Good technical book on amps

JamieWakeham

Can anyone recommend a good book on designing and building amps?  I find myself more and more interested in this side of things.  I'm a physicist so quite happy with reasonably technical explanations, and I'd want something fairly in-depth.  Specifically (as some of my other posts will indicate) I'm interested in low power amps, not 100W monsters...

I keep seeing the Dave Hunter handbook mentioned - is that a good place to start?  Or Aspen Pittman?

RiftAmps

Best bet is to go see Merlin - Www.valvewizard.co.uk

ecc83

RiftAmps said:

Best bet is to go see Merlin - Www.valvewizard.co.uk

Absolutely! Merlin is Da Man. He has not so far as I know done a book on power amps for guitar? Wish he would hurry up, not getting any younger!

Jamie, beware of some of the authors out there, some are very partisan and some talk "cork sniffing bollocks". Merlin takes an "engineering" view and blows out a few myths on the way. If you do read other people, check in here before committing a large wedge to traffs and such.

I know you are a clever chap but I make no apology for saying BE CAREFUL! Even a wee 1 watt valve amp has 250V or so inside it and they ALL have mains volts! If at all possible don't work on live chassis without a responsible person around.  No kids, no pets, no booze.

Dave.

RiftAmps

ecc83 said:

RiftAmps said:

Best bet is to go see Merlin - Www.valvewizard.co.uk

Absolutely! Merlin is Da Man. He has not so far as I know done a book on power amps for guitar? Wish he would hurry up, not getting any younger

There was a book on designing power supplies (2010) but wasn’t in print for very long. Info/tutorials on the website is good but would like a proper book to get stuck in to

JamieWakeham

Thanks, both.  I had spotted Merlin, but had thought 'I don't want a book on just pre-amps' so I didn't investigate much further.  But it does look like he's put a lot of material on his website too, so I might start with his book and see where I go from there.

And no apology needed, Dave - I have a healthy respect for capacitors, but it's always good to reiterate it!

ecc83

JamieWakeham said:

Thanks, both.  I had spotted Merlin, but had thought 'I don't want a book on just pre-amps' so I didn't investigate much further.  But it does look like he's put a lot of material on his website too, so I might start with his book and see where I go from there.

And no apology needed, Dave - I have a healthy respect for capacitors, but it's always good to reiterate it!

"...Just on pre amps" I get you but he does go right up to the PI and the drive voltages needed to drive OP stages. Also embraces NFB around OP stages.

Actually, once you have the pre amp/PI "right" the OPS is really just a transformer, for which you are stuck to those available and about 4 different power bottles. ICBM has commented elsewhere that different power valves make little difference.

The book on PSUs was stopped I understand because Merlin felt there were to many errors? I have a copy and cannot really say it is littered with them!  Can you not buy a .pdf?

Dave.

equalsql

One of my favourites:

https://www.ampbooks.com/mobile/photos/bassman600x771.jpg

https://www.ampbooks.com/mobile/books/bassman/

It goes into incredible detail on the design of each part of the amp. It's not an easy read ie lots of maths and assumes the reader has a deep understanding of electronic theory, but it's worth the effort.

ecc83

Oooo! Be Dad's Day afore long!

Dave.

JamieWakeham

Thanks again.  I'll start with Merlin.  Sadly his website says he's permanently pulled the power supplies book from print and won't supply PDFs - but it rather looks like I can get what I need from the preamp book and what's available on his site anyway.  The Bassman book looks a bit over-specific for what I want but I might well try it later...

Cheers!

normula1

The preamp book is a very interesting read.

Modulus_Amps

Merlins Book is great, I also really enjoyed Richard Kuehnels power amp book, his website also has some interesting articles to read too.

The Dan Torres book was my first book, I now tell people to stay away from it.

The Aspen Pittman book is good for photo's and schematics, but I would be weary of the mod's info in it now.

I have a couple The Ultimate Tone (TUT) books, I would stay away from those too.

I would suggest getting a good electrical text book too that discusses electrical theory if you have not already got one

Gadget

The Radiotron Designer's Handbook.

I had a hard-back version, but it's expensive. If you Google the title, there is a PDF of it online, but as I'm not sure of it's current copyright status I haven't linked it here.