Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site


In the Forum: Melquiades Amplifier
In the Thread: Training amplifiers
Post Subject: The capacitors draining dilemmaPosted by Romy the Cat on: 1/12/2008

I have been contemplating for a week if I need to drain the power caps in my new revision of my power amp. The benefits to live the voltage in there is the cap continue formatting what the amp of off and it minimize the need to break-in or to train the amps. The disadvantage is the when the amp is on then the cold tube’s anode faces the residual voltages – not good…

This post is kind of off-spin of the new Super Milq amps:

http://www.romythecat.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PageIndex=5&postID=6338

With the single-stage amp build around of short-life 6E5P/6E6P and armed with polypropylene caps this question particularly important. The polypropylene caps have very low leakage and they stare voltage for very long time. So, when the single-stages amps go up then the plates see the almost full B+…

I wonder, what if I discharged the cap down to 20-30V to keep the dialectic polarized and then disconnect it without a complete discharging. This way a cold tube will see a little voltage and what the filament is heating up for the first 1.5 minutes of my soft start the 20-30V will be drain out on anode incising conductively. (I apply bias 2 second before B+). I think this way I might to get the best of the both approaches: to keep the caps charged and to protect my fragile driver tubes… I do not have a final decision though and if any “common practice” exist out there then I would like to hear about it.

The Cat

Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site