I had an unusual valve kicking around – an ECH83. It’s a triode-heptode designed for use in car radios, with an anode voltage of only 12.6V.
I also had a couple of the ubiquitous Park G10 practice amps from my early guitar-playing days waiting to be recycled into something better, so I thought I’d see if I could concoct some sort of bastardised hybrid.
The G10 actually has quite a nice chip amp for it’s final stage; the TDA2030A. What a pity about the JRC4558 preamp stages. I really hate the sound of that particular 80’s opamp.
Inspired by this wanton ECH83 abuse by Engels, I decided to use both the triode and heptode in the ECH83 as preamp stages and salvage the silicon from the G10 for a power amp stage.
This is the result (click to enlarge):
Read on for explanation, layout and construction notes.
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I’ve been getting back into electronics. High voltage stuff this time around – I’m trying to get a small Tesla Coil running at the moment (and to that end just let the magic smoke escape from my cheapo bench power supply).
Going through my camera, I found some photos of some robots I built last time I was in a soldering mood and thought I’d share and document – read on for pics and details.
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EYEkanoids is a webcam-controlled Breakout/Arkanoids type game. I made it a few months ago but I dug it out, applied some polish, and decided it’s ready to post. Click here to play now (Note you need a webcam!)
The little cityscape banner at the top of the page has been part of the site for years and years, but it used to be static. I decided I’d update it with some parallax-scrolling animation and ended up building in a little game.
Just click the little Start Game button in the banner to play.
