VU Meters

[biagio]

Hey, I wanted to add some eye candy to the st-35 Iam planning on building "VU meters". Id love to throw some Round Sifams or I could probably obtain some free Mcintosh meters but I fear that this is a bigger project than I first thought. Iam not looking for anything accurate just something kool to look at like the moth audios bias meter. any suggetions?
Bill

[TomMcNally]

Hi Bill ...

VU Meters on a power amp don't really work. The problem is that
the level is all over the place, depending on how you have your
volume set, they either won't move at low volume, or slam the
pointer to the peg at high volume. VU meters are meant to be
used at a "constant level" point, like across a program line or
output of a mixer.

You could put a level control on the meters, that would adjust
the sensitivity so they would read 100% at different power
settings of the amplifier. Bias meters are kind of boring,
they just sit at one spot. I put a multimeter on my 300B amp
that can measure B+ before and after the chokes, bias current
on each tube, B+ on the drivers, etc. It looks cool, but it
just sits there, usually at 475 volts, on an antique dual scale meter.



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[biagio]

your right, that looks very cool and milliamp meters are a lot easier to find.
thanks again tom
Bill

[samuel1]

where might I find a small, cheap vu meter to hook up to my preamp?
I'm just looking for something to measure preamp input and add a little vintage look to my homebrew amp.