Preamble

Here begins my DIY adventure to build a stereo tube amplifier. I have minimal electrical engineering knowledge. I've soldered a few things here and there, and understand which direction the batteries go into most of my kids' toys.

I've thought about doing this for several years, and after some recent browsing, I finally found what I think is the best option. I first thought I'd need a kit, where you buy all the components in a neat box with instructions, since I would not know what in the world to buy from an electronics retailer. Really, I don't know what those numbers mean on a capacitor...1500 uf, 50V, etc. And I don't know very well how to read a schematic, though I'm hoping to learn more through this process. But a kit really constrains you to a specific set of components and you have to sort of go all-or-none with it.

 

Then I found Tubelab, which I think is the best of both worlds--not a kit, but enough guidance that it's almost like one. George Anderson is a pretty amazing electrical engineer who designed several tube amplifier boards and includes part lists and complete instructions on his website (www.tubelab.com). I bought the Simplified Single Ended (SSE) board, which is good for beginners, but also designed well enough that I could put some decent transformers, capacitors and tubes on this to hopefully have a really good sounding, high quality amplifier (assuming I don't electrocute myself or wire it all up wrong and have it blow up). I'm sure some DIY audio geniuses would add in things like, "Yeah, it's two-stage and has this for biasing, and the B+ is so and so..." but I don't know what most of that means. But reading his website and the DIY forums gives me enough confidence that this will be a pretty good amp to build.

 

I'm mostly in this to learn new things, but also expect to have a nice sounding amplifier when I'm done, and do my best craftsmanship to have something that looks nice.

 

Here we go.