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Friday, December 12, 2008

Lots of congratulations

Uh-oh... Time flies and I have not been around Blogspot for a while.
In the meantime my mother has turned 88, the very same day Pete and Roger received the Kennedy Center Honors of 2008, Ingela's father turned 81 and last but not least: Matti Ahtisaari, former president of Finland and renown peace-negotiator, recieved the Nobel Peace Prize of 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQomxbnQr7E
Embedding of this clip was disabled
Yesterday there was a big celebration concert in honor of mr. Ahtisaari in Norway, the concert was broadcasted on TV here in the Nordic countries.
My congratulations to all mentioned above.

And congratulations to myself, my amplifier is now working at full power, a new output transformer was shipped from Germany some weeks ago, all demons (like unwanted internal feedback and oscillation...) have been exorcised and it sounds really good, the output power before onset of excessive distortion in the power-amp itself is even higher than expected, I aimed for 50W but it is nearly 60W at less than 10% distortion which would be acceptable for any amplifier used for public announcement.
Single tone, pure sine wave at 1 kHz produces 50W at 2% distortion in clean mode.
It is funny that the guitar-amp industry never went for these tubes (QQE06/40 aka 5894)as they were around and mass produced in the late fifties.
Maybe the solution with the anode-contacts located on the top of the tube was a little scary and made tube-change a little more complicated. At least Ampeg built a big 200W amplifier using 6146B:s and they also have a similar solution with anode contacts on the top so the solution was not completely unfamiliar.
Now I have to build the second channel and order another output transformer from Germany. Then I will build it a nice case and hopefully get it ready in time for the fund-raising ball that Lukas and his classmates will arrange this winter in benefit for their trip to Germany and Poland this spring.

8 comments:

grace said...

well,, lots of congrats indeed in this post. Best to all involved :)

You will now be blowing the roofs off your neighbors with your amp!

Happy Holiday Season xo

Hans said...

Hi Grace,
Not the roofs really but Lukas managed to blow some tools off the garage wall yesterday :)

Vallypee said...

Yes, Hans, congrats are needed all round! I was beginning to think you'd given up blogging and here you come back with a fistful of good news items ;-)

Well done on getting your amp finished! I don't understand half of what you explain there, but it sounds as if it's going to be a real blaster...in dutch they call them a versterker....sounds as if you've taken the strengthening thing literally! Tools of the garage wall indeed ;-)

Dale said...

Happy Birthday to your mother and Ingela's father!
My folks are both in their early 80's, as well.
And of course, congratulations to Pete and Roger!
I am not familiar with Matti Ahtisaari, but he must have done some great things to receive that honour.

Have you blown yourself, or the neighbours, away yet with your new and improved amplifier?

Hans said...

Hi Val and Dale, the whole amp is not still finished, only one channel and I will document everything "as built" and use as a blueprint for the second channel and projects to come in the future. The pre-amp part will become a standard solution in my designs and can be reused in amps from 1 to 1000 W :)
By the way Val, "versterker" sounds very much like "förstärkare" which is swedish for amplifier :)
Dale, Ahtisaari was the man negotiating independency for Kosovo and peace in the Ache province of Indonesia among other peace-projects.
I have tried to blow myself away but I'm a lousy guitar player so it failed :)
But the sound level I produced was beyond explanation.... LOL!

grace said...

Happy Holidays :)

Vallypee said...

Just popping by to say Happy Holidays Hans. Here's wishing you a very loud and musical new year :)

Hans said...

Thank you all, I'll post a Seasons greetings soon :)

 
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