Help needed reducing heater voltage

Do you happen to remember what type of resistors you used?

 

@Dan_Pomykalski
Cement block probably ordered from mouser.

EDIT: Mouser # CP0005R1000KE14
5W 100mOhm Vishay/Dale

I have no affiliation with the above mentioned companies.

 

I've never even measured heated voltage.

 

You could use a pair of diodes, one in each direction which will knock off about 0.7V. As long as the heater current is less than the current rating of the diodes you should be good to go (1N4007 will handle 1A and should be sufficient here).

But as most people have said, I wouldn't sweat over 6.8VAC on the heaters.

 

Squawker beat me to the suggestion, I'd also say that diodes was the best and easiest solution.

 

That chart seems to be saying it's much easier to ruin them with less voltage.

I've seen full wave rectifiers in heater circuits, although I think the scope was to reduce noise.

 

Another option - if you've been at all interested in getting a variac and are having trouble justifying it this could be what pushes you over the edge

 

^^^This. Especially with B+ at 383 V as documented in OP's first post (layout shows 340, and 295 rather than 330 at pin 4, both of which are 12% or so over "spec", though within Fender's "20%"). Arguably cheaper than a Variac would be the (Robinette) BuckMinister approach, with a 6.3/12.6 bucking transformer, a couple switches and a fuse. Knock down both B+ and both sets of heater voltages by ~7% or 14% at one fell swoop.

Plus, all this can happen outside your amp enclosure, so zero heat buildup (except ambient).

 

What I normally do in a cathode biased output stage is to select a resistor that is higher in resistance than the normal value. Then I parallel a smaller (wattage) resistor across it to drop the resistance down to where I think it should be. So you can have a relatively easy way of having adjustable bias on a cathode biased amp.

 

The watt or so with the resistors is not going to change the temperature all that much.

 

@jvande7, if you want to properly go down the tube life rabbit hole, read Robert Tomer's "Getting the Most Out of Vacuum Tubes": http://www.tubebooks.org/Books/Atwood/Tomer 1960 Getting the Most Out of Vacuum Tubes.pdf (Just Google it if this link doesn't work.)

It's a really good read on the likeliest causes of premature tube failure (defined as less than 5,000-10,000 hours), and what to do about them. Just be forewarned that you may end up with an amp that no longer resembles a 5F1 -- or any other Fender amp.

As mentioned before, it's worth putting this in perspective: if I wear out a $25 power tube in "only" 1,000 hours (that's an hour a day for the better part of three years), then my cost comes out to a couple of pennies for each of those hours. Cheap thrills, really!

 

http://www.valvewizard.co.uk/heater.html

This might help.

 

Let’s pull up a few thousand feet and survey the whole battlefield.

1. I don’t worry about heater voltage per se, but B+ *and* heater voltage vary together... what’s your B+?
2. I run good ($$) NOS output tubes, and experts (as above) since the '20s point out tubes last longer if not above 6.3.
3. Your amp will sound different, possibly better, if wall voltage is say 110-115 instead of 120-125.

Variacs are nice and have other uses, but a simple and possibly cheap option is a 'vintage voltage adapter.'

RG Keen tells all here. Rob has parts and options for building a switchable version. Here's one I built.

 

Transformers are ratio devices. Lower the AC coming in, each secondary will drop proportionately to the AC feed's reduction. The heaters are a secondary.

 

In your example, 6.8V is about 8% higher than spec. If you were to reduce the AC by about 10 V, that would drop the heaters roughly to 6.3V.

At the same time, your high voltage (B+) secondaries would be about 8% lower and so would your filtered B+, to a first approximation. 92% of 383 would be 352, right where you went with the Zener method. Remove the Zeners and you are right where you were with B+ around 350 and your heaters are now taken care of too.

You'd want a 120V:10V transformer with 250 VA rating or more, again rough values. Put the 10V winding in series with the 120V winding. Feed the combined series winding with 120V, feed the amp from the neutral and the junction of 120 & 10.


Safety first. Follow all standard precautions for mains wiring - a fuse in the adapter's box, a metal shell enclosure bonded to both the wall outlet ground and the adapted outlet's ground, yadds yadda yadda.


Second, be sure the 10V winding and the 120V are phased the same to do it this way.

There are already links in this thread for a slightly different approach but it's basically the same idea.

The arrangement I've put forth is EXACTLY how a variac adjusted to 92% works: a tapped autotransformer.

 

As a bonus, your adapter box can be used with any amp, and your '50s tweeds will be very happy you did.

 

Yeah, I feel ya. You should be able to source a surplus 10V mains transformer and a box big enough to hold everything somewhat less than that, but the Variac has the Choose Your Adventure feature which the adapter won't.