For quite some time now I wanted to share one of the variations of the famous VT-25/10Y pre-amplifier. As usual due to work, business travel and family duties, I’ve struggled to find the time to update the blog.
Continue reading “VT-25/801a/10Y DHT Preamp with SiC filament bias”Tag: DHT Preamp
DHT Folded Cascode Experiments
Here we are on holidays and surprisingly I struggle to find any free time in which I can sit down in front of a tablet and write this blog entry. This is actually quite good as it’s a sign of me being disconnected and looking after my daughters. Life is good.
ER801a Driver Stage
Received the ER801a today back from Thomas. They were working fine, it was a faulty UX-4 socket pin of my tracer which annoyingly made the grid to appear faulty and open at certain voltage level. I need to replace it.
Either way, they are now in my system and I can only say how much I was surprised with the sound of these. They take the detail and timbre of the VT-25 to a next level. Amazing result, happy to have these as part of my driver stage. The preamp is the 201a feeding the ER801a into the 4P1L PSE.
Highly recommended valves, worth the price indeed.
Another DHT Preamp
Another DHT Preamp on the way with Rod Coleman regs. I will do a A-B comparison with some Tentlabs modules, it’s an interesting experiment to undertake. The preamp has the classic gyrator Rev07 and Source Follower boards…
Ba DHT Preamp (Part II)
I’ve been posting not very frequently lately. This is mainly due to lack of time and the level of business travel which reduced to nearly none the time available for DIY audio.
Nevertheless, the scarce time always pays off. It’s incredible how selective I have to be in order to prioritise which project I should work on. The list is long though.
Last time I did a quick exercise on the Ba DHT based on the curves I traced and the LTSpice simulation. Well, you always need to build and test in order to check against simulations. The result is, that you may need to adjust and learn from your practical experiences.
The Ba (like the Aa) are tricky to use. They pick up any electrostatic induced noise. You don’t need even to place your hand close, the mains noise is induced already in its plate. This force you to shield these valves if you want to use them. Am afraid, that is what it is. My friend Rob (DHTRob) warned me, thank you.
The circuit I posted here, had to be readjusted. Distortion was way too high. The operating point wasn’t good enough. You’d normally get inclined to run the valve as hot as you can, but I was wrong here with this one.
Ba German DHT Preamp, here we go…
Flying around
Travelling around Europe on business is paying its toll. I’m away from home every week and pretty exhausted now. I don’t have much time free and whatever is available I spend with my family. Hence, the lack of posts recently. I hope this will change in the future.
Anyway, what’s up in the DHT world? I listened the Aa/Ba valves long time ago but never played with them. Mainly due to their higher anode resistance. With the gyrator load and the source follower output, things take a different dimension.
German precision
I have a nice stash of Aa from Valvo (globe) and Ba from Siemens. Interesting to see that curves are not easy to find, so I submit them both to the mercy of the uTracer. Nice to see the linear curves with high mu about 14 on the Ba to 30 in the Aa.
Here is an example of the Ba loadline:
UV-201a DHT Preamp Revisited
I previously implemented a preamp with the UV-201a. These are very old globe valves, somehow fragile and hard to get in good shape. Despite all this, it’s a superb valve. I have managed to acquire a decent set of them to pair the best valves to use in my preamp.
Recently I developed a prototype PCB for the source follower circuit. The source follower is ideal to place at the output of this preamp due to its low driving current. My 4P1L PSE amplifier will be pleased with more current to pump the Miller capacitance effectively.
Gyrator PCB Update – Rev07
The gyrator PCB has been updated to fit now a wider variety of lower enhancement MOSFETs with low capacitance and high transconductance. The best examples are the BSH111BK and BSN20BK which are great options for currents above 25mA:
The board offers now all the flexibility needed in terms of different TO-92 and SOT-23 package pin-outs to use whatever FET you want.
2Ж27Л / 2Z27L DHT Preamp
2P29L DHT Preamp
The Mule saga continues and it was time to modify the 3B7 preamp and to test the 2P29L valve. This was quite easy as they both have loctal sockets. I had to modify the Rod Coleman filament regulator to set the filament current down to 120mA. Then a bit of wiring work, and in less than an hour a new preamp was ready. Job done, this is why I built the Mule:
The circuit is quite close to my original design time ago. I modified the filament resistor to use an existing Russian NOS wirewound part I had in stock and suit this preamp quite well. Added grid and screen stoppers as well: