all-tube guitar headphone amp.

[arjepsen]

Hey.

I'm wondering about the possibilities of building an all-tube headphone guitar amp.

The reason is, that I've been looking into low watt amps (½ a watt and below), for practice use at home.
But I keep running into a few problems:
1 - ½ a watt can still easily be too loud for home usage.
2 - when the amp gets really really quiet - it doesn't really sound good.

I know there are quiet a few options if I turn to solid state, but my aim is to have something I can play late at night - preferably _in_ the bedroom
(the plinky-plonky of the strings are ok - any amplified noise is not... according to the wife)
Also, I would like something that sounds and responds like a tube amp - preferably as close to my 2xel84 version of a matchless dc-30 as possible. Partly because I like to tinker with pedals, and I want to see how the amp responds - but it's seldom that I have the possibility to really crank it at home...

To sum it up:
An all-tube headphone guitar amp.
Has to be push/pull, since I never really liked the sound of single ended amps.
Preferably pentode p/p, if it's possible....

Any helpfull ideas?

Regards
Anders

[terminalgs]

what about a small enclosure with a dummy load in parallel with two identical parallel voltage dividers with double ganged attenuator pots to dial in/dial down the signal.  fine tune the voltage dividers for an acceptable signal voltage and output Z for your particular head phones.  plug your favorite tube amp into it.

works for me.

[eleventeen]

Here's a suggestion that in no way addresses your request:

Get a TASCAM GT-1 (soon to be GT-2) CD-player. Probably one of the coolest devices for real practicing.

I'm not believing that given that headphones are right up against your ear whilst amps that drive speakers have to move air and have transit time, infinitesimal thought it may be, to get your ear. Speakers also respond to the hardness or softness of the acoustics of your room.

You say you want to get familiar with or match how your erstwhile tube amp responds (thru speakers) yet through headphones. I don't think it's possible, though the dummy-load config seems the most promising.

Just a suggestion.

[Willabe]

Do a search here (and elsewhere ~AX84) for "Firefly amp". It's in KOC's TUT5.

It's a PP amp with a 12 _ _ 7 for it's output tube at ~1 to 2w's. Guys seem to prefer a 12BH7 (?) for it.

You could easily rig up dummy load for it to go to head phones.


          Brad      

[Willabe]

Willabe, thanks for the link

     

[kagliostro]

A bit of ideas

PRR 1/3W amp  

http://www.el34world.com/Forum/index.php?topic=6759.0

http://www.el34world.com/Forum/index.php?topic=3202.0

or this other stuff

https://www.tube-town.net/cms/?DIY/LoW-Projekte/Molly_%28engl%29

https://www.tube-town.net/cms/userfiles/media/low-molly/low-molly.pdf

https://www.tube-town.net/cms/userfiles/media/low-molly/low-molly-layout.pdf

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https://www.tube-town.net/cms/?DIY/LoW-Projekte/Lummerland_Express_%28engl%29

https://www.tube-town.net/cms/userfiles/media/low-lumex/low-lummerland.pdf

https://www.tube-town.net/cms/userfiles/media/low-lumex/low-lummerland-layout.pdf

---

https://www.tube-town.net/cms/?DIY/LoW-Projekte/Emma_%28engl%29

https://www.tube-town.net/cms/userfiles/media/low-emma/low-emma-schematic.pdf

https://www.tube-town.net/cms/userfiles/media/low-emma/low-emma-layout.pdf


K