Product Description

Morgan Jones' Valve Amplifiers has been widely recognised as the most complete guide to valve amplifier design, modification, analysis, construction and maintenance written for over 30 years. As such it is unique in presenting the essentials of 'hollow-state' electronics and valve amp design for engineers and enthusiasts in the familiar context of current best practice in electronic design, using only currently available components. The author's straightforward approach, using as little maths as possible, and lots of design knowhow, makes this book ideal for those with a limited knowledge of the field as well as being the standard reference text for experts in valve audio and a wider audience of audio engineers facing design challenges involving valves.

Design principles and construction techniques are provided so readers can devise and build from scratch designs that actually work. Morgan Jones takes the reader through each step in the process of design, starting with a brief review of electronic fundamentals relevant to valve amplifiers, simple stages, compound stages, linking stages together, and finally, complete designs. Practical aspects, including safety, are addressed throughout.

The third edition includes a new chapter on distortion and many further new and expanded sections throughout the book, including: comparison of bias methods, constant current sinks, upper valve choice, buffering and distortion, shunt regulated push-pull (SRPP) amplifier, use of oscilloscopes and spectrum analysers, valve cooling and heatsinks, US envelope nomenclature and suffixes, heater voltage versus applied current, moving coil transformer source and load terminations.

* The practical guide to analysis, modification, design, construction and maintenance of valve amplifiers
* The fully up-to-date approach to valve electronics
* Essential reading for audio designers and music and electronics enthusiasts alike

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #268183 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 624 pages

Review
"Jam-packed with theory, circuit analysis, and DIY basics, it will walk you through all stages of design so that you can create your own wonders. Jones is an ex-BBC engineer with a cool writing style and you'll find it a no-pain education."
Hi-Fi News and Record Review

"Valve Amplifiers is an extremely well-written book, containing a wealth of information that all audio designers and builders will find useful."
Glass Audio

Review
"Jam-packed with theory, circuit analysis, and DIY basics, it will walk you through all stages of design so that you can create your own wonders. Jones is an ex-BBC engineer with a cool writing style and you'll find it a no-pain education."
Hi-Fi News and Record Review

"Valve Amplifiers is an extremely well-written book, containing a wealth of information that all audio designers and builders will find useful."
Glass Audio

Book Info
Guide to valve amplifier design, modification, analysis, construction, and maintenance. For professionals in valve audio and audio engineers facing design challenges involving valves. Previous edition: c1999. Softcover.

Customer Reviews

Not for the faint hearted
I bought this book because I need to restore an old valve guitar amp. I enjoy a challenge and feel that I am a reasonable learner - however being a complete novice at electronics, I am finding that I regularly need to refer to other resources to explain what are probably reasonably basic concepts. For example it has taken me 3 careful read-throughs - while constantly cross-referencing articles found on the internet - to understand the information given in the chapter that covers biasing a triode valve. I would have preferred a slower and more gentle introduction before 'hitting the hard stuff', or perhaps a few more examples and 'tests' with answers to ensure that I understood the concepts.

The author is certainly knowledgable, and it is written in a lively and engaging style, though he certainly pulls no punches with getting to the nitty-gritty. I know that if I succeed in reading the full book, and ensuring I spend the time to take in the information, then I will have a thorugh understanding of valve amplifiers.

A very good book about valves and electronics
This is a very good book about valves and about electronics. Mr. Jones has a very good knowledge about the subject, probably acquired during his time at BBC, and you can enjoy this knowledge bt reading carefully it. A treatment of hybrid circuits ( valves + transistors) is the highlight of this book. The volume packs a lot of useful information about the subject, with, in my opinion, just one point missed: the design of magnetics.

Commnet on first edition
A good practical book on this subject, but beware of mathematical and conceptual erros especially on pages 237-239 on the feedback calculation which are not applicable to controlled sources. Readers with an EE background will be dissapointed with this book. The author has been made aware but chose to ignore.

The noise calculation methods are standard but, alas, triodes can be far far noisier than 2.5/Gm and the author would have you believe so, again, caveat emtor!

The book is better at the mechanical donkey work aspects of the amp building than the electronics.

I personally would not bother with building any of the designs in the book there are much better ones around. The zero feedback E88CC based designs are interesting and I hope noise and microphonics that can plague such designs prove acceptable.

All said, the book cab be a good starting point with useful nuggets of wisdom once in a blue moon; I still glance at this book once in a while but competent amatures will out grow the book quickly.. and this is probably a backhanded compliment if that means it did its job.