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In the Forum: Melquiades Amplifier
In the Thread: Single-stage Melquiades vs. DHT amps
Post Subject: Read the f*** manual!Posted by Romy the Cat on: 5/10/2009
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 Romy the Cat wrote:

Hm, have another strange problem.  Sometimes, and completely unpredictable, the amp goes crazy.  As you might see I have fast blow fuse in anode line and seldom plate current rises to some crazy volume.  In a past I have cooked my Chinese tube:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=10426

and I was under impression that I “crewed something up”. What I did not say in the referred post is that I did not fixed the problem but the problem is gone itself. I was frustrated particularly because the problem bitten me by my paw, returning recursively rarely. So, I put the fuse and it protected my tube, still I had no idea what it was. I checked all assembling 6242 times but nothing that I recognized was wrong.

This morning it happened again, and did not go away before burned a dozen fuses, then it went away after I did absolutely not relevant change.  So, if there were no structural changes done that cured the problem then it shall be internal fault of elements. My investigation shows that the 185V of cathode voltage get shorted to ground, the question is where? I was checking everything and looks like fine.

What came to me this morning is that it might be the filaments of my 6 drivers tubes or 2 power tubes (1/2 6C33C) might shortened to ground. Since I lifted the center tap of my 6,3V supply my filaments are flooding and have pass to ground across the DH resistor. That is 180V between filaments and cathode. Would it be possible that some of the filaments sometimes break through?

If so, then I would need to put another transformer in game, but I wonder how can I confirm it…

I is kind of stupid that I did not pay attention to it before. I just took the 6E6P datasheet

http://www.romythecat.com/PDF/6E6P-DR.pdf

 and it is written clearly

Maximum allowed positive voltage between cathode and heater is 80V.

Maximum allowed negative voltage between cathode and heater is 100V.

My cathode resistor on DHT side drains 185V that becomes the voltage between ground and drivers’ filaments. So,  I have driver 6 tubes (let discard the 6C33Cm where  maximum allowed voltage between cathode and heater is 300V) with filaments based at twice higher voltage that tubes might handle according to datasheet. That think explains the problem and explains why the problem appears intermediately.

Well, this brings a need for a dedicated DH filament transformer or a need to lift the whole DHT cathode from the amp ground. I vote for dedicated DH filament transformer…

The Cat

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