Car Stereo

[6B4G]

Hi has anyone worked on any tube amp schematics that can be used in a car?

[kt88pppamp]

It can be done but I would be very concerned about tube elements shorting when the car hits bumps, etc. As absurd as it sounds, I considered a tube amp for a bicycle . I rejected the idea when I thought of the shorting potential. The bicycle stereo I later constructed with a chip amp.

Next issue is supplying high tension with a 12 volt DC electrical system. You could either do it two ways:

-A boost type switching power supply. This would be the most efficient but may not sound the best.

-This method is inefficient, expensive, and sounds like it it is beyond the scope of your electronics knowledge. The system would start with a square wave oscillator at 60Hz. A low q, high-order active band filter with resonance at 60Hz will then filter the harmonics of the square wave to yield a clean 60Hz sine wave. This is fed to a solid state power amplifier. The power amplifier feeds the primary of a 12 volt step up transformer.

I would not trust those car AC power adapters as they are cheap and harmonic filtering in them is poor. I do not think they like highly reactive loads either.

What do you want to do with your car anyways?

[6B4G]

Thanks for the reply, I was thinking that I remember that in the 50's or 60's there were cars with tube radio's and even some had turn tables.
But the odd thing is that now that the tube is on a comeback that no one is looking at doing it. I have found in my search only one company
that does make a tube amp for cars I think it is Butler audio. So hence the question.
Thanks again for the info.

I just found this link.
http://web.archive.org/web/200809220258 ... aramp.html

[bone]

You could always use the Russian miniature tubes, which were I believe developed for use in their military aircraft. These are often for sale on ebay.

[nyazzip]

the poor "acoustics" inside of a car, the speakers, and the environmental noise all trump any small improvements to be had with employing tube gear.....in short it is just impractical.
....kinda like asking, "why not make a bulb-planting trowel out of titanium, as opposed to the usual aluminum alloys?"


just my opinion

[6B4G]

Thanks guys for all the info, I don't think I should go down that path then.

Thanks
Greg