Good "tube" circuit theory books?

bigugly said:

try these two, "Designing Tube Preamps for Guitar and Bass" and "Designing Power Supplies for Tube Amplifiers" both by Merlin Blencowe. Although they are geared more for the guitar and bass amp builder the info they contain applies just as well to other uses.

http://www.tubesandmore.com/products/B-950

http://www.tubesandmore.com/products/B-964

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Thanks for the suggestion, both of them caught my eye when I was browsing in Amazon, however several people has warned me to be very suspicios of "Tube Audio" books, since many of them are "audiophiley" in nature, have you actually read those two? what do you think of them?

user 37518 said:

Thanks for the suggestion, both of them caught my eye when I was browsing in Amazon, however several people has warned me to be very suspicios of "Tube Audio" books, since many of them are "audiophiley" in nature, have you actually read those two? what do you think of them?

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Yes, I own them both. No, they are not "audiophiley". ;D Merlin posts quite a bit @ AX84.com and the Hoffman amps forums. He also has a great web page: http://www.valvewizard.co.uk/

It looks like he has a second edition of the preamp book out and it has an additional four chapters. Crap, now I've got to buy it. Seriously, check out his page. There is a ton of good info there to get you started.

cheers,
James

bigugly said:

user 37518 said:

Thanks for the suggestion, both of them caught my eye when I was browsing in Amazon, however several people has warned me to be very suspicios of "Tube Audio" books, since many of them are "audiophiley" in nature, have you actually read those two? what do you think of them?

Click to expand...

Yes, I own them both. No, they are not "audiophiley". ;D Merlin posts quite a bit @ AX84.com and the Hoffman amps forums. He also has a great web page: http://www.valvewizard.co.uk/

It looks like he has a second edition of the preamp book out and it has an additional four chapters. Crap, now I've got to buy it. Seriously, check out his page. There is a ton of good info there to get you started.

cheers,
James

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Thank you very much for the tip James, I will check it out, your post was the final push to go buy the books!

+1 for Merlin's books ! A real good start, and a lot easier to understand than RDH4.

Yeap I had to read some chapters from another book before reading RDH4 to actually get a better picture of how a tube works. There seems to be a lot of ""Tube" books on amazon, targeted both at pro audio and consumer audio, the thing is that its kind of difficult to tell which one is Audiophile vodoo, and which one is more serious design. I refuse to believe that only 4 or 5 books are fit to teach tube based electronics, so any other suggestions are accepted.

Recently the Mullard application book caught my eye, apparently you can find most designs used today in that book, so ill give it a look.

> I refuse to believe that only 4 or 5 books are fit to teach tube based electronics

It has always been true that 95% to 99% of books on the market are crap.

I buy a lot of books. Most of them disappoint.

> other suggestions are accepted

I assume/hope you have read at least half of http://tubebooks.org/technical_books_online.htm This collection is better selected than most. Nearly all have virtue. Many are pretty specialized. Over 50% have general application.

There is also the NEETS military manual, widely available.

Remember that doctors don't heal you, though they may keep you alive while you heal yourself. Likewise books don't teach you, they just hold your attention while you teach yourself.

And FWIW: I browsed RDH3 for decades before a lot of it sank in.

A problem I see in many students is incomplete digestion of BASICS. Voltage current resistance power. When I am king, all EE students will Boot Camp like we do our soldiers. 500 V=I*R problems before breakfast. Analyze a car's electrics (battery, starter, lights, wires) or you get no supper.

And FWIW: I browsed RDH3 for decades before a lot of it sank in.

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I'm officially on year 4 of browsing and the floor is still littered with scattered pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.  It's like every other textbook I ever had in college - comprehensive and competent but missing the voice of the professors who helped tie it all in together in a way that was hard to get from dry reading.

A problem I see in many students is incomplete digestion of BASICS. Voltage current resistance power. When I am king, all EE students will Boot Camp like we do our soldiers. 500 V=I*R problems before breakfast. Analyze a car's electrics (battery, starter, lights, wires) or you get no supper.

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I've found that often I wasn't always able to see how to apply the basics like Ohms Law, rules for series & // circuits, etc  to complete circuits in ways that would simplify analysis.  Instead I just stockpiled a bunch of rules of thumb and bits of advanced details that were relevant to whatever project was at hand.  I recall trying to do that with the bridge circuit in the one Collins limiter.  I could go to the textbook and work their basic problems but had trouble applying them to the real circuit and never really did.   

So will we be getting a PRR Boot Camp section on the forum??    I'll enlist! 

Thanks for the links PRR, and yes I agree with you, im an EE student, and I love doing simple ohms law, kirchhoff, Y to Delta conversions and so on. I noticed that it is easy to underestimate something as basic as series and paralel circuits, but things can get quite convoluted and suddenly everything is not as straightforward as one would expect.... Start adding multiple voltage and current sources, etc.. and youve got yourself in a really good mess, using nothing but resistors + voltage and current sources.

> everything is not as straightforward as one would expect.... Start adding multiple voltage and current sources, etc..

Of course. And basic 4th grade arithmetic is only a starter for personal budget: salary, per-diem, taxes, groceries, medical, car repairs, poker debts... ... ... It's "just arithmetic", but "a really good mess". To mangle metaphors, it's Sodoku or more like Crosswords. You do the part you can, then do some more. At least in electricity, there IS an answer (whatever the electrons do). Not like yesterday's BDT crossword (clues misprinted).

Sudoky sounds about right!