COMPONENTS

A valve
substitute
Unable to find a replacement 6V6 audio power valve for
his radio, Dave Allen set about making a MOSFET
substitute which, he says, works better than the valve it
replaced. Here's how he did it...

fter giving me many years of pling capacitor was easy but finding a

A good service, my faithful

Murphy wireless recently fell
silent. This was due to a failed 6V6
replacement valve was not. In view of
this, I devised a direct plug-in replace-
ment for the valve based on an
audio output valve. IRFI830G high-voltage MOSFET - of
The valve's demise was caused by which I had plenty.
the coupling capacitor feeding its input In addition to the FET, all that was
grid on pin 5 going short circuit. This needed were a few peripheral compo-
resulted in a positive voltage being nents and the valve base from the dud
applied to the valve's grid, which in valve.
turn caused excessive current between
the anode and cathode. Can this technique be applied
Apart from the dead valve and capac- to other valves?
itor, the rest of the radio was in good It should be possible to build similar
order. Replacing the 0.1uF/400V cou- plug-in modules to valves other than
the 6V6, like the 6P1 or KT61. This
assumes that you can find information
Substituting valves that are part of a on the pin connections for the valve
series-connected heater chain you want to replace, and that you have
Removing a valve with a series-connected heater a suitable spare base to hand.
from a circuit disables all other valves in the same Such plug-in modules can directly
heater circuit. If you want to replace a valve with a replace a variety of octal-based output
series-connected heater using a MOSFET substitute, valves that are wired in a parallel heater
Table 1. Pin connections for the 6V6
the missing heater wi[l need to be substituded too chain without further modification to
tetrode.
using a resistor that simulates the heater. the original equipment.
A 20P3 valve is used here to illustrate how to Although I have not tried it yet, it Pin Description
determine the compensation resistor needed for the should be possible to use similar MOS- 1 No connection. This pin may
heater chain. This valve requires a heater voltage of FET modules to replace output valves be connected to the
20V at a current of 200mA. Since R=E/I, the heater that are directly-heated - i. e. those with suppressor grid, 93, on certain
replacement resistor is 10Oti. no separate cathode. Examples of these pentode valves and can be
The power rating of the resistor is Exl, hence are the PX4 and PX25. Have you seen ignored.
20x0.2, which is 4W. For this example, a resistor the price of these valves? 2 Heater
with a 5% tolerance rated at 10OQ and capable of If a MOSFET valve substitute is to be 3 Anode
handling 7W would be a good choice. used with a receiver that has a series 4 Screen grid (g2)
As this resistor is replacing a valve's heating connected AC/DC heater chain, fed via 5 Input grid (g1)
element, it will get hot, so it is advisable to place it a mains dropping resistor, an addition- 6 No connection
where it will have sufficient ventilation and al resistor will have to be wired across 7 Heater
electrical insulation from the metal chassis. the redundant heater pins on the valve 8 Cathode
holder. This ensures continuity of the

316 ELECTRONICS WORLD April 2001

 COMPONENTS

HT feed 1k, 5W T
To HT from HT feed To HT from
rec UdMIUI
stages 33(4,, re
stages 33U,

JM
450V 450V
I] I +J=,33u.,
T450V " " 450V

Signal 100n 100n 3 ^™

Signal . ,5
in0 H
5\f—-y
^SO*-1^ Q
T c
T—T o
[ ?8 Fig..2. Usinga6V6
Fig.
220k 27"
220k I subs
substitute, the
12701 ^l-1"^ heat and screen
heater
1 !25VT grid connections
become redundant,
so 01
SO only three pins
Negative feedback to earlier stages Negative feedback to earlier stages on the valve base
are used.
Fig. 1. Original valve audio power output stage.

heater circuit, as the replacement mod- Imiplementing the valve Main components
ule does not have a heater. substitute Resistors
Simply shorting the heater pins of the A good starting point is the preparation R, 100R, 0.6W
redundant valve may overload the of the valve base. Wearing safety gog- R2 IM, 0.6W
other valve heaters and/or the dropper. gles and gloves to protect you against VR] 220k, horizontal mounting preset
There's more on this in the panel cov- cuts from broken glass is a good idea
ering valves in series heater chains on when reclaiming the valve base. Capacitors
Ci 2 lOOn, 63V metallised polyester film, 5mm spacing
the previous page. The best way to break the glass enve-
lope is to place the dud valve in a thick Semiconductors
Details for the 6V6 plastic bag and tap the glass with a IRFI830G MOSFET (Farnell). This version of the MOSFET has
Connections for the 6V6 valve are small hammer. Then carefully remove an insulated tab so the heat sink will not be af HT potential.
shown in Table 1. Figure 1 shows a the shattered remains from the base.
typical single-ended Class-A output Remnants of wire in the valve base Diode
stage using a 6V6 tetrode, or similar pins can now be unsoldered. D] is an 18V/400mW zener diode
valve, incorporating cathode bias. A piece of 0.1 in matrix stripboard
In Fig. 2 is the output stage - minus with 11 strips by 32 holes is required
valve - and the relevant connections for mounting the MOSFET, heat sink,
shown for use with the plug-in module. and the few passive components.
Figure 3 shows the circuit for the plug- After completion of the component
in replacement module. board, three short flying leads can be
connected to the board and taken to To pins
The circuit the relevant pins on the valve base and on valve
The circuit is based on an IRFI830G soldered. The board can then be held base
MOSFET, wired as a triode. In this in place using epoxy resin adhesive.
application, no screen grid connections
to the valve base/holder are involved. Setting up
For the MOSFET to operate as an With the plug-in module completed, 8
amplifier it has to be biased into con- rotate the wiper of VRi so it is at the L o VWV-J
duction. This is achieved by applying a anode end of D\. This will ensure
small positive bias to its gate. there is no positive bias voltage on the Fig. 3. MOSFET substitute for the 6V6 valve. Only three pins
Bias voltage for the FET is derived gate of the FET when you first switch are needed on the valve base, to replace the valve's anode,
from a potential divider, fed from the on your receiver. cathode and grid.
HT rail. It consists of R2, VRi and R{. Now insert the plug-in module into
Resistor RI also serves as a current its socket and connect a meter power - or heat if you like - so a good
limit for the MOSFET and as a conve- switched to its 20V DC range across heat sink will be required. The sink
nient test point for voltage monitoring R\. Switch on your receiver and let it needs to be at least 9.9°C/W.
when setting up the plug-in module. warm up for about ten minutes. In my particular case, the voltage
Zener diode DI keeps the gate volt- Slowly rotate VR{ until the MOS- across the MOSFET was measured at
age stable, enabling the module to be FET springs to life. This will happen 277V at a current of 20mA so the
used in a variety of receivers with dif- quite suddenly. Finally adjust VKj for power being dissipated was 277x0.02,
fering HT voltages. Decoupling capac- a drop of 2V across R^ This corre- which is 5.54W.
itor C\, connected across VRi, helps sponds to a current of 20mA flowing
prevent any noise from the power sup- through the output stage, which works In use
ply entering the sensitive gate input of well with my particular receiver. My original plug-in module has been
the MOSFET. in use for about two years now with no
Capacitor €2 provides input coupling Power dissipation considerations problems. As a bonus, the audio is
for the module and is fed from an ear- As the MOSFET in this case is biased much improved - especially at the high
lier audio stage in the receiver. in class-A, it is constantly dissipating frequency end. •

2001 • ,April 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD 317

-1