F4 power amplifier

twitchie said:
Thanks Jason. The heatsinks are from the R-Theta groupbuy from many years ago - they are 11x11. These heatsinks are good for Veteran's layout, but it's not always a simple thing to find big heatsinks. If I were to build another one, I would use CVILLER's layout and get the ebay heatsinks or sinks from Conrad.

Stephen


I think i have the same heatsinks :) when you power yours up im interested in knowing the tempature.

Jase
 
Nelson Pass said:
I had a chance to run F4's on a pair of Quad 989's last
Saturday. The sound was terrific (I was really impressed by the
speakers as well). The only problem was taking them home.

:cool:

As never before I can sense a real enthusiasm on Nelson’s part about the sonic abilities of one of his creations. That say a lot about the F4 and I’m looking forward to building one for my enjoyment.

Thanks once again Nelson for sharing this wonderful design. :) :cool:
 
Nelson Pass said:
I had a chance to run F4's on a pair of Quad 989's last
Saturday. The sound was terrific (I was really impressed by the
speakers as well). The only problem was taking them home.

:cool:

aah the singing mattresses i call them. The housing of the new ones ,the 2905, are significant different from the old one's they are nice.

A question for they who have build a F4 already; what is the degree celcius per watt of your heatsinks ?. Have done some time with the pcb cad program but I need to know if the heatsinks that i have in mind are large enough.
 
Jaac TheMaster said:
A question for they who have build a F4 already; what is the degree celcius per watt of your heatsinks ?. Have done some time with the pcb cad program but I need to know if the heatsinks that i have in mind are large enough.

I don't know what rating you need, but the amount of current is the same as in aleph30, but you'll have 6 volts less rail to rail.

I have mounted my f4 in a temporary box (I'll put it in a different one when I finish my preamp). The heatsinks are 36x7x18cm, but the fins are horizontal, thus making the air flow resistance too high. You can't boil an egg on them, but after a couple of hours, I cannot hold my hand on the heatsinks for more than a few seconds.
 

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veteran said:
What do you think about DC protection and soft start circuit integrated on PCB? This amplifier is quite powerful ;)


The usual NTC is enough for softstart of the toroids, and there is no need to do tricks to avoid thumps, they have been removed by papa! :)
I have placed the fuse and NTC on a small scrap board to the left of the psu board.

It might be a good idea to have some speaker protection in case of transistor failure, if you have expensive speakers, but the circuit feels rock solid as it is.
 
I have almost the entire BOM for F4s, well, almost. The concern is that the input JFETs are nearly impossible to obtain in my country. I do have a bunch of BF244, BF256, 2N5461, 2N5486, a couple of 2N5459s and J111s and nothing else. Which of these can I use to get the F4 idea off the ground.

Any offers of JFETs on payment would be appreciated.

Any thoughts/offers?

Thanks Nelson, thanks all!!
 
The one and only
Joined 2001
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Variac said:
OK, I searched, but I haven't seen a reference to what a reasonable VA rating would be for a single transformer to feed both channels of the F4 ....

I use a 300 VA. This would be a continuous VA rating, and
you see various ratings for continuous vs short term and of course
this has to be taken with ambient temperature, frequency, and
power factor. When in doubt, Plitron.

:cool: