I am new to these forums, but I am old dog in electronics. As my handle implies, my name is Les. I live in the south eastern part of the US in Tennessee. Been here all but 5years of my life, and they were too long ago to remember. I am Hawaiian born, but I am not Hawaiian. My father was in the USAF and I was the last delivery in the family. I believe my intrest in electronics started at a very young age when I supossedly stuck a set of car keys in an electrical outlet, but I really don't remember it. Since then, I went through adolesence where I managed to experience my first actual-factual repair of an open reel portable tape recorder. My dad knew we were in trouble from that point on.
I had 3 years of vocational electronics when I got to high school and graduated electronics top of the class. Unfortunately, I wasn't so lucky with the rest of my scholarly duties. What can I say, literature didn't interest me, electrons did! I did graduate, just a month later than everyone else. Since then I have managed to keep up my skills by persueing my little electronic hobbies. I work on copiers for a living. Not much fun there, nothing to challenge my electronics skills. I have built several solid state amps just for fun. My favorite is the LM380N. It easy to plan and implement and it's fairly forgiving. I do hold an ammatuer radio license (KC4ZOC) and I plan on upgrading to General Class this coming year when I renew. Recently, I hired a new technician at the copier repair shop I work. This person is,like me, a geek. We share common ground in many different intrest and he is the one responsible for reawakening my interest in tube technology. He plays rythm/lead guitar in a "bar-band" and introduced me to tube amplifiers that I though had long ago fell by the way side. I did learn a little about tubes in electronics class and did get to repair some old tube radios and TVs and honestly thought I would never see a tube driven anything again. I was wrong, and thankfully so. I LOVE TUBES! I will be setting out to build my first tube project soon. Still gathering parts, but nearly ready to start building. However, I am rethinking the project. I have come up with a rather ambitious build that may be a little to much for a first build. So now I am considering a small first build. Maybe a 300B SE or even a 12AU7 based PP (yes there really is one). Both are simple builds. I already have a lot of what I need for the 12AU7 flavor PP, but I am drawn like a moth to the 300B SE. But the price of the 300B tube keeps getting in the way.
My builds include several LM380N chip amps including a 4watt bridged guitar practice amp, a 12Vdc/20AH NiMH based reserve power supply with built in charging, an ultra-pure 15v DC supply -BRUTE FORCE, and a nifty little hybrid headphone amp that features a 6418 sub-mini tube. More tube based build to join these are in the plans.
- I hate SMPS
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The key to a successful build is to keep the smoke
IN the circuit.
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Les Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. - Albert Einstien_________________________________
LM380 Bridged Guitar Amp, Oatley K301 Phono Pre-amp, Oatley K272 Headphone Amp, Tube proto-boardCurrent project: 6V6 "pseudo Champ" prototypeStill to come (On hold): 6CG7/12AX7 Guitar amp (modified FireFly)
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