1.

Lowish Cost Big Valve Amplifier

I routinely use 3 power amplifiers on the home HiFi. The default amp is a Hugh Dean AKSA 55W Kit
Amplifier with the Nivarna Plus upgrade, This amplifier is a 55W into 8 Ohm (90W into 4 Ohm) Solid State
amplifier which has large gobs of that Valve Amplifier sound and is one of the very few Solid State Amps
which I don’t find to be Cold, Sterile and Boring. For some of my old Rock and Roll and blues recordings it is
however a little bit too revealing and for listening to these recordings I prefer my little EL84 Ultra linear Push
Pull Valve Amp when I need musical “pace” or my 845 Single Ended Triode Amp when I just want pure valve
warmth and emotion. For some time I have felt the need for something else. I wanted the pace and
excitement of the EL84 amp but with a bigger (more grunt) sound.

Graham Maynard’s reference to KT88 Class AB1 ultralinears in his “Class A Imagineering:Part 1”
(Electronics World June 2004) prompted me to get off my derriere and design and build a prototype using
low cost commercial grade components. I wanted to see what level of performance could be achieved
without spending huge amounts of hard earned cash for toroidal output transformers and the like. As a
further goal I wanted something that any average DIY’er could build.

2. The requirements specification

You can’t tackle a design without at least a minimum requirements specification. No need to go overboard
BUT you need some idea of your goals. Here they are:
 A FAST ”pacey” amp – that means Push Pull, Ultra linear
 Appreciably more power than the EL84 Amp – that means 80 – 120 Watts into 4 Ohm Load
 Simple Driver Stage - No grid current in the output tubes – that means Class AB1
 Decent amount of Class A power before the transition to class B – that means deep Class AB1 (high
bias currents in the output valves) to give good fine detail.
 Fixed Bias for the output valves
 A damping factor of not less than 2 and not greater than 8 (personal preference from experience).
 Robust design for long lifetime with no components being stressed beyond their ratings.

3. The Design.
Always start a valve power amplifier design from the output and work back to the input.
A search for readily available (worldwide) output transformers of reasonable cost meant a Hammond
Transformer. The requirements from above lead me to select the Hammond 1650T. This transformer is a
1900 Ohms Raa unit with Ultra linear taps at 40%, rated at 120 Watts and with a FULL POWER bandwidth of
30Hz to 30kHz. The low Raa (anode to anode primary load impedance) means that 4 off EL34, 6550 or
KT88s can easily drive it to 120 Watts.

I happen to like EL34s so I started the design with some cheap Chinese EL34s and immediately ran into a
problem. The Ultra linear connection imposes full anode voltage on the screens of the output tubes. The
EL34s suffered screen to cathode flashovers despite using large series resistors in the screen circuits to limit
screen dissipation. In line with the requirement for robust design I abandoned EL34s, looked at 6550s and
decided their screen rating was also inadequate and went straight to KT88s (Va = 800V and Vg2 = 600V).

Allowing for an output transformer efficiency of 90% means we need to deliver about 135 Watts into the
primary. That means 506 VRMS or 716V pk across the primary. In a push pull amp half of this is handled by
each side or about 360V pk. KT88s have a saturation voltage of 90V and so we need a High Voltage rail of
450V as a minimum. Its actually a good idea to allow 10% more than this so we end up with a 500V rail.

The problem with many higher power valve amps is inadequate control of Grid 1. Most designs tend to use
high values of Grid 1 to the bias supply resistors since these resistors are the “load” for the driver stage. The
maximum recommended value for KT88s in fixed bias is 120K. I used 100K. Each side has 2 of these in
parallel (50K) which is a significant load for the phase splitter/driver stage to handle. Of possibly even more
significance is the total grid capacitance that has to be driven. This value is difficult to calculate as it consists
of grid 1 capacitance plus miller capacitance to the anode plus miller capacitance to the screen. The gain
values required to calculate it are usually not given on the valve data sheets so I simply assumed it would be
large (approaching 100pF) and proceeded from there.
I already had a phase splitter design in mind. I wanted to use a current sourced differential amp. Kevin
O’Connor in his “Principals of Power” book showed a typical circuit using the 2 halves of 12AX7 as a
differential amplifier. Resistors from the two anodes are connected back to the base of the current source
transistor. This arrangement guarantees AC balance as the current source is “adjusted” at audio frequencies
until balance is achieved. DC balance relies on the two halves of the 12AX7 being well matched.

