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Registered Member #1956
Joined: Wed Feb 04 2009, 01:22PM
Location: Jersey City
Posts: 172
Can someone recommend a simple Headphone Tube Amp for a fun DIY winter assembly?
My only constrains: - Below $100 for all parts - No audiophile gold-plated connectors/sockets/board plated BS - Use of readily available parts - no hard to find tube and sockets or ICs - Good audio quality
For some reason all the designs I found so far do not meet more than two or three of these...
Registered Member #4104
Joined: Fri Sept 23 2011, 06:54PM
Location: Uk .
Posts: 122
Ive made this headphone amp -
It works great its simple and isn't expensive ( around £30 - 40 or less ) to do and the parts are easy to get id say , but I run it from a SLA battery .
Registered Member #3215
Joined: Sun Sept 19 2010, 08:42PM
Location:
Posts: 780
I say, find an old tube apparatus in a garage sale, like a small radio or something, and try to make a design based on the tube you'll find
usually you'll get a suitable small base xformer as well, and you might even find a schematic online for your model, and be able to scavenge the existing chassis and clean it so it would be nice to display
Very cool build. However it isn't exactly what I would call a tube amp. It uses a tube as a voltage gain preamp, but the "main" amplifier is a class-A biased MOSFET. Now, I have nothing at all against silicon audio, but I am under the impression that one goes through the trouble of putting a power hungry tube into a design to get the tube's characteristic output curve profile into the audio. If you're following up the tube with an imperfectly linear silicon then the characteristic curve will get distorted at least some. Now this of course opens the audiophile can of worms about tube vs silicon, and while I am neutral on the issue of detectability/sound quality, for purity and novelty's sake if you're going to toss in silicon then why not just use a lm741 design?
Registered Member #4104
Joined: Fri Sept 23 2011, 06:54PM
Location: Uk .
Posts: 122
Thanks :D , No its not a true "tube amp" as you said the tube is just a voltage gain stage , but for the sake of eliminating High voltages and Output transformers it works great and for me it sounds fine driving headphones and it wasn't expensive :P .
I agree , I've Build a full tube based amp , KT88 based , but I never built them for the "tube sound" i just made them because it was fun and the sound is good , but then id happily use a full silicone based amp but they are less to look at , same reason I build this hybrid amp .
Registered Member #543
Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992
Inexpensive 100V multi-tapped line transformers can be quite effective as valve output transformers by selecting and combining taps:
An interesting valve to consider is the triode output pentode, which was the mainstay of domestic audio in the 50's and 60's.
These were made in standard 6.3V heater versions ECL8*, and series heater versions PCL8*. for TV service, identical to the 6,3V types except for the heater. The PCL types are usually much cheaper.
ECL82/PCL82 is an excellent example of this class, with a useful maximum output of 3.5W from the pentode section.
Registered Member #3414
Joined: Sun Nov 14 2010, 05:05PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4245
Proud Mary wrote ...
Inexpensive 100V multi-tapped line transformers can be quite effective as valve output transformers by selecting and combining taps:
An interesting valve to consider is the triode output pentode, which was the mainstay of domestic audio in the 50's and 60's.
These were made in standard 6.3V heater versions ECL8*, and series heater versions PCL8*. for TV service, identical to the 6,3V types except for the heater. The PCL types are usually much cheaper.
ECL82/PCL82 is an excellent example of this class, with a useful maximum output of 3.5W from the pentode section.
Fascinating stuff, PM. I was just sitting here contemplating building a valve amp. I have everything except output xformers, pretty much. I've also a handful of 6U8's here ((ECF82?), which are triode-pentode, although I'm going to look through the shed and see what I can turn up.
I'm planning on starting a thread on the subject in the next day or so, once I've seen what I can turn up in the shed.
Registered Member #543
Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992
Ash Small wrote ...
Proud Mary wrote ...
Inexpensive 100V multi-tapped line transformers can be quite effective as valve output transformers by selecting and combining taps:
An interesting valve to consider is the triode output pentode, which was the mainstay of domestic audio in the 50's and 60's.
These were made in standard 6.3V heater versions ECL8*, and series heater versions PCL8*. for TV service, identical to the 6,3V types except for the heater. The PCL types are usually much cheaper.
ECL82/PCL82 is an excellent example of this class, with a useful maximum output of 3.5W from the pentode section.
Fascinating stuff, PM. I was just sitting here contemplating building a valve amp. I have everything except output xformers, pretty much. I've also a handful of 6U8's here ((ECF82?), which are triode-pentode, although I'm going to look through the shed and see what I can turn up.
I'm planning on starting a thread on the subject in the next day or so, once I've seen what I can turn up in the shed.
I've got a box of NOS PCL82 somewhere, so I'll try and find them and put a couple in the post with some ceramic or PTFE sockets, depending on what I can find in the shed.
PCL82 has a 16V heater, but will motor along nicely at 15V if need be.
This PCL82 data sheet even has a table with all the component values to use with different anode voltages, so you don't even have very much to work out.
There's a complete design of an AF amp using ECL86 - very similar but slightly more powerful than ECL82/PCL82 - on p. 94, figure 10.1 of The Technique of Sound Production (1964) which you can download free as .pdf here:
You could use exactly the same circuit with PCL82, by changing the resistor values to those given in the PCL82 data sheet.
Transmitters using the ECL/PCL triode pentode series still remain popular, with the triode section as oscillator, and the pentode as tuned power amplifier.
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Headphone Tube Amplifier
