All about electronic valves and hi-fi
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.
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.
The 45 DHT is probably one of the best sounding valves out there. In fact, I have struggled to get a similar level of detail and timbre in a 300B or 4P1L output stage. Even my 814 SE Amplifier (which was class A2 and had thoriated-tungsten filaments) couldn’t replicate that sound. I posted time ago my incarnation of the 45 single-ended amplifier here. The main challenge with this valve is that it can only put out there nearly 2W, not more. With its 10W anode dissipation, you will struggle to get more juice from it in class A at a low distortion level.
However, if we look at a push-pull amplifier with the 45, we can hopefully retain the timbre characteristic of the valve, despite it won’t be a single-ended one. Well, I love good PP amps, so why not?
This year I entered the shootout competition and will bring my DHT system to the European Triode Festival in France. It’s comprised of the ER801a stage plus the 01a (if extra gain is needed) and the 4P1L PSE output stage
I will have to swap out the amorphous OPT for the Monolith Magnetic ones as the speaker load is 5R.
It’s going to be interesting!
They are now available here