'Zener Mod' on 12AX7 Gain Stage

[Alf]

seen this before

Ray, no offence but I've seen the mod before in Kevin O'Connor's TUT 1 on page 5.35. Not quite the same as you do it though.


Regards , Alf

[Ray Ivers]

Alf,

I'm surprised it's taken so long for this to come up - especially since I forgot to add any disclaimers - so here goes:

I did NOT invent the Zener circuit in my first post! I just added it to an existing Marshall preamp circuit, and then posted my results in the hopes that someone might find it as usable as I did.

I'm always surprised why it should matter... if someone finds a cool circuit they want to share and make no claims to it as being their own, then why should anyone (other than perhaps the circuit's creator) give a sh*t? And if a similar circuit was used in 1995 or 1973 or 1947, so what?

At any rate... the circuit on page 5-35 of TUT is a bounded dual-zener circuit, on the output of a cathode follower - very different from the circuit I posted. Kevin's going for straight-ahead diode clipping on both sides of the waveform, while the circuit I posted... well, it's all pretty well covered in the thread.

Ray

[Alf]

Ray,

Thanks for the explanation. I have a big admiration for all the contributions you've added to this forum and didn't want to suggest anything negative.
I hope to keep learning a lot from your posts here.

Alf