Mini-Tube Audio Amplifier - Part 1

Mini-Tube Audio Amplifier - Part 1
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It would appear that there comes a time for every electronics experimenter
where they feel the need to build a tube audio amplifier. And so it has
come to pass with me. For my first serious attempt, I decided to keep
things rather conservativeunder 1 kilowatt. Well actually, under one watt
per channel.
Warning:
This is not intended as a step by step DIY construction project. It's a

discussion of my experience building this project, and an explanation of
the various design, construction and testing stages. I recognize that some
people may use this information to build their own version of this project.
Consequently, take notice that there are high voltages present in this
circuit which can be lethal. These voltages are significantly higher than
those of other tube electronics projects which appear on this web site.
http://electronbunker.ca/eb/TubeAudio_01a.html[16/04/2017 18:10:07]
Proceed at your own risk.
A discussion came up on one of the news groups some time ago about
building the smallest (or simplest) push-pull tube audio amplifier. This got
me thinking about making a one tube push pull amplifier (two tubes for
stereo). I had a few 6M11 Compactron tubes on hand that I previously used
to build this AM transmitter. These tubes have a pentode section plus two
identical triode sections. I thought that the pentode would be a good
preamp, while the triodes would serve as the push-pull output. The triodes
are only rated for a maximum plate dissipation of 2.25 watts each. So, this
is definitely a low power
audio project (less than a
watt RMS per channel).
But, it seemed like a good
application to drive desktop
speakers from a computer
audio output. Just to keep
things in perspective, here
is a picture comparing the
size of a 6M11 with the
well known 6SN7GT. As
you can see, this is a rather
tiny tube, considering that
it comprises three sections.
Using the pentode section as a preamp, and the triodes as the output stage,
there's no section left to act as a phase inverter. There are other options
however. Some of the earliest designs fed the push-pull output stage from a
centre tapped inter-stage transformer which accomplished the phase
inversion task. However, I decided that inter-stage transformers are a rather
dated design technique. Instead, I decided to drive one half of the push-pull
output directly from the pentode preamp stage, and then use the plate
signal from the first triode to drive the second triode. To do this, the triodes
must not be cut off for any part of the input cycle. In other words, they
must operate in Class A mode. This isn't a big deal, because the reduced
efficiency of Class A mode makes little difference at these low power
levels.
This is the prototype circuit:
(Click for larger version.)
And here is the original breadboard assembly:
The output transformer has its primary taps wired to a 2 pole multi-
position rotary switch in order to test different impedance ratios on the fly.
The Preamp Stage
The preamp stage is a standard cathode biased amplifier stage. The cathode
resistor is not bypassed, because this stage already has sufficient gain, and
by leaving the cathode resistor unbypassed, it provides a means to
introduce negative feedback later. The voltage gain is approximately equal
to the plate load resistor divided by the cathode resistance, or:
Av = 12000 / 150 = 80
Note the 680 pF shunt capacitor at the input. I added this after discovering
that many digital audio sources have insufficient filtering, and include
sampling frequency noise components at around 44 kHz. I didn't want this
passing through the amplifier. This low value capacitor removes the high
frequency noise without affecting audio frequency signals.
The Push-Pull Output Stage
I mentioned that the inverted input to the second output triode would be
taken from the plate of the the first triode. In fact, this is only partially true.
Because the two triode sections share a common unbypassed cathode
resistor, the output stage acts as a cathode coupled differential amplifier.
However, because of the relatively low value of cathode resistor, the
cathode current will not be constant as it would in a normal differential
amplifier (rather than the traditional 'long-tailed pair', we have, so to speak,
a 'short-tailed pair'). Therefore, the cathode drive to the second triode will
not produce an equal plate swing. In a normal cathode coupled stage, the
grid of the second triode would be grounded. However, in this circuit, the
grid of the second triode receives a small amount of signal from the plate
of the first triode to compensate for the insufficient cathode drive.
The potentiometer in the voltage divider shown on the right side of the
diagram is adjusted to get the proper level of inverted signal to drive the
grid of V1-C. One interesting thing to note, is that this voltage divider must
connect to the opposite ends of the output transformer, rather than from
V1-B plate to ground. This is because, in the latter case, there would be a
positive feedback effect which makes the stage unstable. This happens
because, as the plate of V1-B goes more negative, causing the grid of V1-
C to go more negative, the plate of V1-C then goes more positive, and
because of the coupling between V1-B and V1-C plates due to the
autotransformer effect of the output transformer primary, this causes the
plate of V1-B to go even more negative. Hence, the positive feedback
situation, and adjustment of the V1-C drive potentiometer is very touchy.
By connecting the lower leg of the drive potentiometer to the V1-C plate,
this introduces a slight negative feedback to counter the positive feedback.
Adjustment of the drive pot, is then much smoother.
Up to this point, circuit component values and power supply voltage were
selected based on a preliminary load line analysis using a slightly modified
single ended loadline. This was fine for determining quiescent operating
plate voltage and current and grid bias, but not ideal for determining plate
dissipation, output impedance matching or power output. For that,
composite plate curves are needed. However, they are laborious to produce
manually, and must be completely redone whenever the operating point
changes.
During this time, I had been doing some research on vacuum tube SPICE
models. It appeared to me that at the present time the most accurate triode
model is the one given on Norman Koren's Site. His plate current formula
is:
IP = (E1X /kG1)(1 + sgn(E1))
where the value E 1 is given by:
E1 = (EP /kP ) log(1 + exp(kP (1/ + EG /sqrt(kVB + EP 2))))
where E P is plate voltage, E G is grid voltage, and the remaining variables

