"Valvecaster Head" - How to turn your Valvecaster into a Practice Amp

[Jered]

  I just built a Nixie last week and so far, so good. Mine adjust's from 73 volts to 241 volts. I used a 10 turn 1K Helipot instead of the trimmer, so I could dial in precise voltages if need be.
  I haven't tried it yet with a tube circuit. That will be the true test.

Excellent - did you build the one I linked to above? If not can you post a schematic of what you built? How did you get the adjustment so wide? Will be interesting to see what you do with it.

    Yes I built the one from your link. I have no idea why such a wide voltage range, but it does talk about the varied voltages in the write up.
    I had also read the desmith article so I added a .1 ceramic disk at the output. I'm hoping for our simple analog builds that rfi interference won't be significant, but I still have not had the time to test it. Hopefully on my next day off.

[DUY1337GUITAR]

Any news on these?

[doitle]

It saddens me that the small output transformers I have only go up to 8K primary impedance so I cannot try this out with my valvecaster... Also how much power would you estimate it produces as far as matching up a speaker to it goes...

[frequencycentral]

Any news on these?

News? What news? It was an experiment. Never built one, moved onto other experiments. It works though - the more volts you give it the louder it gets.

[kristoffereide]

I thought there was a 10mA limit on the 1044, wouldn't it be better with a 660? It has a 100mA max

[slacker]

The tubes don't draw much current, if you figure the plates are at half the supply which would be 30 volts, then the first stage draws 30/220,000 = 0.13ma and the second stage would draw 30/22,500 = 1.3ma so 10ma is more than enough.
It's the heaters in tubes that need a lot of current and that is supplied by the 12volt wallwart not the output of the voltage multiplier.

[DUY1337GUITAR]

I was just interested.  I'm probably gonna build one in the future. Make a nice looking head with the valvecaster (or maybe even a twincaster) and box a 12" speaker with it 
Right now I need to finish my guitar project and buy a new main amp

[sean k]

Hey Doitle, If your 8k transformers are 8ohms out then just series up two 8ohm speakers for 16ohms and you'll double the primary impedance to 16k and if you use three 8ohm speakers in series you'll 24k primary impedance which is well close to 22.5k. Three sixes or eights could be quite nice.