Having the pleasure to meet Thymios today

 At your risk. (This is included on most euroelectron posts).

I had the pleasure to be introduced today by Philippos  at Underflow premises  to Thymios.

We talked about single ended low power electron tune power amplifiers. I told him about the 1920s Harold Arnold (see previous posts) design with just one input transformer, an output transformer, just one electron tube and 3 batteries. It sounds great to use a step up input transformer.

Also on electron tube preamplifiers, see previous post.

Also on full range loudspeakers.

Also on output transformers which may emit sound depending on varnish or no. 

An important advice from him is that the system should portray dynamics, micro dynamics as live music and this is why he likes so much such designs as mentioned above.

I pointed him to the pdf Tubes vs Transistors is there an audible difference by Russel O Hamm.

At the end it was mentioned how an electron tube with heater voltage applied automatically has a negative grid potential without anything else connected to it. This is by electrons approaching the grid or equivalently by electrons leaving the cathode leaving it positive. Therefore the electron tune cannot conduct 9have anode current) at a low plate voltage, say 6V. But if a say 8.2M resistor is connected between plate an grid, the grid becomes less negative and the electron tube can operate very well at say Vb=6V with nice grain and very low noise. The heater voltage can even be reduced with even better results, as the anode current is typically of the order of 100uA. For example a high gm variable EF183 triode connected. See Pleiades V6 microphone low level preamplifier.