46 DHT driver final tests

Having built the 4P1L filament bias driver stage in a breadboard, I now have the sufficient voltage swing to drive the 46 to maximum sweep. In my 4-65a SE amp, a maximum of 200Vpp is required to drive the amp into class A2.

The following tests conditions were used:

4P1L first stage:
- DN2540 gyrator in mu follower output
- 220nF/450V Capacitor coupled into 46 driver
- Filament bias: 15 ohms, Vgk=-10V
- Vsupply=355V and Va0=210V
- Output set to about 30-32Vpp to drive 46 at 200Vpp
46 driver stage:
- IXYS 01N100 gyrator in mu follower output
- Load impedance is 100K (Pete Millett’s interface)
- Filament bias: 10 ohm / 100W Vgk=-17V
- Vsupply=355V and Va0=204-208V
- Output set to 200Vpp

I tested 28 valves. Just a few of my lot are NOS. The average THD was about 0.4-0.5% but a good selection of 8 valves (mainly Sylvania NOS) provided a consistent 0.18% THD:

Happy now with the initial tests and selection of 46 pairs for the amplifier, I can now continue with the build…

4-65a SE Amp: refining the 46 driver

I did some tests today and looked at minimising distortion of this 46 driver in filament bias and found that Va=230V (instead of 184V) to provide best performance:Filament bias resistor array is now laid out horizontally to improve the dissipation of heat.

Here is the performance (0.05% at 17Vrms) at maximum drive input from my audio test set:

4-65a SE Amp: testing the 46 driver

46 driver breadboarded. The mu-follower gyrator, the filament bias resistor array and the nice teflon UX5 socket from Jakeband. The filament bias resistor array is formed by 4 10Ω 20W dale wirewound resistors. These get very hot so probably need to think an alternative layout or further resistors in parallel:The performance is very good. I just picked up a random 46 from my stock and biased it at 204V (which is the operating point in my design) achieving less than 0.05% at 10Vrms. Need to re-run this test to see how will perform at 70Vrms:

Using my spice model created from a good 46 valve, THD should be around 0.15% at 200Vpp with a 100K load and performance is great to loads down to 100 ohms. Clearly the load in A2 will change from high impedance to some kΩ so this driver should maintain outstanding linearity all the way through:

4-65a SE Amp: filament regulators

Finished the 4-65a filament regulators. Filament noise is only 1.5 mVrms at full load (3.5A):

4-65a filament supply mono block

Today made more progress as managed to build one of the 4-65a raw filament supplies. They weigh a ton so decided to build monoblocks for all filament power supplies as well as the main amp.

The power supply is built on a piece of wood. This is a fast method for breadboarding the amp which provides fantastic results. I’m using PTFE sleeved wire for the first time. This is rated 600V and 10A, sufficient for the requirements here.

The common-mode choke is built under the capacitor arrays to reduce wire length and optimise space use.

The choke and 200VA transformers are bolted directly to the board.

The Schottky rectifier bridge is mounted on an 4mm alumminium angle which is primarily used as heat sink and also the solid structure helps to mount the first capacitor array very close to the bridge.

Tested the supply with a dummy load of 3R3 50W. Ripple is only 53mVpp which will be dramatically reduced by the Rod Coleman filament regulator.

Edit (28th December 2012)

Just made a minor adjustment of the output voltage by the addition of R1 and R2 and fuse F1 was increased to 2A to avoid blowing it at full load when switched on:

4-65a filament supply

One of the good things about Christmas is that I always managed to get some proper time for working on my projects. This year is devoted to my belated project: 4-65A SE amplifier. We bid farewell to our family guests so had this evening a bit of time to start preparing the filament raw supply for the 4-65A.

This will be a heavyweight amplifier. Too much iron, but 100% DHT and no capacitor in the signal path, a promising design.

A couple of hours were sufficient to prepare some of the key components: a pair of common-mode chokes winded on ferrite rings, capacitor arrays and a Schottky bridge mounted on an aluminium sink:

The raw filament supply circuit follows the standard design recommended by Rod Coleman to use the filament regulator boards. I managed to get a nice pair of 10mH@3.5A chokes made by JMS transformers which is the same company that provides the custom-made split bobbin transformers:

The 10mH choke will help reducing the current pulses and the input capacitance, which is less than 3mF. This circuit will provide 12V @ 3.5A with a ripple current of 31mV peak to peak maximum.

814/VT-154 triode mode curves

First set of characteristic curves in triode mode:

A first attempt to produce a SPICE model was quite successful:

The valve glowing in the dark, nice….

4-65a SE HT power supply (Glowing in the dark)

Valves are clearly a beauty, don’t you agree?

4-65a HT Power supply 1

Here is my final 300V raw HT supply (one of several) at I will be using in my 4-65a SE amplifier.
Output ripple is 30mV @ 300V / 90mA

4-65a SE driver

46 DHT in triode mode as a driver

Continuing with the design of the 4-65A SE amplifier based on M. Koster design, I’m in the process of tweaking the 46 driver to optimise the operating point and provide maximum distortion to drive the demanding 4-65a. Here is the circuit I’m currently working on.

The current 46 driver will be biased at around 25-30mA using filament bias, so Vgk will be around -16 to -17.5V using a 10Ω filament bias resistor array. This will set the 46 at around 185-210V which will give sufficient headroom (i.e. need about 200Vpp max) to drive the 4-65a.

So today I look at varying slightly both anode currents and Vgk to see impact on THD.

So minimum THD is around -17V and Ia=30mA. So if setting the Rod Coleman filament regulator to ensure that Vgk=-17V and the anode gyrator to set anode voltage to ensure Ia is close to bias current would provide the minimum distortion (which is 0.04% in this example). Pa is close to 7W, but looking at the datasheet we can see that maximum Pa is 10W (as the latter 45 version).

46 Super Silvertone Ia=30mA — 46 Super Silvertone THD

So next I need to build a prototype of this driver with filament regulator and gyrator load.