One of the performance issues raised by the original Son of Zen (Audio Electronics, #2, 1997) was its efficiency figure, which was charitably described as 4% (500 watts in, 20 watts out). You may recall that this was dictated by the original requirements - no feedback, no capacitors in the signal path, and a single gain stage. Zen Variation 6 relaxed the requirements on feedback and capacitors in order to provide a tutorial exercise about “super-symmetric” feedback. The performance was improved in distortion and output impedance, but the efficiency was only slightly improved, largely because we used most of the… More...
Cue the Theremin music! This article is about building your own all-FET Circlotron. It smashes atoms. No, strike that. It won’t smash atoms like a cyclotron, but it has a really cool name and it is, technically speaking, powered by atoms and very, very good at amplifying music. Alpha M. Wiggins of Electro-Voice is generally recognized as the inventor of the Circlotron amplifier although other inventors developed similar circuits around the same time period in the 1950’s. The Circlotron’s transformer-coupled vacuum tube output circuit, a floating bridge, was often drawn in a circular fashion; hence the name. Later, Circlotron-type output… More...
Copyright © 2016 Pass Laboratories, Inc. All rights reserved
Telephone: 530.878.5350