DIY SONY VFETS pt 3 - Got VFETs?

I'll do the cutting.

In the mean time I followed the 'noisy filament' path. I before in the noisy state had connected the 12.6V minus to the earth. No elevated filament.
Now I connected the minus of the filament PS through a 10KΩ to the V+; the connection is also attached to earth via a 6.8µF capacitor. The tube is elevated to 45V average, like you would do in a real tube amplifier (with a real driver with real 80-100V power supply that is ;)) I can say: very silent now.
Below a 100mV 3kHz square wave in 8Ω. So this looks good.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_1517.JPG
    IMG_1517.JPG
    476.5 KB · Views: 55
Thanks Zen, this really helped me in this moment of peril.
OK I'll do that, 10K--> 36V and 33K --> earth so the mean filament voltage is 35 v approx.

In the mean time I have disconnected the outgoing earth from the driver board twisted pair. The noise dropped from about 1 mV RMS on the output to less than 0,1 mV RMS. Now that is something!
I had for God's sake also taken 10 pF across the 215K feedback of the driver (it did reduce the noise - but also a BW that dropped to 50 kHz) now it is a 6 Hz-120 kHz again.

I have Tesla PCC88 can upgrade to a blue topped PCC88 that has almost double mu and lower Rplate. I have tried E90CC but it had slightly more 3rd harmonics.
 
I don't know how my pair of 2SK60 VFETS measure/rank/match but I guess it might be useful to find out. Can anyone give me a steer on doing that? I did do a quick search of the forum to see if I could find something myself but didn't turn up an obvious match - maybe I just got the search criteria a little wrong. Cheers.
 
Member
Joined 2012
Paid Member
If you only have two VFETs, don't worry about matching. The bias voltage is adjustable so a wide range of Vgs will work in the circuit.

None of the SITs/VFETs in my diy amps are matched and that doesn't affect my enjoyment of their sound, even if the left channel may measure a bit differently from the right channel with respect to harmonic distortion.

Matching of Vgs will not ensure identical performance. Curve matching is needed for that.
 
Having some vfets around I decided to build this amp on some proto pcbs. I was impressed about the sound so I decided to draw a pcb for it.
In the meantime Mark designed the AmyAlice filter for which I drew a pcb too. I added a extra cap multiplier to make it suit my needs.
I will have the pcbs in a few weeks so the rest of the fun still has to come.
A big thanks to Pa, ZM and Mark!
 

Attachments

  • amp + ps.jpg
    amp + ps.jpg
    56 KB · Views: 126
  • amp pcb.jpg
    amp pcb.jpg
    49.1 KB · Views: 118
  • Like
Reactions: 2 users