March 8, 200917 yr Crazy elephant?! I'm "Super-cool baby elephant" dammit. Nahh I'm still going with crazy... I asked for all black except for silver tube rings. Yep, boring. I just know that I'm going to be jealous of other better-looking color combos. Needs moar silver!! Hmm, maybe I can buy a Singlepower two-box chassis and put the BHSE inside? Why not ask Mikhail about it...? I'm sure he could use the cash...
March 9, 200917 yr DAMN! Justin those are incredible Sir! Your design sensibility is right on the mark IMO!
March 9, 200917 yr Forgive my incompetence here, but I thought tube amps were not supposed to be turned on without headphones plugged in
March 9, 200917 yr Forgive my incompetence here, but I thought tube amps were not supposed to be turned on without headphones plugged in They shouldn't be run for long periods with out a load but it is ok to run them once and a while like that.
March 9, 200917 yr Pardon my additional ignorance, what is the ill effect of not plugging in a headphone? Surely the amp will be sort of "oh theres nothing plugged in, this is EASY, ho hum, I think I'll read the paper and put my feet up"?
March 9, 200917 yr Forgive my incompetence here, but I thought tube amps were not supposed to be turned on without headphones plugged in Really not sure that this applies to many amps OTL tube amps with capacitor output (Singlepowers, RSA, many others): All of these if they are built properly have a resistor load on the output to prevent the output capacitor from discharging into the headphones transformer coupled amps: Not sure, do they require a load on the secondary? In the case of headphone amps, many of these may be 8-16 ohm outputs and already have a resistor load internally. OTL tube amps, DC coupled: This is like the Blue Hawaii. A Stax headphone is a capacitor load anyway. I would think the feedback loop would count as a resistive load on the output of the amp.
March 9, 200917 yr As far as I know, for what an amp builder tried to explain to me, if you don't load the secondary of a transformer coupled tube amp, the tube output sees the primary as a load with just the impedance of the wire in the primary, so it's quite close to a short. The tube is asked to delivery way more current than it's designed to and will die soon. So for a short while you can run an OTC tube amp without a load plugged, but it's not a good idea doing so for more than a few minutes, unless you want to burn out your tubes prematurely. For an hybrid amp, if the output devices are the transistors, not having a load plugged shouldn't be a problem. The transistors are still a load that the tubes would "see" despite you don't connect anything to the output.
March 9, 200917 yr Really not sure that this applies to many amps Me neither, it was something I read here a while back. I don't recall if it was directed only at OTL or some other type, or all types. Again, you'll have to pardon my ignorance on the matter. It was more of a question than a statement, for my part.
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