• WARNING: Tube/Valve amplifiers use potentially LETHAL HIGH VOLTAGES.
    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
    performed by someone who is thoroughly familiar with
    the safety precautions around high voltages.

Building parafeed EL84 DC 2A3 amp

Not a lot of progress. I cut into my right hand thumb (I'm righthanded) with an angle grinder. Nothing serious...but it happened on the top of my thumb very sensitive. Don't ask me how because I don't know. It's all a blur. Bought my self cut resistant gloves the same day. View attachment 1268041
The small tube sockets are off-centered in their cutouts. Will the tube fit in there without colliding with the chassis?
 
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always start your layouts from the same corner, never assume your material is the size its supposed to be and measure in from each side.
I never assume my material is the size it is supposed to be. I measure what I receive. For instance this is for a new project. Rectifier subchassis. I measure where I want stuff. Make a guide hole.

And use that as a template to drill into the main chassis. I.e. use it to mark where I should drill. Then punch it with the dot punch. Then drill.
 

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I didn't try it both ways, sorry. Having read over the years that connecting between plate and cathode was an improvement I just did it that way. The only comparative measurements I made were between this amp with the parafeed output and a version of it with a series feed output. The parafeed showed about 0.5% lower THD at 1kHz and 1W. I assumed, don't know for certain, that this was at least partly the result of the shorter and more direct signal path in the output circuit. Both amps had a similar high frequency response but the parafeed had a lower bass rolloff measured at 1W. The HF was -3dB at about 65kHz. The parafeed had a bass -3dB about 15Hz. Flat in between. It's funny that both versions had similar HF behavior but the series feed sound like it had more treble but to me it seemed sharper where the parafeed has a smoother less distorted character to my ear.
 
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To try out an SE design, I have taken a push-pull transformer and placed B+ voltage at the center-tap of its primary. 1/2 of the winding went to the tube's plate, and the other half went to a constant current source set to the same current as the tube draws. That arrangement canceled out the magnetic field in the transformer's core, and since the constant current source has a load impedance in the megohms, it did not load down the tube. This eliminated the capacitor and the choke in the original design. That arrangement also allowed for the use of a smaller, non-gapped transformer.
 
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egellings,

That is a good idea!
I might consider building that kind of topology.

For your SE design that used a push pull transformer:

What was your output tube type?
How many mA was your quiescent plate current?
What was the secondary plate to plate impedance?
What was the output transformer part number?

What was the CCS pass tube type?
Or what was the solid state CCS part number?
How did you get the CCS impedance to be Megohms, with current equal to the output tube's quiescent current?

What was the operating mode of the output tube, if it was not a triode?
For example, Pentode or Beam Power in native mode?
Triode wired Pentode orTriode wired Beam Power?
Tetrode wired Tetrode in native mode?

Thanks!

Using that kind of circuit:
A 10k plate to plate push pull transformer would provide a 2.5k Ohm load (plate to center tap), to a 2A3 (rp = 800 Ohms); thats good!

It is a Mean thing to say that Karl Friedrich Gauss was an Average man, who was Centered on his Gaussian Curve.
 
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