kP, , x, kG1 and kVB are constants which depend on the tube characteristics.
By tabulating the data from the published 6M11 triode plate curves,
entering them into a spreadsheet, and then performing a multi-variable
optimization, I was able to determine the values of the constants to be:
= 84.8
x = 0.98
kG1 = 162.87
kP = 243.8
kVB = 2664.39
Using these values, Koren's triode formula models the published triode
plate curves very precisely. In fact, manufacturing variations between tubes
would create deviations greater than those of the model. Rather than model
the circuit in SPICE, I chose to use the spreadsheet to create the tube
curves and load lines. In creating the load line, I used the original circuit
component values, and then refined them during the analysis. A graph
based on adjusted component values is shown below:
The blue lines are Plate Current vs. Plate Voltage for grid voltage
increments of 0.5 volts for each curve. Normally, the first curve on the left
is 0 grid volts, and then each curve increases in round numbers. However,
this graph has the grid voltages shifted slightly so that one of the curves
(violet) will pass exactly through the quiescent operating point. In this
case, it corresponds to a grid bias of -2.84 volts. The curves moving away
from the violet one change by increments 0.5 volts, in order to preserve
linear display of the I-V characteristics.
The red line is the static load line, and the green line is the dynamic load
line.
The orange line is the locus of maximum allowable plate dissipation which
is 2.25 watts for the 6M11 triode section. To stay within the tube's
allowable ratings, the quiescent point must be below this line, and ideally
the entire dynamic load line should remain under the this line as well.
However, as long as most of the dynamic load line remains below the
maximum dissipation line, the average power will generally be less than
the maximum, and this is acceptable. That didn't appear to be a problem in
this situation, because the dynamic load line just touches the maximum
dissipation line at one point and otherwise remains in the safe area. It can
be seen immediately that the original plate supply of 180-220 volts has
been increased to 250 volts. The static load line includes a cathode bias
resistance of 160 ohms plus transformer primary winding resistance of 350

ohms. When creating the load line for one tube, because the cathode
resistor will be shared by two tubes, its value must be doubled. Hence the
total DC load resistance will be 160x2+350=670 ohms.
From the analysis, the quiescent operating point gives a plate voltage of
244 volts, plate current of 9 mA, and a quiescent plate dissipation of 2.2
watts. As mentioned previously the grid bias is -2.84 volts.
It became apparent that the dynamic load of 16k was a bit too low, and so
it was changed to 20k. Fortunately, I had another output transformer
available with a 20k primary.
An advantage of having an accurate plate current formula in the

spreadsheet is that composite push-pull plate current curves can be
generated.
Following is the set of composite characteristic curves:
Again, the central violet curve corresponds to the chosen grid bias of -2.84
volts. Each curve moving away from the central one has an incremental
grid voltage of 0.5 volts.
Note how the combined plate curves show amazingly good linearity, both
in the even spacing between curves (indicating constant gain over over the
full dynamic range), as well as constant slope of the curves (indicating a
constant output impedance over the full dynamic range). It should be
mentioned that the first two and last two curves have positive grid voltage
(+0.16V and +0.66V) on one of the triodes. My past experience shows that
these triodes draw very little grid current when positively biased, and it can
be seen here that as long as the tube model is still accurate in this region,
then linearity continues to be very good.
Maximum power output is achieved when the slope of the dynamic load
line (green) is the reverse of the slope of plate curves. It can be seen that
this is the case, with the chosen load impedance of 20k.
Maximum Plate Dissipation Curves
Whereas generating the composite plate current curves was relatively

