parameters, e.g. EL34
The next thing to do is go to
http://tdsl.duncanamps.com/tubesearch.php. this
is the Duncanamps site - invaluable for tube data. You should download two
things from there - the tube data TDSL and the power supply calculator PSU
designer 2. also keep note of
http://hereford.ampr.org/cgi-bin/tube?tube=el822
which is another great site for tube data.
As for what to build, I'd be tempted to try Allen Wright's stuff.
http://www.vacuumstate.com/ is his site. If you're in the UK you can make a
cheap version of his amp using the Maplins power and output transformers parts
DM54 and DM53. this will give you good quality and with a modern circuit like
Allens you will get better sound than older circuits such as the World Audio
Design kits. For valves I'd use Edicron - reliable, well matched and cheap. Get
valves direct from them - Troy is very helpful.
www.edicron.com They will give
you good EH6922 for Allen's circuit - this is an excellent front end. I'd be
tempted to go for some Sovtek 2a3 output valves instead of the EL34s in the
circuit - you just need some 2.5v transformers. You can get those from
http://www.vvttransformers.co.uk/ . For the rest of the parts I'd recommend CPC
(subset of Farnell). they have a big thick catalogue you should get, and they
usually have nice offers and discounts for new members.
www.cpc.co.uk.
All this should get you started! Good luck and come back with any questions.
You'll also find a few useful valve people on this newsgroups like Nick Gorham,
who I'm sure will be pleased to help out. Patrick Turner will give you full,
informative advice on almost anything and is a real friend in need. Top bloke.
andy
=== Andy Evans ===
Visit our Website:-
http://www.artsandmedia.com
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Tube amplifier
Linear Mode
