[Rogers Gomez] has posted up this hybrid tube based headphone amplifier over at DIY Audio. Being a fan of tube amplifiers, but wanting something with lower voltage and lower cost, he put together this little system out of spare parts he had lying around. He wanted it to have as few parts as possible and be able to power his 32 ohm Grado headphones.
He states that he’d built several YAHA amps, and a Szekeres Mosfet follower and was curious how they’d sound together. He was pleasantly surprised with the resulting quality.
There are less than 30 individual components involved in the project. The complete parts list and schematics are available from the site. He notes at the very end, to unplug your headphones when powering up as there is a surge that could damage them. That might be good to know at the beginning just in case you get eager to test it out.
[Thanks, Gio]
you are welcome.
The project does look interesting. Most will likely have a 12-13V power supply kicking around so you can do this real cheap. I have tried the szekeres mosfet follower:
http://diyaudioprojects.com/Solid/IRF610-Class-A-Headphone-Amp/
and it works well. I have never tried a tube at low voltage but I have seen it done several times before.
cheers,
gio
Another relatively cheap and simple hybrid amp is the Millet Starving Student, which I have been having a go at building:
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f6/millett-starving-student-hybrid-amp-319231/
add to the audio rails a tranzorb and 1kV, 1000pf (or larger) cap to ground, with low-value (3 to 10 ohm), high-power resistors in series with the audio line. i’ve done this to catch turn on/off spikes in systems running XLR cables.
Hey Samarai1200, can you elaborate on your post? Do you have a link for the schematic or a link to a DIY forum discussion? Alot of people buy an E12 to stop those spikes but that seems expensive for some of the budget DIY projects out there. So if your suggestion does the job it would be cool. (Just need more info before I try it!)