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LIGHTS ARE GLOWING IN QUEENSLAND...... YIPPEE
Dear Forum My SE amps are having their first run today. WOW I am stoked!!! These are just about perfect for my Corals. Driven with my new DALE/VISHAY PASSIVE. They are silent and sound superb. THANKS TO EARLE WESTON FOR SUCH A FINE DESIGN The meters are as cute as pie as well. You can see the bias voltage rise as the music come on song. I hope the picture come through. MY WEB
Re: LIGHTS ARE GLOWING IN QUEENSLAND...... YIPPEE
Nice job. I hate to raise concerns, but here I go...you mention the bias meters moving with the music? I assume a fixed bias and small sensing resistor to measure current with Ohm's law? If so, don't worry, nooooo problem! if it's cathode biased, the voltage change with signal could indicate an inadequate bypassing of the cathode resistance. I must say, the chassis work is quite good. I really like the layout and appearance. Are the finals rigged as Triodes? U-L? Pentodes? cheers, Douglas
Dear Doug Thanks for responding. This meter has been set up correctly. I started listening to them with KT66 ends (I have a switchable Triode or UL). They sound very sweet. STEREO IMAGE is as good as I have ever heard. Fantastic almost spooky effects. The speakers are about 3-4 m away in room corners. In some cases I am getting images directly to the side and well beyond room limits. I am not even on the Vodka! Female vocals, jazz type sounds are excellent The picture is in sun. The boxes are a bit darker. I was aimimg for a sort of industrial VNV Nation look Apparently I can convert them to run 300B? But I think the flexability of using KT88,EL34 or 6L6 should be enough to keep me interested. It has been a great project. I highly recommend it to anyone Howard my audio pages
Beautiful amps, Howard! Congratulations. I really like the gold hammertone end bells, that looks very nice. Nice, clean chassis work too. Sweeeeeeeet! Thermionic
Thanks for the comments. I got those "bells" from Earle Weston. Its his standard issue gold fleck. The rest of the metal work was powder coated up the road. I originally intended a darker hammered look. It was quite a lengthy process involving a lot of chemical treatment and baking to 280 degrees C. The hanger wires left a few marks but this is hard to get around. It is powder coated underneath. What with the 3mm thick Al metal I think its safe to assume that I wont suffer from any corrosion. I did consider a dark olive green, but I am very happy with the colour combo. The powdercoating was $50 Howard
With Halloween comming up, I hear about Spooky stuff from my young son all the time...:) On the 300B conversion, if you have B+ above 300, and ability to deliver 80 mA, you can suport it. You'll need the dedicated 5V filament TX of course. Possibly a bigger negative rail for a fixed bias circuit if B+ is on the low-ish side. The 300B looks best operating into 3k5 per tube( IMO you see ). For me that means two 300's and a 7k PP OPTx, but we're talking your SE amp now...:) It looks like you have an EH 6SN7 in there. I do most heartily recommend a NOS US made replacement. The black RCA is a hard one to beat( and not fanatically expensive ). cheers, Douglas