CX371a / 71a DHT Preamp

71a DHT Preamp
71a DHT Preamp (2012)

More than 4 years ago I ran a lovely 71a preamp which sounded amazing. I used it for some time and enjoy its sound up until I continued with my exploration around DHT preamps. Recently I was asked about how to implement this lovely valve again.

The CX371a / 71a valve is a great candidate for a line stage with its low mu and anode resistance. In my experience you have to run it above 20mA and over 100V to get the best out of this valve:

CX371a curves
CX371a curves

The implementation of this preamp is dead simple and a few components are needed on top of the gyrator PCB:

CX371a DHT preamp

 

I haven’t starved the filaments as I found this valve not to be microphonic. If you have an 01a preamp you can modify it slightly. The interesting thing is that you can run it with just 180V. Even 150V should work and you need 25mA on each channel. A J310 or BF862 lower JFET device will work fine and you will need a heatsink for the top device (e.g. DN2540). Filament resistor is anything close to 50Ω. I used some 51Ω Russian NOS wire wound resistors, but any combination will be fine.

Enjoy

Ale

THD benchmark

I’m still in the process of testing valves, here is how the ranking is coming up so far. This is a mix of driver and output valves. All tested at Vo=+22.22dBu:

THD analysis of different valves

Looking at the chart above a couple of interesting points to highlight:

  • 4P1L is the most linear valve I’ve found so far.
  • 6e5P and 6C45 are expected to be on the top five anyway.
  • 12P17L despite of having similar characteristics as 4P1L is not that linear
  • 6N6P and 6N6P-I disappointed me. I thought the would be more linear..
  • 46 and 47 in triode mode are superb drivers

Have so many other ones to test, but limited time….

Expect this chart to be updated in the future, so stay tuned 🙂