Mini Single-Ended Amp

Keeping things small and inexpensive — and at the beginner’s level — Rick Spencer shows you how to build your own single-ended amp. For about $10 worth of tubes and some small transformers, you can build this neat little amp in one weekend. This article was originally published in audioXpress, April 2004.

This project is based on a previous audioXpress article: “A Solid-State Single-Ended Power Amp” by Ed Simon, published in the April 2006 issue. Ron Tipton was deeply impressed with this amplifier project which used only five transistors per channel, two of them being current sources. This article was originally published in the old audioXpress website as a PDF, but was never reposted. Now we make available online with updated references and links.

In this simple amplifier project, Ed Simon describes a Class-A amplifier design that mainly intends to reproduce music with reinforced emotional expression. That's what you normally get with a quality design, but to achieve it, the author shares the complete concept, power requirements, circuit topology, construction and testing of this single-ended amp... in a solid-state design. This article was originally published in audioXpress, April 2006.

Attention, all first-time (or wanna be) builders of single ended directly heated triode amps. This project’s for you. This is an easy to build, simple direct-coupled input/driver circuit that provides the proper drive voltage to the grid of the 211. A nice way to experiment with a single-ended (SE) triode amplifier.