painless, calculating the maximum plate dissipation locus turned out to be
quite a challenge. It's easy to do on the single ended curves, as one simply
plots the line I=PMax/V. However, on the composite curve graph, the
current axis is differential current and there is no direct way to determine
the maximum differential current given a plate voltage value. The solution
involves tracing along each composite curve to find the point where I V
for a single tube is equal to P Max, and then recording that point. This is
repeated for each curve, and then a line is drawn through all of these points
to produce the maximum plate dissipation curves. Doing this on a
spreadsheet requires a lot of calculation cells and is a bit messy, but it can
be done. The result of all this is the following composite curves which
include the maximum plate dissipation lines (in orange). The upper line
indicates the upper limit for the upper tube, and the lower line indicates the
lower limit for the bottom tube. The safe operating range is the band
between the orange lines. To avoid exceeding maximum plate dissipation
ratings, the dynamic load line should be between these two limits.
Not good! Obviously, I did a poor job picking the operating point. The
good thing is that the composite curves immediately reveal the problem. At
this point I decided to reduce both plate voltage and plate current, and try
again. The advantage of having everything on a spreadsheet is that the
results of any change are immediately displayed. Here is the next attempt
using a plate voltage of 240 volts and plate current of 7 mA:
This is better, but at high output levels the maximum allowable plate
dissipation of each triode will still be exceeded part of the time. By
increasing the load impedance to 30,000 ohms, the dynamic load line can
be made to fit within the allowable power band as shown in the next graph
below:
This shows a voltage swing of 240 volts peak-peak into the 30k load which
gives an output power of 0.24 watts RMS, which is less than I'd been
hoping for. In the end, partly because I didn't have a 30k output
transformer, I opted for the design shown in the previous chart which gives
0.36 watts, and stays within the maximum dissipation ratings on average.
Having nailed down the basics of the amplifier, I decided to add some
refinements. These are discussed in the next few sections.
Negative Feedback
From initial testing, the amplifier has a reasonable frequency response

(considering the inexpensive output transformer) of 25 Hz to 15 kHz, and
reasonably low distortion. However, the amplifier has plenty of gain, and it
makes sense to take advantage of the excess gain, and introduce some
negative feedback to improve frequency response and further reduce
distortion. There are several ways to incorporate negative feedback. The
method I chose was to take the output signal from the output transformer
secondary back to the cathode of the pentode section.
Adding negative feedback to a high gain amplifier introduces the risk of

instability, and the possibility of the amplifier breaking into oscillation.
This happens because certain reactive circuit components cause phase shift,
and at certain frequencies the combined phase shift can reach 180, at
which point the amplifier becomes an oscillator. Most of the phase shift
comes from the output transformer, generally at high audio or ultrasonic
frequencies. There are a couple of methods to prevent this from happening.
The first is to add a parallel RC network, in the feedback path, which has a
complementary phase shift characteristic thus reversing the phase shift
introduced by the output transformer. The second method is to add an RC
low pass filter, in the feedback path, which rolls off the feedback to a
sufficiently low level at higher frequencies so that at the point where the
net phase shift reaches 180, the total loop gain is less than one, and
oscillation is not possible. This second method is the approach that I used.
The 470 pF capacitor in combination with the feedback resistor (680 ohms
in the above schematic diagram) accomplishes the feedback roll-off.
With negative feedback applied, the 3db frequency response is now 20Hz
to 70 kHz.
Tone Control
I decided that the amplifier needed a tone control. I wanted something

better than a simple adjustable RC low pass filter, but at the same time,
wanted to stay with a single knob control. It must be a passive circuit, since
I've already used up all the tube sections, and the tone control must be
outside of the negative feedback loop. This means that it has to be right at
the input, or else at the speaker. (Tone control at the speaker has been
done, but requires some odd component values.)
After a bit of web searching, I found two particularly interesting tone

control circuits:
Derek Bowers simple tone control article in EDN (Electonic Design News)
His circuit is shown below:
Frequency Response of the Bowers' tone control:
The Bowers circuit looks very good. Bass boost and treble cut at one end
of rotation, and then treble boost and bass cut at the other end; completely
flat at mid-rotation, and very significant amounts of boost and cut at the
end positions. In addition, the circuit is very simple.
The only problem is that it requires a very low impedance signal source
(<200 ohms), and a very high load impedance. The high load impedance is
normally not a problem with a tube, but I still need a volume control, and
that means something in the 500k range in order not to load down the tone
control output. Using high resistance volume controls can lead to increased
hum and noise though. I also found that some of my audio input sources
have significantly higher impedance than 200 ohms, which would therefore
require an additional buffer stage prior to the tone control.
I didn't immediately rule out the Bowers' tone control, but decided to look
at some tone controls that were specifically intended for tube amplifiers.
The next one that I looked at is Stephen Delft's 'Moonlight' tone control.
His circuit is shown below:
This one is intended for a tube amp, and has component values more in line
with what I was looking for. It also allows for (and includes) the volume
control. The 1 Megohm volume control resistance is higher than desirable,
but the 270k fixed resistor and 1 Meg. pot can be replaced with a 250k pot.
Additionally, all of the component values can be scaled down to more
acceptable ones without affecting frequency response.
Unlike the Bowers circuit, this circuit only gives treble boost/cut, and
leaves the bass unaffected.
Frequency Response of Stephen Delft's 'Moonlight' tone control:
That may not be such a big deal since everything is relative, but the treble
boost/cut is about half the range that the Bowers circuit gives. So relatively
speaking the overall effect is the about 1/4 of the former circuit.
Furthermore, since this circuit doesn't give a complementary bass
cut/boost, the tone control affects the perceived overall volume.
Since I'd been running simulations of both of these circuits anyway, I