The 12AX7 is NOT a good choice of signal input device however due to high Miller Capacitance limiting the
input bandwidth. This idea was modified to use a Cascode connected 6DJ8s (ECC88) for each side of the
differential amp similar to the “traditional” Hedge Circuit. This is where we had a big win. While doing some
net searches I came across Curcio Audio Engineering (CAE) who offer a PCB with exactly this design
combined with a High Voltage Regulator. It is his PCB1A that was designed for use in upgrading of Dynaco
MK3 Valve Amps. For the MK3 upgrade the diff amp is used to drive the output valve grids directly. The
anodes of the top of the diff amp sit at 200 to 210V DC which made them ideal for a DC coupled Cathode
Followers to be added to drive the output valve grids, thus there are some coupling caps and bias
components on the PCB1A which you simply don’t load for this application.

I had some commercial concerns about publishing a design using CAE’s circuit and PCBs until further net
searches showed that the design has been used widely in the past (eg Sonic Frontiers Amps to name just
one) and that the circuit is in the “public domain”.

That is enough of a design to build the prototype. With that built we have an ideal test platform for the final
set to work. Rule 1 of any feedback system (whether it be an audio amp or a laser scanner or whatever) is to
make it as linear as possible before closing the loop.

Note that I have included a HT fuse and the 10R 0.25W cathode resistors for each output valve act as
individual fuses (as well as giving a convenient point to measure bias currents). Do NOT be tempted to use
high power resistors here.

4. The Set to Work

I set the output valve bias currents to 50mA per valve and then did plots of output valve anode voltage and
phase vs frequency with a resistive load on the secondary of the output transformer (and constant grid 1
voltage). This showed a serious peak at 68 KHz on the “Push” side and an even more complex arrangement
of dips and peaks on the “Pull” side. These resonances need to be damped by addition of Zobel Networks. I
made some enquiries among the valve amp “gurus” I knew and they all told me that this is a trial and error
procedure and there is no correct way of doing it. For a professional engineer that was “A Red Rag to a Bull”.
Back to the Internet and the reference books. There has been quite a bit of work done in recent years on
critically damping transformer resonances, mostly in relation to DC-to-DC Converter design. Some of this
work has been interpreted and applied to transformers for valve amps. The clearest explanation/method I
found was on a Valve Amp DIY’ers site. Here is the link.
http://www.siteswithstyle.com/VoltSecond/Damping_ringing_XFMRS/Damping_ringing_in_xfmrs.html. I used
the methods described for maximally flat input impedance (what VoltSecond calls Rd-opt-Zi) to arrive at the
position (anode to screen) and values of the Zobel Networks shown on the schematic. The voltage and
phase plots where repeated to confirm that critical damping of any ringing had been achieved. You will note
that the capacitor and resistor values are a quite a bit different than seen on most old published amplifier
designs and that they are different for each side of the transformer. It is IMPORTANT to do this BEFORE
closing the loop as it has a serious impact on the amount of high frequency roll off required to stabilise the
amp once feedback is applied.

Having done the above, I applied feedback from the 8-Ohm tap of the output transformer. I found that very
minimal step networks across the diff amp anode resistors were required to stabilise the amp. I then did full
power tests showing 122 Watts at saturation and 138 Watts in heavy overdrive. Output Impedance without
Feedback was 3.5 Ohms and with feedback was 1.8 Ohms. As my speakers are actually nominally 6 Ohm
this was good enough for the Damping Factor I wanted. Next I did frequency response runs at 50 W output
(None of that frequency response at 1 W rubbish here). At the High Frequency end the –3dB point was
65kHz which is outstanding. At the low end, response was flat down to 22 Hz with a severe waveform
distortion setting in at 18 Hz due (I believe) to Output Transformer saturation. Because of this I dropped the
output grid coupling capacitors from 470nF to 100nF to give a –3dB point at 16 Hz (and save some cash). A
lag compensation cap across the feedback resistor is not required however I found that a small value (22pF)
did slightly improve the 10kHz square wave response. I also found that increasing the KT88s bias currents
from 50mA to 55mA per valve made a small but worthwhile improvement. Increasing it again to 60mA did’nt
seem to make any difference so I settled on 55mA.

5. The result.
While I’m listening in mono while building the second mono block and so I can’t actually speak about imaging
and the like, the results are simply stunning. It is by far my favourite amp with a big valve sound. It has the
detail of the 845 Single Ended Triode with the pace and excitement of the EL84 UL PP and the sound is
HUGE.

6. The conclusion
As an exercise in seeing if a high quality sound, big valve amplifier could be designed without recourse to
fantastically expensive components like toroidal output transformers, this project has been a huge success. I
believe that the critical point in the process was in optimising the Zobel Networks to critically damp any
ringing in the output transformer. This optimisation linearised the input impedance and phase of the output
transformer allowing it to perform way past its standard capability. The use of the current source biased diff
amp to guarantee AC balance and the direct coupled cathode followers to drive the output valve grid
capacitance and low value grid resistances also helped.

