Iron and Sand
Over the last few months life has been very hectic for me. Between work travel and family, I’ve struggled to find time to work on any audio related stuff. You probably noticed this as have reduced significantly the amount of posts over the last 4-6 months.
This is sad, as have many things piled up for sharing. Either way, my focus has diverted slightly over the last few months. I decided to get back to music performance after so many years. This is a great decision, which I’m very happy about. When I thought about which instrument to play again, I immediately looked into my tenor saxophone – which I played for so many years. Unfortunately due to family commitments, I can only play during night time, so saxophone was ruled out. So, what should I do? Of course, my mind then got stuck on to my next big instrument preference: the Chapman Stick. When I was at university, I discovered this amazing instrument. I believe it was Tony Levin from King Crimson the first one I heard playing it. Anyhow, as I couldn’t either afford one and also there were probably none available in Argentina at that time, I decided I would build one myself. Luckily my dad was very experienced in woodworking and crafts in general. With his help we designed and build one, which sounded really good.
6F12P a great Russian valve
The 6F12P is used (by many) in Europe (mainly) in RIAA circuit. You would wonder why? Well, it’s a great Russian frame-pentode which has high-mu and high-gm therefore driving larger currents at low distortion.
D3a driver w/ Rev08 board
A friend from Canada ordered a pair of boards and I used the opportunity to test the newly arrived hybrid mu-follower (aka as gyrator) Rev08 PCBs. He will be using these boards in the 300B design posted here.
EML20A driving EML45B
I’ve got asked the question on how an EML20 (or EML30) can drive an EML45B. Answer is straight forward and hopefully this brief blog entry can shed some light to this request.
I recently looked back again on the EML20A. With a gain of 20, it’s a good candidate but it hasn’t got just enough gain to drive the output stage to full power:
45 SE Amplifier – revisited
A unique sound
If you have a small room and high-efficiency speakers, then keep reading. If not, you can still enjoy reading about probably the best sounding output valve in my view. The 45. I wrote about it few times and have to say, it’s still one of the best. Better than a 300B but unfortunately can do only 2W. You can use it in Push-Pull and is superb. Have a look at this.
47 Push-Pull with local feedback
This design is inspired on the great work from Gary Pimm. The 47 is a sterling directly heated pentode and worth using it. I have several on my stash, including some good globe versions.
Tail CCS PCB test
A belated test of this simple, yet effective PCB. I made it as small as possible, however in order to provide flexible connections, it’s actually double the size. Still at 4 x 4 cm is small enough.
300B Emission Labs
Back at the beginning of the year I purchased a pair of Emission Labs 300B for my new amplifier version (still working on it). I own several 300Bs but was keen to try these out given their reputation.
Jac from JacMusic sent me a matched pair which I traced them with the eTracer:
Pentode Differential Pair (Hybrid Mu-follower)
Pentode drivers are very interesting. You can get excellent results out of them. Here is my version of a differential pair using pentodes. I want to try them out in the 45 PP design I wrote previously Continue reading “Pentode Differential Pair (Hybrid Mu-follower)”