Simple Hybrid Audio Amplifier Circuit

Here’s an amplifier circuit that based on the BUZ11 can be replaced by an IRFZ34N and an ECC83 can be used instead of the ECC88. In that case the anode voltage should be reduced slightly to 155 V. The ECC83 (or its US equivalent the 12AX7) requires 2 x 6.3 V for the filament supply and there is no screen between the two triodes, normally connected to pin 9. This pin is now connected to the common of the two filaments. The filaments are connected to ground via R5. If you’re keeping an eye on the quality, you should at least use MKT types for coupling capacitors C1, C4 and C7. Better still are MKP capacitors. For C8 you should have a look at Panasonic’s range of audio grade electrolyts. P1 is used to set the amount of negative feedback. The larger the negative feedback is, the flatter the frequency response will be, but the smaller the overall gain becomes. This is the figure of the circuit;

With P2 you can set the quiescent current through T2. We have chosen a fairly high current of 1.3 A, making the output stage work in Class A mode. This does generate a relatively large amount of heat, so you should use a large heat sink for T2 with a thermal coefficient of 1 K/W or better. For L1 we connected two secondary windings in series from a 2x18V/225 VA toroidal transformer. The resulting inductance of 150 mH was quite a bit more than the recommended 50 mH. However, with an output power of 1 W the amplifier had difficulty reproducing signals below 160 Hz. The distortion rose to as much as 9% for a signal of 20 Hz at 100 mW. To properly reproduce low-frequency signals the amplifier needs a much larger coil with an iron core and an air gap. This prevents the core from saturating when a large DC current flows through the coil.