decided to experiment with different configurations. I eventually came up
with another bridge circuit, somewhat different from Delft's:
My bridge tone control:
Interestingly, by adding the input resistor, changing the tone potentiometer

to a two wire variable resistor configuration, and changing other
component values, the circuit gives bass boost and treble cut at one end of
rotation, and bass cut and treble boost at the other end of rotation. Though
the total amount of boost/cut is equal for bass and treble, using a linear
taper control, it can be seen from the following frequency response graph
that the control adjustment characteristic is not linear.
Each curve on the graph is an equal increment of tone control resistance.

The control characteristic falls roughly halfway between linear taper and
reverse audio taper. However, by paralleling a fixed resistance with an
audio taper control, the control action becomes much more linear, and
gives flat response at mid position, as shown in the next graph where each
curve is an equal increment of control rotation:
The final tone control circuit is shown below:
As previously mentioned, for a proper linear control characteristic, the tone

control must be a reverse audio taper (also known as C-taper) or else a
standard audio taper control must be wired so that bass increases with
clockwise rotation, and treble increases with counter-clockwise rotation. I
decided to use a standard audio taper control, and live with the reverse
operation (and redesignate it as a bass control). If the constructor is not
concerned about having the flat response exactly at mid rotation, then a
20k or 25k linear taper control (in place of the 50k pot & 33k fixed
resistor) gives perfectly acceptable performance. My personal preference
was to have flat response at mid-rotation (making it easier to do frequency
response testing among other things), so I went with the audio taper
arrangement.
This tone control is not as fussy about input signal impedance as long as it
doesn't begin to approach the value of R 1. Also, the tone control and
volume control are identical in value which helps in sourcing parts.
There are always compromises though. The boost/cut ratio is slightly

higher than Delft's circuit, but still only about a third of the Bowers circuit.
Here is a summary of the tone control characteristics:

Frequency response is flat when R 2/R 3 = R 4/R 5 (ie., the bridge is
balanced, hence no current passes through the capacitor which is the
only reactance in the circuit). With the component values given, R 2
(actually, the net value of R 2 in parallel with R 2a) is adjusted to 4.5k for
flat response. That works out to be mid-position for an audio taper pot.
For equal boost and cut range, the R 2 value should be about 8 times the
R 3 value.
For equal treble and bass adjustment range, R 1 should be equal to R 2+R 3
(when R 2||R 2a is set to flat position: 4.5k). To be more precise, R 1 should
be equal to the combined resistance of the parallel combination of
(R 2+R 3)||(R 4+R 5), but since R 4+R 5 is much greater than R 2+R 3, it
doesn't affect the value significantly.
Doubling R 1 makes the bass boost/cut range double the treble boost/cut
range.
Likewise, halving R 1, halves bass boost/cut range relative to treble range.
For the resistance values shown, the C 1 value is determined from the
desired crossover frequency, F C, according to: C 1=0.005/F C, where
capacitance is in microfarads, and frequency is in kilohertz. So, a
0.005F capacitor gives a crossover frequency of 1kHz.
Though 1 kHz crossover frequency seems to be standard in most of the

tone controls I've seen, I find this a bit high for my taste, and I opted for a
lower frequency using a capacitance of 0.0068F resulting in a crossover
frequency of 735Hz.
One rather useful thing about this circuit (as with Delft's) is that since the
crossover frequency is set by a single capacitor, different values can be
switched in, to change F C.
Continue to Part 2
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This page last updated: April 6, 2017
Copyright 2015, Robert Weaver

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Final Version of the Circuit
In the final circuit, I reduced the amount of negative feedback to

