PY 81 as power rectifiers?

[Amie]

Hi.
I'm sitting with Gran this weekend, so the project will be gathering dust....and I'm not letting anyone see that skywired lashup!

But....I have been in the process of making, and assembling an aluminium chassis for the set (with help from our next door neighbour he has folded the sections for me), I've piloted and punched it where I want the main components to go, in the picture you see the filament transformer, the audio output transformer (from Kalee20,) and the ECL80 in position, but not yet fixed down, underneath the chassis where the filament transformer is, is a C core smoothing choke. The filament transformer is in fact a 0-6 0-6 6W type, but with the secondary in parallel and feeding 3×300mA heaters in parallel, it loads down to just a smidge under 6.3volts AC.
   

It's being made as compact as I can and will be run from an isolated supply. When finished it will be capable of being used straight off the plug (I've dad's old pal Don on standby to have the final say on SAFETY).

I would like to admit I'm going to relegate the PY81 idea to the notebook, mainly because I found that the transformer I was going to use was an autotransformer and what I assumed was a "secondary" was in fact in series with what was marked "primary" so the top of the "secondary" could be at more than 500V above neutral ....

I would like to get the audio stage to fly with the cathode bias idea as it seems the most long term stable, in that when a badly worn valve is swapped in for the NOS one, the anode values are still similar, unlike the fixed bias pentode/contact bias triode type....

I think this could now be renamed the "completely off topic thread" or something more suitable to advertise the diverse discussions!

Sorry!
Amie.