SR45 amplifier

debk · 181450

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Offline tsingle999

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Reply #270 on: April 29, 2013, 04:54:14 PM
Adding a grid choke should the value of the coupling cap increase?

SGS iTransporter with Qobuz & Roon to Optical Rendu to BH DAC (Battery) / Wavelegth Cosecant to BeePre to 300b(ehemoths) to Jagers.
Bottlehead Stat headphone amp with Wavelength Brick DAC


Offline Paul Joppa

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Reply #271 on: April 29, 2013, 05:09:36 PM
As long as we're pushing the envelope how about a Quickie (ie. battery) BeePre.

Michael
Quickie IS a battery BeePre! Well, it's a DHT single gain stage with no output transformer, straight from the plate - the simplest possible tube gain stage. You could try a Type 31, which is a real triode instead of a triode-wired pentode and needs 2 volts for the filament - a single-cell lead/acid would be appropriate, and I think they exist in D-cell format. It would probably be happier with more plate voltage, but should work at Quickie conditions. Said to be EXTREMELY microphonic but I haven't tried it or heard one.

Paul Joppa


Offline Paul Birkeland

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Reply #272 on: April 29, 2013, 08:09:05 PM
Adding a grid choke should the value of the coupling cap increase?

0.1uF works out to be pretty reasonable on Mikey's grid chokes. 

Paul "PB" Birkeland

Bottlehead Grunt & The Repro Man


Offline awsjr

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Reply #273 on: April 29, 2013, 10:57:20 PM
 :)....of course... its all in the numbers.... 0.1uF also.... one of these day I'm gonna buy some V-Caps....

.........__o
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.......( )/ ( )


Offline Jim R.

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Reply #274 on: April 30, 2013, 03:08:22 AM
In my amps the stages are RC coupled and the grid chokes go from grids to ground -- I thought this was thepreferred way to use a grid choke as opposed to LC coupling?  Any advantage either way?  I would assume with the grid-to-ground config the value of the coupling cap would not have to change.

Speaking of the split personality of this thread, might it be useful to have a separate thread either for the legacy or new design -- I can see new folks getting pretty confused by this thread at some point in the future.

-- Jim



Jim Rebman -- recovering audiophile

Equitech balanced power; uRendu, USB processor -> Musette DAC -> 5670 tube buffer -> Finale Audio F138 FFX -> Cain and Cain Abbys near-field).

s.e.x. 2.1 under construction.  Want list: Stereomour II

All ICs homemade (speaker and power next)


Offline Paul Joppa

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Reply #275 on: April 30, 2013, 04:27:34 AM
Jim, I am not clear on what you said. Normally the grid choke would replace the grid leak resistor (usually 249K or 270K in Bottlehead power amps), from grid to ground. (Actually I mean from the grid stopper to ground; nothing but the stopper actually connects to the grid pin.) I suppose that, by analogy with how we describe power supply filters these days, you might properly call these C-R or C-L coupling rather than the traditional RC/LC terms.

There are two main technical effects of a grid choke:

1) Since it has inductance, it will resonate with the coupling capacitor. That resonance is damped mostly by the effective parallel resistance of the choke, which comes mostly from eddy-current losses. There is an argument for leaving the grid leak resistor in parallel with the grid choke so that a known minimum amount of damping is provided. This resonance means the bass response rolls off more steeply while remaining flat through the audio frequencies, so faster recovery from transient overloads is likely to occur.

2) At midband frequencies the impedance of the grid choke is higher than the resistor it replaced. This places a lighter load on the driver, possibly reducing its distortion. Leaving the resistor in parallel will eliminate that effect.

I have not done any measurement or listening to evaluate this tradeoff - which is why I wanted to know the capacitance that seems to work. If there are experiments with leaving the resistor in parallel, I would be most interested in the results as well!

With the longer chassis, and the DC heater supply, there may be a suitable location for the grid choke, near the driver and far from the power transformer.

Paul Joppa


Offline Jim R.

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Reply #276 on: April 30, 2013, 04:42:06 AM
Paul,

Ok, third time on this later when the oxy codone wears off and I'm a bit more focused.

I'm just going to avoid posting for a while until I can truly grok this :-).  I think we're saying the same thing but I thinkk I used the wrong terms in the wrong places.

-- Jim
« Last Edit: April 30, 2013, 05:19:26 AM by Jim R. »

Jim Rebman -- recovering audiophile

Equitech balanced power; uRendu, USB processor -> Musette DAC -> 5670 tube buffer -> Finale Audio F138 FFX -> Cain and Cain Abbys near-field).

s.e.x. 2.1 under construction.  Want list: Stereomour II

All ICs homemade (speaker and power next)


Offline Jim R.

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Reply #277 on: April 30, 2013, 05:31:31 AM
Ok, we are saying the same thing, except you have a grid stopper in there and I'm not sure I remember seeing one in there -- unless it is the same as the series RC coupling combination.  But the amp is downstairs and has juice on it, so I'm not going to go poke around right now.  And yes, now I can see why it would effect the RC resonance point.

Thanks for getting me on the right track.

-- Jim

Jim Rebman -- recovering audiophile

Equitech balanced power; uRendu, USB processor -> Musette DAC -> 5670 tube buffer -> Finale Audio F138 FFX -> Cain and Cain Abbys near-field).

s.e.x. 2.1 under construction.  Want list: Stereomour II

All ICs homemade (speaker and power next)


Offline johnsonad

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Reply #278 on: May 19, 2013, 06:38:02 AM
Me again, any updates Paul?  The Bottlehead team has been busy with so many releases lately but my eyes are on this baby!

Aaron Johnson


Offline Paul Joppa

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Reply #279 on: May 19, 2013, 11:51:00 AM
Nothing much. I'm struggling with the wiring plan, since I moved parts away from convenient locations to locations where they will remain cooler and last longer. The amp is part of a larger plan, and there are some issues with making sure that derivative designs are going to be workable.

I think I may have a few too many balls in the air and will have to drop a few ...  :^)

Paul Joppa


Offline johnsonad

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Reply #280 on: May 19, 2013, 12:25:51 PM
Lol, as long as the new SR45 stays in the air, I'll be happy. Electrolytic caps are cheap and if I have to replace them every 2 to 10 years, I can afford that. Mastery need not be achieved on v2, just improvement and a step forward from v1. ;)

Aaron Johnson


Offline johnsonad

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Reply #281 on: June 03, 2013, 10:28:33 AM
I know others are watching and that Paul and team have got a lot on their plates but I'm going to bump this thread every two weeks to keep interest and check on progress. So any updates Paul?


Aaron Johnson


Offline Paul Joppa

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Reply #282 on: June 03, 2013, 12:13:26 PM
Thanks, Aaron.

Not much yet, except I've shuffled the parts around quite a bit to simplify the wiring. There are still 16 or so wire bundles, mostly 2 wires each, of 4 different compositions - but at least they don't cross each other any more. And I put most of the parts in a BOM spreadsheet so I can guess about the cost.

Premium caps are EXPENSIVE! I may put all the PSU caps on a separate board, and let the tweakers make their own boards for fancier caps. Between the DC filaments and the turn-on delay logic, there's a lot mroe caps than usual. Incidentally, I'm keeping the critical caps off the board, it just has caps with no signal voltages.

Paul Joppa


Offline johnsonad

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Reply #283 on: June 03, 2013, 04:21:47 PM
Thank you for the update Paul :)

Aaron Johnson


Offline johnsonad

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Reply #284 on: June 17, 2013, 02:08:53 PM
Two week follow up post checking on progress. Paul, I hope you are on or going on vacation shortly.

Aaron Johnson