compensate for the insertion loss of the tone control. The original feedback
resistance value of 680 was increased to 3.9 k.
The final schematic is shown below:
In addition to the tone control and negative feedback, a few other changes
were made to the circuit.
A 470 ohm grid stopper resistor was added between the volume control
and the pentode control grid. This corrects an instability problem that
appeared during final construction. Further explanation of this is given
below.
An adjustable bias circuit was added to balance the plate currents of the
output triodes. I hesitated adding this, because it complicates the circuit
and necessitates more set-up adjustments. However, since it only
requires the addition of one trimmer pot and one fixed resistor, I
decided to add it. The trimmer can simply be left at mid position, and
http://electronbunker.ca/eb/TubeAudio_01b.html[16/04/2017 18:12:20]
the output stage will work the same as with the single fixed cathode
resistor. But since there is no guarantee that the triode sections sharing
the common envelope will be well matched, this gives the option of
better matching to get the best possible performance from the amplifier.
The output transformer was changed from a 16k primary impedance to
20k primary impedance, as explained in the load line discussion.
Output Transformer
Up to this point, I've made very little mention of what I used for the output
transformer, other than to mention impedance. Output transformers are a
critical component in tube audio amplifiers, and can make or break a
design. So, it may be rather surprising to learn that I used common and
very inexpensive 70 volt line audio matching transformers. Because of the
way that the number of turns progress from tap to tap, it's possible to pick a
centre tap and two other taps which give an equal number of turns on either
side of centre. These transformers have the primary taps designated by
wattage rather than impedance, and typically the wattage changes by a
factor of two from one tap to the next. The wattage rating can easily be
converted to impedance by dividing the square of the nominal line voltage
rating by the tap wattage rating. For a 70 volt line transformer (actually
70.71 volts) having 4, 2, 1, 0.5 and 0.25 watt taps, this gives primary
impedances of 1250, 2500, 5000, 10,000 and 20,000 ohms respectively.
Starting from the primary common lead, the number of turns increases by
2 every tap. Hence, the number of turns doubles every two taps. So,
having chosen a particular primary impedance, the tap corresponding to
that impedance becomes one of the plate leads. The tap which is two down
from the plate lead will be the centre tap, and the common lead becomes
the other plate lead. For my amplifier I used a McBride model MCT70 4
watt transformer selecting the appropriate taps to give a 20,000 ohm
primary.
Since these transformers were never intended to be used as push-pull

output transformers, there is no reason to expect that the manufacturer
made any attempt to balance the different sections of the primary winding.
In fact, in doing some resistance measurements, it appears that there is a
change of wire size between taps, resulting in a significant difference in
DC resistance readings between the chosen centre tap, and the plate leads.
The difference is much greater than what could be accounted for by the
normal progressively increasing winding diameter. Hence the higher
wattage sections must have larger gauge wire than the lower wattage
sections. In any event the transformer primary DC resistance is negligible
compared to the tube plate resistance, and the AC load impedance.
Consequently, I don't expect the resistance unbalance to be a significant

problem.
Of more concern is an imbalance in leakage inductance between the two

halves of the primary winding. Indeed, I found that the transformer
performed better when the primary common lead was connected to the
plate of V1-C. In any event, considering the low price, the performance is
surprisingly good. Though, given the overall 4 watt power rating of these
transformers and the fact that the amplifier is putting out a fraction of a
watt, they don't have to work very hard, and there is little chance of
operating anywhere close to core saturation.
On the topic of core saturation, that is naturally not a problem in a push-

pull amplifier, because the core flux produced by the DC components of
the plate currents are opposite and cancel each other out.
I should point out that just because these transformers are inexpensive, it
doesn't mean that they are not well designed. In their originally intended
audio distribution application, they need to be reasonably well behaved and
present a reasonably flat frequency response to the amplifier over the
normal audio range. That is not to say that they should be classified as hifi,
but given the conservative power level of this amplifier, the transformer
has enough iron in it to give decent low frequency response, and high
frequency response is generally not a problem in small transformers.
One final comment about using a transformer for something other than its
intended purpose: These transformers are nominally rated 70.7 volts RMS.
From the limited technical data that is available, there is no information
indicating how much over voltage, if any, they can safely withstand. 70
volts RMS equates to 100 volts peak or 200 volts peak to peak on the
primary. I am using this transformer with a plate supply up to 250 volts and
the voltage swing across the primary winding could also be 250 volts peak
to peak in some situations.
Because the transformer is operating well below its maximum power

rating, there is little concern that it would fail due to current overload. The
most likely failure mode would be a short circuit due to insulation
breakdown caused by the higher than normal operating voltage. The worst
case situation would be a short from primary to secondary. However,
because of the very low impedance of the secondary winding, and because
one side of the secondary is grounded, this would would quickly pull down
the plate supply voltage, and the plate supply fuse should immediately
open. This is my primary concern in properly sizing the plate supply fuse.
Regardless, I would never under any circumstance use this as a headphone

