This post has firstly, a brief history on the vacuum tube.
And secondly the first steps in my build project.
In the beginning there were tubes.
There was the ECC83's who served, doing all the smaller tasks worthy of a less powerful being. Just above them there were the EL84, who took the roll of gate keepers, book keepers and such.
Running the city there were a vast array of rectifier rubes, who kept the city in order. At the top sad the mighty EL34, in all his tonal might.
For a long time this was a good and orderly system.
One day, many years later how ever there was unrest in the smaller tubes.
"Why do we eat so poorly, work so hard, and some of us ever have to sleep in the barns with the capacitors and pots. When the bigger tubes live healthy, carefree lives at our expense!? It's time we struck back!"
So the ECC83 and alike picked up their sockets and stormed towards the center of the city. Where all the big tubes lived.
They reached the city streets that they swept every day, which only encouraged their flames of hatred.
A long and tiresome battle took place shortly after, the city was desolate with smashed glass. Tubes were strewn across the road, their inners becoming outers, and none of them were very happy.
What they didn't know is that the mighty EL34 was on holiday, in America (where he was hailed 6CA7, and make king there too).
Upon his arrival he was angry, his city lay in ruins.
he knew punishment had to be dished with the cold spoon of fury to stop civil disobedience once again staining the city with the nasty aftertaste of war.
With his cathode outstretched he used his superior 25watts of power to banish the evil doing tubes to the stock piles of radio shack and jaycar outlets.
Here they have remained until this day, raising an army...thus the transistor revolution was born.
I swear, that's how it happened.
Okay, now here's the actual post that I was gonna start off with :P
So I'm building an amp :)
w00t!
You want to build an amp too?
Good, well you can find everything you need in order to build one here on this site.
The following posts will all be labled with the same heading, so you can find them easily, and they should lead you through your own amp project.
Step one, getting parts.
If you're a noob, you won't have a hope of understanding the schematics.
it's important that you find some one to help you with this, or else you amp will not work. And you'll most likelly kill yourself with the 375v that this amp can sting you with.
Secondly, you wont know where to get parts from.
You can try your local DSE or JayCar, but there are parts you'll need to order from other countries.
These include the out put transformer, and probably some high voltage caps.
I'd personally suggest the Tube Amp Doctor in germany for these parts (they're greate)
http://www.tubeampdoctor.com/index.php
For this amp, you're probably going to end up spending close to $800 if you're lucky.
So now is the time to decide if it's worth it or now (NOT after you've blown your mains transformer and have to throw it all away!)
you'll find a complete parts list on this site soon.
Okay, so far I'm still awaiting postage on my output transformer, but here's what I've got so far.
Note all the caps in these photos are rated at a voltage suitable to their purpose (for example the blue ones are rated at 350v. And there are a few more coming, rated at 450v. If they aren't at the right voltage rating it is possible to blow them up..and ruin everything).
Any way, it's getting late.
I'll upload the schematics as soon as I can, at the moment I've only got my wee hand drawn version which won't do so well when compressed.
So I'll upload those, and hopefully i'll be able to provide some useful info for building your very own amp. And if nothing else, just provide a semi entertaining blog for your reading-ness.
Enjoy
Jonny.
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