Sunday, April 8, 2018

PVC Tubes Driven by Tubes

Dear reader,

please accept my apologies for keeping you in suspense over my latest projects for so long. 2017 was a very intense year for me. During said year, I changed my day-jobs twice, so, the radio hobby and the audio hobby had to take a break. Concerning jobs, I believe to have finally found the position of my dreams with a lot a really nice people in the company... I believe I have never been happier before!
Anyway, this is not about life, this is about driving tubes, PVC that is, with tubes, such as in vacuum.

My pipe dreams, as you know, are employing 3W (8Ohms) broadband drivers, which came with a super-cheap set. By now, I am convinced that those drivers were the most valuable part in the entire kit.

In search for a 2 x 3W class A amplifier, I came across a Chinese kit supplier (Douk Audio, cf. ebay), who sells single-ended class A amp kits based on 6N1 and 6P1 tubes. Said kits are comparably inexpensive and, while provide good quality parts, come without a mains-transformer.

My choice of mains transformer fell on a 100W transformer offered by a supplier in the UK, search for "big.daddy!" on ebay.

The combo works as a charm! The amplifier kit seems to be made for my pipe dreams.

As an audio source, I am presently using a professional grade table top DJ CD player by Numark.
In the future I consider to add a passive equalizer / tone control circuit to the setup in order to allow for compensating deficits from compressed digital audio formats. For now, I am pretty pleased with the raw performance from CDs.