amplifier due to the possibility of electric shock, no matter how remote.
For that matter, I would be reluctant to use any home built tube amplifier as
a headphone amplifier. Accordingly, I hereby warn anyone who may
consider using one of these transformers in this or any other tube audio
amplifier circuit, that they do so at their own risk.
Power Supply
I eventually decided on a plate supply of about 250 volts, that with proper
output stage biasing would have the triodes operating under their maximum
dissipation rating of 2.25 watts except during conditions of maximum
output, which will be infrequent. Getting a 250 volt supply during the
prototyping stage was easily done. I simply used a transformer with a 350
volt secondary winding and then powered the primary side from a variac,
so I could adjust it to any desired voltage. However, that is obviously not
practical for the final design. Unfortunately, I had a very limited supply of
transformers. I have an ample supply of 20 VA 120 volt isolation
transformers. So I decided to use one of them in combination with a
voltage doubler. The power supply circuit is shown below:
The two stages of filtering with the 470 ohm resistors and 22 F capacitors
are intended more for dropping the supply voltage to 250 volts, than for
reducing ripple. Push-pull amplifiers are highly immune to power supply
ripple.
In past projects I have added a filament winding to these isolation

transformers in order to get all necessary voltages from a single
transformer. However, for a stereo amplifier, the 1.5 amp total heater
current would be pushing things. So, I opted for a separate filament

transformer.
Note the fuses on both primary and secondary side of the plate supply
transformer. These are important for safety reasons, and should not be left
out.
Total plate current for both channels should never exceed 50 mA. If it
does, then there is something wrong, and the fuse should blow. It's
important to note that if the +250V B+ line should ever short directly to
ground, the current draw will not exceed 370 mA because of the supply
dropping resistors. Therefore, a secondary fuse rated higher than this value
will not provide any protection. A 75 or 100 mA fuse allows normal
operation, but will blow if current consumption increases to an abnormal
level.
Construction
I discovered that major parts distributors don't seem to stock a very wide
variety of dual gang potentiometers anymore, and I had to settle for some
Panasonic miniature printed circuit mount types.
Because of this, it made sense to

incorporate the volume and tone
controls along with all of the tone
control components onto a single
printed circuit board, making for a
very compact and tidy input
assembly. Or, so I thought.
I should have had the good sense

to stop with the tone control
components, but since I was going
to the trouble of making a circuit
board I thought it would save a lot
of trouble by adding some
additional amplifier components onto the board as well. By the time I was
finished, the circuit board included all of the amplifier components except
for the tubes and the power supply. This wouldn't necessarily be a bad
thing, except that the circuit board had to mount behind the front panel,
with long leads extending to the tube sockets. In some cases the leads were
up to 4 inches long, which I consider to be a rather bad practice in a high
gain amplifier. Nevertheless, I had committed myself.
The volume and tone pots were mounted on the foil side of the board due
to clearance restrictions. If they had been mounted on the component side,
there would have been interference between the larger components and the
front panel.
The black and white trim pots at the top edge of the circuit board are the
output stage grid drive pots. The small blue multi-turn trim pots lower
down on the board and closer to the sides, are the bias balance pots. It may
seem strange to use such small trim pots that will be handling the output
stage cathode current. However, the actual power dissipation is very low
and well within the specs of these trim pots. Don't do this with a high
power amp though!
The lower half of the circuit board is the tone control section, and is well
isolated from the rest of the amplifier circuitry.
The capacitors that determine the tone control crossover frequency are the
dark red ones mounted vertically at the lower part of the circuit board, just
left of centre. They are plugged into a set of header sockets, so that they
can be easily changed out, if I decide that I want a different crossover
frequency.
The following series of photos shows various stages of construction.
The main chassis which I fabricated from 22 gauge steel on a small sheet
metal brake/shear. Here it's shown after drilling all of the mounting holes,
and applying grey primer:
Top view of the chassis after applying a matte finish sandstone texture
paint:
Two views of the chassis after mounting the plate supply components:
Two views of the chassis after the circuit board and tube sockets were
installed. Also, the filament supply transformer has been installed:
Note the rat's nest of leads from the circuit board to the tube sockets. This
is because I pre-wired the circuit board to the tube sockets before installing
the sockets in the chassis, and I wanted to make sure that there was
sufficient lead length. The intention was to test out the circuit, and once I
was satisfied that there were no wiring errors, I could unsolder the leads,
trim them to proper length, and then reconnect them.
It turns out that my concern about mounting all components on the circuit
board was well founded. When I powered up the amplifier, the pentode
stage had a tendency to break into oscillation (~70MHz). It was hardly
surprising considering the high gain and the long leads. Luckily, the fix
was quite painless. I added a 470 ohm grid stopper resistor at the pentode
control grid, located right on the tube socket, and the parasitic oscillation
immediately disappeared.
Note the circular black item mounted between the tube sockets. This is a 9-
pin tube socket to be used as a test point during set-up. It gives easy access
to the output stage common cathode point and the triode plates for both
channels. This makes for simple grid drive and bias balance adjustments.
Shielded leads were used from the audio input jacks at the rear of the
chassis to the circuit board, and again from the circuit board to pentode
control grids. All other leads are unshielded. Because of the close
proximity between the amplifier and the power transformers, I had some
concern about induced hum, and had made allowance to install an
aluminum shield between the power supply section and the amplifier
section. It proved to be unnecessary, as there is no audible hum with this
amplifier. (Well, to be entirely accurate, hum is very faintly audible when I
place my ear directly against the speaker. It does not increase when the
volume control is turned up, and it is 60 Hz hum, not 120 Hz supply ripple.
I believe it's probably induced from the filament transformer. It could
probably be shielded out, but I'll leave that for a future experiment.)
Remaining cabinet components including the bottom cover, wood side

