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In Reply to: End Of Zen schematic posted by Tom §. on October 29, 2001 at 07:29:32:
Hi Tom,If only it could have more power…..That’s was my daily mantra with the Zen. At the end of the day 1.5w is 1.5w. Once TG hooked his Laurels up to my speakers it became impossible to pretend that I had enough power.
More power. Ok you’ll think I'm pulling your leg but I’m straight up serious. Take the output transformer off the 12B4 and stick a small good quality cap on the plate and hook it up to a 6L6 Cathode follower. Parafeed of course – autoformers is even better. The 6L6 is run as a tetrode and sits on a choke that can handle 80-100ma.....
My current amp is a 6H30 input a choke loaded 10Y and 6L6 cathode follower. It’s a GREAT amp. Before that I had my Zen amp modified to drive the 6L6 cathode follower and it sounds like a great big Zen with killer bass and much better highs the the standard amp. It had all the good things (and some of the bad). What was the bad? Well in my opinion the Zen is a great little amp but the midrange is not right (I'm being very picky here so no flames please.). Its dark and a bit closed in and not properly integrated with the music. Just my opinion.
The 6L6 Cathode follower is incredibly transparent. You hear the SV83 as it is. The SV83 as a triode it’s a good but not great tube. Lets stop fooling ourselves – you can do much better. Going from that to 10Y was a giant step up. So now I have 10Y with about 6 or so watts. You can have even more power with a KT88 output. The KT88 is a bit warmer and not as clear. After living with both I think the 10Y works best with the 6L6.Cheers,
Anthony
Follow Ups:
What operating point do you run the 6L6 as a Cathode follower? pentode or "triode" connection?I assume then the output tranny is easier to design... less turns ratio.
Richard
i fooled with this briefly with triodes and never found and major gains... i too though the reduced turns ratio would be a huge plus.. but but found to make it listenable, i still needed much more of a turns ratio in the cathode then in the plate.. .so i was getting a great impedanc ematce and control, but suddenly i needed tons of drive to get reasonable power out so i abandon it...i note that anthony uses pentodes... how does a pentode behave in CF mode????
also the whole reason i was looking into it was to get some serious power... and i think i was barking up the wrong tree... i never looked at it for a sweet low powered sound...
dave
Dave,I stumbled into this just by fooling around one night. I never expected it work that well. What I have worked out is that the driver tube is king. Use an ordinary driver and you will have a ordinary amp. I'm aware of a couple of design on the web one use a 6SJ7 and another uses a transformer coupled 6SN7. I don't think either tube is really up to the job. The tubes I would consider are 71A, 45, 46, 2a3, 10Y - you get the picture.
I started with a triode in the cathode follower but found it did not work very well, not that much power and it would get distress very easily. The tetrode (or pentode) is another ball game. Its is big, clear and confident.
I guess at the end of the day this is not an easy amp for getting lots of power but a way to get the character of a small power triode without the power limitation....And heck its been lots of fun.
Cheers,
Hi Richard,Its a pentode. Works best that way. The 6L6 is running at about 460V and 300 on the screen its pulling about 55ma. So only a 6L6GC is up to the job. Don't use metal 6L6 or 6L6GB etc.
The load is about 2.5K which is high but works very well. Very punchy and lots of great bass.
Cheers,
Anthony
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