300b lovers

@lynn_olson 

The original Karna had twointerstages, which was frankly over-the-top. Requirements for the first one bordered on impossible, since impedance from the first tube was much higher than the driver. When I switched over to the 6SN7, I decided enough was enough, and went with simpler inductor loading instead.

I love the candor.

Charles

My PP 845 Mono's are produced with a optimised performance for the 845, they are Low Wattage approx' 25 Watts when the VU Metre at Biasing is set to 12.5, I have been informed I can push the Watt Output Up if I increase the Bias, but the Trade Off is a reduction in the Head Room, in the past I played with Bias, but the Headroom when perceived is quite addictive as a trait of the Amp.

These Amps have Hand Wound Output and Power Tranx's, the designer/builder has informed me recently, that even though there are increased options for Tranx's since this Amp' was designed, there is not an off the shelf winding that they are aware of, that is readily available to suit the Amp's design.  

I’m not surprised. The great enemy of transformers are high impedance, which decreases bandwidth on both ends of the spectrum, and increased insulation resistance, which takes up room on the winding stack. Both act to increase the size of the core, the winding stack, and the entire transformer.

When transformers get bigger, inter-winding capacitance goes up, and HF bandwidth decreases. Yes, little transformers are better, at least at high frequencies. To get the lows, though, you need more inductance, and that makes it bigger and heavier.

The technique to increase HF bandwidth are more complex interleaving schemes between primary and secondary, but this can cause ultrasonic resonances and poor square wave performance. The art of interleaving has fortunately been somewhat simplified by computer modeling, but there’s still plenty of art involved. You want a skilled builder with plenty of experience with audio transformers.

There ain’t no free lunch with transformers. They solve problems, but you really have to keep impedances low, and work closely with the transformer designer. They’ll tell you what they want, and you tell them what you want, and you work together to meet your goals. In my case, I wanted matched capacitances on the primaries, good phase match at 20 kHz, and the ability to tolerate a certain amount of imbalance current. With SE, of course, it’s all imbalance current, so a (very) large gapped core is required.

A problem with using old transformers is corona discharge where the enamel on the wire has thinned or cracked. Once a point of breakdown occurs, those windings are shorted to each other, and the problem cannot be solved unless the transformer is disassembled and completely rewound using the same interleaving scheme. New transformers are commonly tested with HIPOT, a test fixture that generates 5 kV between the windings and the core.

The evolution from the original Karna amplifier, built by Gary Pimm in 2002 and designed by yours truly, to where it is now, is a desire for rationality combined with reliable performance. The original was a proof-of-concept, the kind of thing I’ve been doing since Shadow Vector in 1975. I’m not so good at manufacturing engineering, which is where my collaborators come in ... Gary Pimm, Thom Mackris, and now, Don Sachs. These guys keep me on the straight and narrow and argue me away from my wilder flights of fancy.

The original Karna was based on a desire to get rid of all capacitors in the signal path, since I truly despise these things. But realistically, transformers are mostly problem solvers, so it’s better design practice to give them a problem to solve.

1) The input transformer accurately phase splits and offers ground isolation between preamp and power amp, if desired.

2) The interstage offers Class A1/A2 operation for the output section, a favorable load to the driver (compared to RC coupling), and balanced Class A drive for lowest distortion into a reactive load (the Miller capacitance of the 300B grids).

3) The output transformer multiplies current by about 28 times, so the peak currents the 300B offers (in the 200 to 300 mA range) now become many amps at the 4 and 8 ohm taps.

All three solve problems. The first interstage in the original Karna was mostly there for spite, to get rid of coupling caps once and for all, just to prove a point. But that required a low impedance tube, and I didn’t want to use a 6DJ8, which is woefully unsuited to power amplifier use. That left a family of industrial tubes that are reasonably linear (much more linear than a 6DJ8), the 5687/7044/7119 family. They worked reasonably well but I wasn’t entirely happy with the tone quality, but I was stuck, since the high plate impedance of the 6SN7 made it a no-go.

The founder of Tribute Transformers saw this as a challenge ... 15 K plate-to-plate ... and built four interstages with an 80 kHz bandwidth and perfect square waves. They’re in my Karna amps and Gary Dahl’s Amity amps now, and no, they weren’t free, both of us paid in full for them. So yes, it is possible to build an amp with two interstages and no coupling caps at all. But ... using a truly exotic interstage, a genuinely one-of-a-kind design from Tribute.

I wasn’t going to lay that burden on Don. We started with the greatly simplified Symmetric Reichert and improved it step-by-step, edging back to the original Karna, but certainly not using a four-box design with a quite exotic grounding system, aviation-grade Amphenol connectors, and four massive power supplies. You really have to draw the line somewhere.

Don had a lot more experience on the practical side, as well as real-world production experience with top-quality, and most of all, reliable power supplies in his well-regarded KT88 amp. So off we went.

I have never had a wooly or bloated 300b amplifier owned about 30 of the things not one had any bloat. All had a very wide frequency range when powering proper loudspeakers. Now if you don't use loudspeakers that are correct for SET or 300b amps they may have issues think that's where most of the bloated 300b comments come from. Since I see many SET or PP 300b etc users running speakers that are not best used with it.