panels, front panel and two art deco corner feet:
The front and side panels, as well as the feet, are made from MDF
(medium density fibreboard), finished with brown or black wood toner,
then lacquer, and then dulled slightly with fine steel wool to give a satin
finish (and hide the imperfections).
The completely assembled case:
Left to right, the controls are: Volume, Tone, Power Switch (with pilot
lamp).
Final Checkout, Adjustment, and Operation
There are several methods for adjusting the output stage plate current
balance. Regardless of the method, these adjustments are performed with
no audio input signal present.
In theory, the simplest method is to use two ammeters to simultaneously

measure the actual plate current of each triode, and then adjust the balance
pot so that both ammeters read the same current. This is not particularly
practical however, because two meters are often not readily available, and
breaking the plate circuits to insert the meters is inconvenient.
Another method is to connect a single voltmeter from one triode plate to

the other triode plate, and then adjust the balance pot until the meter reads
zero voltage. This is much simpler, but it only works when the DC
resistance of the two halves of the output transformer primary are identical.
The chances of this happening are directly proportional to how much you
paid for the transformer. These transformers cost me only seven dollars
apiece, and not surprisingly, there is a significant difference between the
resistance readings between the two halves.
The plate to plate voltage balance method can still be used, however. To do
this, it's necessary to measure the DC resistance of the each half of the
transformer primary, and then add a compensating resistance in series with
the lower resistance winding (still somewhat inconvenient but easier than
the two meter method). This resistance value is equal to the difference
between the two resistance measurements. Once inserted, both windings
will now have the same DC resistance value, and the balance can be
quickly set. To make this easier, the 9-pin test socket has a jumper installed
between the lower resistance transformer winding and the corresponding
plate. So, it's simply a matter of pulling out the jumper, inserting an
appropriate resistor, and then making the adjustment. Once the balance
adjustment is complete, the resistor is removed and the jumper reinstalled.
The slight change of plate load resistance that occurs when replacing the
resistor with the jumper will have no significant effect on plate current
balance, since the transformer DC resistance is much lower than the triode
plate resistance which is the determining factor.
It should be mentioned that the amplifier should be given plenty of time to

warm up before performing the bias balance adjustment. Though the
amplifier will start operating within a few seconds after power is applied, I
noticed that the plate current will take several minutes (or tens of minutes)
to stabilize.
The remaining adjustment is the grid drive pot. For this adjustment, a
single frequency sine-wave tone is applied to the amplifier input.
Frequency is not critical. I used a 1 kHz signal. The signal generator level
and/or volume control are adjusted so that the amplifier is producing a
reasonably loud signal without overloading. An oscilloscope probe is
connected to the triode common cathodes, and then the drive pot is
adjusted to minimize the signal on the cathodes. A small second harmonic
component will be visible on the scope trace, which cannot be eliminated,
but it should be easy to null the fundamental frequency. If not, the level of
input signal is too high and the amplifier is clipping. In this case the input
signal level should be decreased, and the adjustment repeated. If an
oscilloscope is not available, a sensitive AC voltmeter can be used, as long
as it works at audio frequencies. With the AC voltmeter, the grid drive pot
is adjusted for minimum reading on the voltmeter.
As mentioned above, frequency response is 20 Hz to 70 kHz. (This is with

the 680 pF shunt capacitor disconnected. Naturally, the upper end of the
response drops to a more practical frequency of about 20 kHz when the
capacitor is installed.)
As I developed the amplifier, I performed a number of rough distortion

measurements and finally a more careful one that indicates the harmonic
distortion is less than .25% when power output is 75% of maximum. The
measurement method was as follows:
1. Connect 8 ohm resistive load to amplifier output.
2. Feed amplifier input signal into oscilloscope channel 1.
3. Feed amplifier output into oscilloscope channel 2.
4. Record output amplitude (channel 2).
5. Switch oscilloscope to differential mode, and adjust channel 1 gain until
fundamental frequency is nulled out on the scope trace. Whatever
remains is distortion.
6. Measure amplitude of the remaining distortion signal, and divide by
amplitude of original output level. Square the value to convert voltage
ratio to power ratio. Multiply by 100 to get percent.
Though these are hardly laboratory grade measurements, the method gives
a reasonable estimate of distortion.
Note that some distortion measurement methods simply calculate the ratio
of voltages rather than the ratio of powers. These methods would give
higher distortion numbers than the method used here.
It's interesting to note that the principal distortion component is the second
harmonic which is normally not the case for a push-pull amplifier.
However, it is completely understandable in this case. A traditional push-
pull output stage has each output tube driven by identical signals (but 180
out of phase). Any even harmonic distortion will be in phase and will
cancel out in the output transformer. In this circuit, the drive signals are
not identical. The second triode receives its grid drive signal from the first
triode plate that will introduce some even harmonic distortion. The second
triode inverts and amplifies this distortion, which is now out of phase, and
will not cancel in the transformer. The portion of the input signal that the
second triode receives via the common cathode connection should not
contribute even harmonic distortion. So, while the overall even harmonic
distortion is higher than a conventional push-pull amplifier, it should still
be less than that of a conventional single ended amplifier.
Even harmonics are generally considered to be less offensive to the ear