7. Things for you to try

You may wish to try doubling the value of the main high voltage power supply capacitors from 220uF to
470uF. This will add cost BUT may tighten up the bass response a little. The coupling caps to the output
valve grids should be high quality polypropylene BUT cheap polyesters with a parallel polypropylene cap of
about 1/100th the value should also work well. You might also wish to experiment with the output valve bias
currents. The KT88s should handle idle currents up to 70mA per valve BUT valve life may be reduced.

The Amplifier and Power Supply Schematics follow.

 1 2 3 4 5 6

IC1
LM317T
3 1 R3 R2
Vout Vin HV
47R 47R

GND
D D
R7 Radd3 R5
4R7 SOT 330R Q1
TIP50

2
DZ1
R1
22K
5V6
R4
+C1 100K/3W
CAE PCB1A
10uF

+430V
Cadd1 Cadd2
R104
R6 47pF 47pF R8 6K8
47K/3W 47K/3W
R123
Radd1 Radd2 1K/3W
4K7 4K7
5
V3B
+200V R9 R10 +200V R102 4 6SN7
C P1 C107 C
1M 1M 4K7 2
V3A R119 4n7
R103 6 1 6SN7
6 P2 330/2W
V2B V2A 1 4K7 V4 V6
ECC88 ECC88
7 2 3 C103 R121
BRN R107 R117
330/2W
3 4K7 4K7
8 100nF/630V
KT88 KT88
C104

BRN/YEL

BRN
100nF/630V R113 R115 1 T1 6
R11 R12 C2 C3 R13 R14 10R/0.25W 10R/0.25W 8 Ohm
100R 3M3 100nF 100nF 3M3 100R R109 R111 7
100K 100K 2
Cadd3
V1A 22pF 3 8
V1B 6 PS 0V HV
ECC88 1 ECC88
2 4 9

Bias1

Bias3
INPUT R15 R16 R21 4 Ohm
7
Port FB+ R114 R116

BLU/YEL
330R 330R 47K 10R/0.25W 10R/0.25W 5 10
R17 8 R22 Com.
3 C105

BLU
B 470K 1K 1650T B
+3.9V

100nF/630V
V5 V7
C100 C106
R100 R108 KT88 R118
+1.6V + BLU
270K R122
4K7 4K7
47uF 100nF/630V 330/2W
Q2 R110 R112
2N4400 C102 100K KT88
100K
220nF R120
R19 R20 C101 R101 R105 R106
+ 330/2W
4K7 100R 270K 47K/5W 47K/5W

Bias2

Bias4
47uF R124
1K2/3W

Port FB-

C109 C108
2n2 4n7

A A

Title

Size Number Revision

B
Date: 14-Jul-2004 Sheet of
File: C:\Amp\DUD120\DUD120-1.ddb Drawn By:
1 2 3 4 5 6
 1 2 3 4 5 6

D D
C200
10nF/2kV
STANDBY SWITCH
R204 F3
P1 S2-A D200 1 AMP
R200 4R7/5W
MAINS SOCKET T1 +500V
HT
4R7/5W
F1 3.15A SW1 1N5408 R202 C202 R205 C204
R207

220uF/385V
360-0-360

100K/2W

100K/2W
220uF/385V
+ +
C201 330K
10nF/2kV
F2 3.15A +200V
MAINS D201
R201
4R7/5W R203 C203 R206 C205 C206
S2-B R208 C207
1N5408

220uF/385V

220uF/385V
100K/2W

100K/2W
+ + +
220K
47uF 100nF

0V

6SN7 pin 7
R209
C C
6V3 @ 0.6A 150R
Floated Heater for V3
R210
150R
6SN7 pin 8

Heaters
R211

6V3 @ 8A 47R/1W
Heaters V1, V2, V4, V5, V6, V7
R212
47R/1W
Heaters
1

BRIDGE1

50V @ 40mA -68V

2 4
B B

R213 R215 R217 R219

Bias 1 Bias 2 Bias 3 Bias 4
3

10K 10K 10K 10K

C209
100uF/100V
+

R214 C210 R216 C211 R218 C212 R220 C213

33K 33uF/100V 33K 33uF/100V 33K 33uF/100V 33K 33uF/100V
+ + + +

A A

Title

Size Number Revision

B
Date: 2-Jul-2004 Sheet of
File: C:\Amp\DUD120\DUD120-1.ddb Drawn By:
1 2 3 4 5 6