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Old 24th Nov 2019, 7:44 pm   #6
Alan's MagicEye
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Join Date: Sep 2017
Location: Luton, Bedfordshire, UK.
Posts: 53
Default Re: Building a 5 valve A.C. amplifier from scratch

Hello Levente

I can understand that if you have the parts already then your proposal may be attractive, but it may not be that high fidelity although you may be content with this.

I have built several single ended triode amplifiers based on the "Decware Zen". Technically they have some shortcomings but they do sound very good in my opinion and sound better than the expensive Quad ll's which I used on my Tannoys originally, although they are not very powerful and need speakers with a reasonable sensitivity, probably in the order of 93dB/W. On the upside the output transformers are relatively affordable due to the low power. The SV83 output valves can be substituted for 6P15P Russian ones, which are fairly equivalent and can be brought very cheaply on eBay etc. The Russian 6N1P valves used on the input are also easily available.

The schematic is very simple and easy to follow as the philosophy behind the design is to have a few components as possible to achieve a decent result.

Here is a link to the webpage giving the user manual, this also has the schematic:

https://www.decware.com/zsowner.pdf

The designer also did a whole series of YouTube videos detailing very concisely the steps involved in building one:

https://youtu.be/n1ENOdYN6iA

If you built one and liked the result, the amplifier can be used bridged to give 6W so building a second monoblock would give you a 6+6W stereo.

This sounds like very low power but with sensitive speakers they are more than loud enough in my average size room.

I have no connection to Decware other than having used the design to make my own versions which I have used happily for at least 5 years.

I hope this helps.

Alan

Last edited by Alan's MagicEye; 24th Nov 2019 at 7:46 pm. Reason: Typo
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