Category Archives: vacuum tube audio

A Dozen Tubes Make An Educational Amplifier

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If you asked [Hans_Daniel] what he learned by building a tube audio amplifier with a dozen tubes that he found, the answer might just be, “don’t wind your own transformers.” We were impressed, though, that he went from not knowing much about tubes to a good looking amplifier build. We also like the name — NASS II-12 which apparently stands for “not a single semiconductor.”

Even the chassis looked really good. We didn’t know textolite was still a thing, but apparently, the retro laminate is still around somewhere. It looks like a high-end audio component and with the tubes proudly …read more

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Dumpster Dive Speaker Results In Tube Amplifier

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[Michael Wiebusch] found the leftovers of a wrecked vintage tube radio in a pile of electronics junk. Unfortunately, he could not recover any vacuum tubes in it. And to his dismay, it didn’t even have the output transformer, which he figured would have been useful in a guitar amplifier project. The output transformer is not easy to come by nowadays, so he was hoping to at least score that item for his future build. All he could dig out from his dumpster find was a pair of speakers and he ended up building nice Output-Transformer-Less Tube Guitar Amplifier around them. …read more

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Vintage Tube Radio Restorations

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[J.B. Langston] has some vintage late-40’s/early-50’s tube radios that he wanted to repair – a Motorola All-American 5 AM radio, an Air Castle AM/FM radio and a Sears Silvertone AM/FM radio. He goes over, one by one, the three vintage radios, the problems they had, and how he got them back into working order. No finding a replacement microchip here, this was all about replacing capacitors and finding vacuum tubes!

In contrast to most modern builds we see on Hackaday, vintage radios are fairly simple – mainly turret-board builds with a transformer, resistors, capacitors, coil and tubes. The main issues …read more

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