Wayne Parham Messages: 18791 Registered: January 2001
Illuminati (33rd Degree)
On a push-pull amp, you have one component doing the work on positive cycles and another on negative cycles. Class B push-pull amps have a sharp transition at the zero crossing line and are prone to having crossover distortion. Class AB push-pull amps are biased so that both positive and negative driver devices share the load through the crossover region so that the transition is more gradual. Some Class AB amps are made so much this way that both devices are practically run as Class A amps run in parallel. There is a lot of room for performance in Class AB configurations spanning the entire bias range between pure Class A and pure Class B, so the characteristics of a Class AB amplifier are entirely determined by the specific circuit implementation.