hybrid mu-follower – Bartola® Valves

Hybrid mu-follower boards in SMD

I’ve been using these boards for many years now. Haven’t offered them as is required for anyone to be experienced well enough in SMD soldering to get these done effectively. I have a reflow oven so work at scale is easier this way. I’ve been doing a lot of SMD board design and building over the past few years though.

On a busy time regardless, I found the space to build these four commissioned boards for D3a drivers like the ones I used on my 300B amplifier. There seems to be a lot of interest and build work done around this design, so happy to see this happening.

Short of sand

Firstly, my apologies. It’s been long overdue to get back on this blog. I receive several emails from people asking me to share more. I hope I will, when I get the time and energy to get back on hi-fi audio projects. I still work a lot on synthesisers which keeps me very busy when I catch a glimpse of free time from my hectic day life.

We’ve all been hit by the short of semiconductors. Yet, the HV precious parts are in shortage as well. Luckily some of the key parts like LDN150 and IXTP08N100D2 are back in stock, not sure for how long. These are key parts for building any CCS or hybrid mu-followers for audio circuits.

EF86 – 300B XLS SE Amplifier build

Here is a very nice build from Dan Kercher on his contraption of the 300B amplifier with auto bias. The driver is an EF86 with SiC diode biasing, the topology is a hybrid mu-follower and a source follower drives the output stage. Filaments are DC with Rod Coleman’s board:

More details can be found below:

Hi Ale, 

I wanted to thank you for all of your PCBs.  I just finished a project that uses your Gyrators, SiC bias boards, and SiC Source Followers.  I'm so happy with the results.  Details posted on Audio Asylum.  

https://www.audioasylum.com/forums/tubediy/messages/27/276814.html


Cheers, 

Dan

01a Low Gain DHT preamp

How many times I’ve been asked “how do I lower the gain of the DHT preamp?” many builders love the DHT sound and yet don’t really need that gain. Of course when you use a transformer load, step down is the obvious choice. And it works really well when you invest in a very good quality OPT.

However, when you use DHT with high rp, generally most of the low current ones, you face a tough challenge with regard to frequency response.

With the hybrid mu-follower topology (aka gyrator) we have the problem that the gain is fixed to nearly mu.

I’m in love with the DHT sound and in a preamp a 01a and the 801a/VT-25 DHT Preamp Update preamp cannot be beaten in my view. They all deliver a gain of 8 with a hybrid mu-follower topology.

This can be overcome in the following way: Continue reading “01a Low Gain DHT preamp”

EML300B Mesh – initial test

My friend Mirek sent me from Czech Republic a few valves for testing, including a pair of precious EML300B Mesh valves. I managed to slot them into my system before departing for holidays. I only listened to them for a few hours, so these are only initial impressions.

I like the sound and was expecting the additional level of detail and sound of the mesh plate. Worth addition clearly. I wouldn’t say it’s a significant step improvement, just minor, subtle details are clearer. You won’t go wrong with the standard EML300B. The Mesh is a nice upgrade but you will need to think (as always) where it best to put the money on. I’d invest in the iron and overall circuit before you get to throw more money on the output valves. That’s my view.

Anyhow, great job Emission Labs for this superb valve.

3 versions of the gyrator board

Three hybrid mu-follower (aka gyrator) board generations

From left to right: 1) Standard Rev08 PCB with full flexibility of FET and TH components. 2) Rev 1.0s board with SMD except Rmu, protection drain resistor and LED as well as space for any nice big PIO capacitor. 3) the smallest version of all, all SMD except Rmu, film cap and standard TO-220 top FET and multiturn trimmer.

Very happy with the results in the board development. It does take more time and precision (you will need a microscope) to work with the MELF resistors and the SMD components in general. However, it’s worth the trouble if you’re looking to reduce the footprint.

6e6p-dr Headphone Amp – part 3

6e6p-dr HP amp in action – cap coupled output

I’ve been running with this HP amplifier for a few weeks now and I have to say I’m delighted with it. I matched a pair of 6e6p-dr on my eTracer and after fiddling with the operating point a bit, I settled for Ia=25mA and Va=180V. Anode voltage will depend on the valve as said before, the Russian valve parameters tend to be all over the place. Anyhow, expect anode voltage to be around 170 to 185V. The beauty of the gyrator PCB is that you can adjust the anode voltage with the trimpot.

HP experiments – part 1

Experimenting on headphone amplifiers, not always turn out the way you expected. Well, that’s the nature of experimentation and some smoke may come along the way.

Here is my new take on the headphone amp. Modified the 2P29L to fit the 6e6p-dr valve. I love this IHT one, so wanted to experiment more.

Instead of the classic HT, I used some Chinese 300-450V SMPS modules. I used the 70W version with success before, not these tiny ones.

Individually tested all parts and worked fine. Fired up the SMPS with the hot filaments and the 6e6p-dr running at 20mA each and the SMPS oscillated. They went to 450V instead of the 250V dialled and one of my cap multiplier PCB boards got damaged. Damn!

Back to the drawing board. I will probably stick to the simple HT supply 🙂

Pentode Differential Pair (Hybrid Mu-follower)

Pentode drivers are very interesting. You can get excellent results out of them. Here is my version of a differential pair using pentodes. I want to try them out in the 45 PP design I wrote previously Continue reading “Pentode Differential Pair (Hybrid Mu-follower)”

Hybrid Mu-follower (aka Gyrator) Rev08 PCB Update

It’s been far too long since I last posted on this blog. With the limited spare time I’ve got these days, I concentrated in setting up the new workshop and system since we moved back to our place. I’m nearly there, so now it’s time to get back to work

I made some updates to the “gyrator” PCB. I’ll stop referencing it gyrator from now on, since the name is misleading. However, it got popular that way. Nevertheless, it’s a hybrid mu-follower circuit but if only if you take the output from the anode, it behaves like a “gyrator” from a frequency response perspective. If you’re interested in this circuit in more detail, please read the lecture I gave last year at ETF.18. You can download it from here.

Back to the board, here are the few changes made:

Moved the trimpot P1 for easier fixing of the board with the M3 standoffs.
Added a gate stopper resistor (R9) to avoid oscillation at low anode current (<10mA) when using high-gm MOSFETs in the lower position J4. This was evident with devices like BSH111BNK
Added an LED (D4) indicator and a series resistor (R8) at the drain of M3. This enables indication of:
1. Normal operation subject to value of R8
2. Source current into load (e.g. like in A2 operation) subject to value of R8.
3. Short output to ground. Depending on duration and current limitation of power supply, this may prevent damaging M3 MOSFET. Not guaranteed, but in some scenarios will work.

Continue reading “Hybrid Mu-follower (aka Gyrator) Rev08 PCB Update”