I'm wondering if anyone has tried reusing the power transformer out of the Blues Deluxe. This has the diode rectifier setup and the amp has some op-amps etc. So its not quite like a normal all tube type transformer.
As you can see it has differant leads. What I'm looking at doing is using this with a GZ34 or something sim. Haven't quite settled which rectifier yet. I'm going to board this one up and see if it works but I was wondering if someone has tried reusing this one before and had any advice before I let the smoke out of it.
Andy Le Blanc wrote:there's a few 9-pin 6.3v indirectly heated rectifiers .... 6ca4
I'll second that. With 3.75A, you still have 2.75A for the rest of the tubes. Depending on what you are building, you could also consider 6X4 or 6X5, both of which sip a very economical 0.6A, but may not have the mA capacity of the 6CA4.
I remember once building a bridge thing with 6x4? or maybe I paralleled
them for the current. You can also put a real low value resister before any diode in a PS to distribute current and get more of the max, 10 to.5 ohms.
Other than the fact I have this sitting here in perfect shape I wouldn't be putzing around trying to figure if this will work. Just seems a shame to toss it.
The deluxe it came out of was such a unreliable piece of crap it wasn't funny. I fixed that thing about 5 times. All problems with the solidstate section. Nice tone when it made some.
I had toyed with the idea of tapping into the 6.3 section and bleeding off enough to run through the rectifier. Thats real close to giving enough headroom to use a 7805 regulator but probably not after going through a diode bridge etc. Lots of current there to play with as this would be going into a 5e3 circuit so not too many tubes to heat. Have some concerns about introducing noise into the heater circuit if I do that.
For a 5E3, you have heater current to spare. I have one I did that way.
6CA4 =1.0A
2x 6V6 = .9A
2x 12A?7 = .6A
Total = 2.5A. You could build it with 6L6's for grins. and still have enough on the 6.3V winding.
No need to think about DC heaters. Lots of effort, little reward. Just my 2 cents.
My 'friend' (not 100% sure about that after fixing his junk all the time ) plays accoustic blues so everything revolves around clean. Thats why I was toying with the dc heaters. It would be much easier without trying to do those as well.
Just thinking this might actually work really well in a 7027 Champ circuit I was playing with.
Proper lead dress of the filament string will take care of heater noise. If still a problem, elevate it referencing the ground to the power tube cathode.
Also, you will have some work to do to turn 6.3VAC to 6.3VDC. In the process, you will find that your 3.75A is considerably less.