than odd harmonics. In any event, I don't find it offensive. For that matter,
I really can't detect the distortion in a listening test. What is normally far
more offensive is intermodulation distortion, and this amplifier appears to

be reasonably immune. Perhaps this is not surprising considering the
excellent linearity of the output stage over a very wide range as shown on
composite curves.
Conclusion
I was originally hoping I might be able to squeeze a bit more power out of
this amplifier than what I ended up with, but after using it now for several
weeks, I find that I rarely have the volume control turned up higher than
about 25%. My speakers are a pair of vintage Realistic Minimus 7's which
give excellent audio quality, in a small space. These speakers are much less
efficient than what were typically used with tube amplifiers back in the
golden age of tube audio. So, considering that the amplifier can easily
drive them with more than adequate volume, I'm quite happy.
Back to:
Part One
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This page last updated: April 6, 2017
Copyright 2015, Robert Weaver

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Mini-Tube Audio Amplifier - Part 1

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Mini-Tube Audio Amplifier - Part 1

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Mini-Tube Audio Amplifier - Part 1

This is not intended as a step by step DIY construction project. It's a

Proceed at your own risk.

This is the prototype circuit:

(Click for larger version.)

And here is the original breadboard assembly:

The Preamp Stage

The Push-Pull Output Stage

IP = (E1X /kG1)(1 + sgn(E1))

where the value E 1 is given by:

E1 = (EP /kP ) log(1 + exp(kP (1/ + EG /sqrt(kVB + EP 2))))

where E P is plate voltage, E G is grid voltage, and the remaining variables

resistance of 160 ohms plus transformer primary winding resistance of 350

An advantage of having an accurate plate current formula in the

Following is the set of composite characteristic curves:

Maximum Plate Dissipation Curves

Whereas generating the composite plate current curves was relatively

From initial testing, the amplifier has a reasonable frequency response

Adding negative feedback to a high gain amplifier introduces the risk of

I decided that the amplifier needed a tone control. I wanted something

After a bit of web searching, I found two particularly interesting tone

His circuit is shown below:

Frequency Response of the Bowers' tone control:

His circuit is shown below:

Frequency Response of Stephen Delft's 'Moonlight' tone control:

cut/boost, the tone control affects the perceived overall volume.

Since I'd been running simulations of both of these circuits anyway, I

My bridge tone control:

Interestingly, by adding the input resistor, changing the tone potentiometer

Each curve on the graph is an equal increment of tone control resistance.

The final tone control circuit is shown below:

As previously mentioned, for a proper linear control characteristic, the tone

There are always compromises though. The boost/cut ratio is slightly

Here is a summary of the tone control characteristics:

Though 1 kHz crossover frequency seems to be standard in most of the

HOME PROJECTS RADIOTHEORY DOWNLOADS LINKS

Mini-Tube Audio Amplifier - Part 2

Final Version of the Circuit

In the final circuit, I reduced the amount of negative feedback to

The final schematic is shown below:

(Click for larger version.)

Since these transformers were never intended to be used as push-pull

Consequently, I don't expect the resistance unbalance to be a significant

Of more concern is an imbalance in leakage inductance between the two

On the topic of core saturation, that is naturally not a problem in a push-

Because the transformer is operating well below its maximum power

Regardless, I would never under any circumstance use this as a headphone

(Click for larger version.)

In past projects I have added a filament winding to these isolation

current would be pushing things. So, I opted for a separate filament

Because of this, it made sense to

I should have had the good sense

The following series of photos shows various stages of construction.

installed. Also, the filament supply transformer has been installed:

Remaining cabinet components including the bottom cover, wood side

The completely assembled case:

Final Checkout, Adjustment, and Operation

In theory, the simplest method is to use two ammeters to simultaneously

Another method is to connect a single voltmeter from one triode plate to

It should be mentioned that the amplifier should be given plenty of time to

As mentioned above, frequency response is 20 Hz to 70 kHz. (This is with

As I developed the amplifier, I performed a number of rough distortion