Building tube equipment would be difficult for the un-experienced. Buying an rebuilding old tube equipment can be interesting.


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That's the way to sell product! Get a stripper to offer you a fake "promise" and Life's Good!

 

Maybe I turn to solid state

Another option is a hybrid amp where the front end is tube and the output is solid state. There is a lot of info out there on low voltage vacuum tubes designed to operate on 12 volts. This eliminates the expensive output transformer and high voltage power supplies required for conventional tube amps.
SG

 

If you want to do something different, and neat, and something that you could do..........Build a small magnetic audio amplifier.

http://www.nutsvolts.com/magazine/article/the_magnetic_amplifier

 

Hello,

@BR-549 , Here is even a complete book on magnetic amplifiers:
http://www.tubebooks.org/Books/intro_mag_amp.pdf

Bertus

 

It what way?
The output sound of a tube audio amp can be generally explained by the tube and audio transformer characteristics.
No need to involve the power supply in that.

Indeed the power supply in a valve amplifier can have a pronounced effect in "some" circumstances. Running purely within the "clean" power levels, the effect is negligable, but in a guitar amplifier, with 4 EL34's, 6L6's or KT88's as output valves, when used with say a 5U4G rectifier, at very high power levels when over driven, there is a large degree of audio compression that occurs due to the HT to the output stage dropping during the peaks and then recovering as the signal input level drops reducing the current drawn by the o/p valves. This was often the reason that certain combinations of guitars and amps seemed to have amazing sustain that was greatly reduced when amp manufacturers started to use solid state rectifier diodes. So much so, that pre-amps with ghastly overdrive sounds were designed that were supposed to replicate the compression, but it certainly is sonically totally different,
I still have a Fender twin reverb that I equiped with 4 KT88's and modded the psu to use a 5U4g rectifier. Now that is something to hear (from a safe distance) crank it flat out and control from the guitar ('59 Les Paul) and the sound can be anything from glass like clean with immence headroom, to mind blowing eyeball shaking awesome creamy singing overdrive that is almost impossible to create any other way. No effects pedal (and in nearly 60 years of playing I've tried hundreds) can come close too.
But for hi.fi maybe not the way to go.

 

@bertus ----that link was only 5 pages. I do have the complete pdf. Thanks.

 

Hello,

@BR-549 here is the full file:
http://www.tubebooks.org/Books/mag_amp.pdf

Bertus