New Book

[uneumann]

A while ago (~1yr) there was a thread in the Theory & Design page about bias shifts caused by overdrive in tube stages. That lead to a good discussion about causes and remedies and related tangents... anyway, it got me thinking about how little is published about this topic. I challenged the forum to contribute materials about the topic, but that got nowhere since everyone is busy, and that's understandable. There was one positive response from Malcolm (my co-author), and we got talking offline ... and soon the book project got started.

We set out to write a book about the impact of overdrive in tube amplifier circuits. There are plenty of good books about linear design and operation, but overdrive is another matter. Tube circuits in overdrive behave differently than they do in linear small signal operation. Overdriven tube stages produce nonlinear and time-varying behaviors that are important to understand. Almost everyone overdrives their amps at some (or most) of the time they play 'em. Nonlinear (NL) and time-varying (TV) behaviors are documented and explained in this book. We hope this helps people that design, mod, tinker, and repair amps to get better and deeper understandings of what's going on and what impacts tone as the volume and gain settings increase.

Nuff said - You can read the free summaries at the links below... hope you find the pages useful and it leads to better sounding builds and better discussions in these and other forum pages. Cheers.

See a preview of the book here by clicking on the "preview" link under the cover photo.
See a preview of the book here on Google Books.
Also available here on Amazon.

[tedmich]

Congrats on the book, "preview" suggests something more than the cover, is there some trick involved on actually seeing some content?

On a lighter note you guys are both missing your periods (on the Ph.D. part of the cover)

[uneumann]

Congrats on the book, "preview" suggests something more than the cover, is there some trick involved on actually seeing some content?

On a lighter note you guys are both missing your periods (on the Ph.D. part of the cover)

Ha - yes - that period would have cost another iteration with the cover artist...
I'm hoping that's the worst of the mistakes.

More seriously, yes, there are two summaries available. Click on the "here" word in those two sentences.
The Lulu link shows the cover of the book. In very small font under the cover picture it says "Preview". Click on that.
The other link takes you to Google Books and their summary.
The two summaries are a bit different, so you might try both.

[Tom Phillips]

...The Lulu link shows the cover of the book. In very small font under the cover picture it says "Preview". Click on that.
...

That only brings up a larger view of the cover. Any other suggestions?

[uneumann]

That only brings up a larger view of the cover. Any other suggestions?

Hi - Yes - the cover shows up in a pop-up window. Look at the upper right corner.
You'll see a page number with little left and right arrow buttons. Press those to change pages.

It works fine once you get it.

[MarkusBass]

Great book - I'm going to buy it. But there is one problem: on Amazon it is "Temporarily out of stock" and on lulu.com when I select Paypal option and click "Save and Continue" nothing happens. Has anyone been lucky to buy this book? If not, this is maybe due to problems that lulu web site has.

EDIT: in the evening I was able to buy it (they fixed something on the web site). It is supposed to be delivered before Christmas

Mark

[tedmich]

Yes that works, the FLASH window hides the top navigation on smaller windows.

The book is indeed impressive! And a MEF acknowledgment is super cool!

I'll link this over at AX84; as they'll totally dig it

[Tom Phillips]

... And a MEF acknowledgment is super cool!...

Yes. But, it kind of gets cancelled out by the GW acknowledgment.

[uneumann]

Yes that works, the FLASH window hides the top navigation on smaller windows.

The book is indeed impressive! And a MEF acknowledgment is super cool!

I'll link this over at AX84; as they'll totally dig it

Thanks! I much appreciate any exposure to the community.

[tedmich]

Yes. But, it kind of gets cancelled out by the GW acknowledgment.

there is also a GW blurb on back cover,
perhaps "even a broken clock..."

[MarkusBass]

Have I mentioned that the book arrived today - just in time for Christmas?

Mark

[tedmich]

Merlin read the book and included the following review over at Ax84

"I finally got around to reading this book. As the title implies, it's a fascinating tour of what happens in a typical amp, especially under dynamic overdrive conditions, i.e. when it is hit with signal bursts, not just steady, bench-test sine waves. I have described in my own book how DC shifts (the "beginnings of blocking distortion") are an essential part -maybe the most essential part- of valve overdrive tone, but this book
mines this vein deeply (and I was flattered to see my own book mentioned quite a few times).

It's almost a picture tutorial book, showing you with oscillograms (mostly) how signals clip, compress, block (or not), and recover as they pass through various overdriven stages. There are some computer simulations, but mainly they and real measurements of real test circuits, including some beautiful examples of how transfer functions shift and bend during overdrive.

Everything is explained from the ground up, beginning with a simple diode analogy, which leads onto the overdriven valve grid, and even pentode and cascode screen compression effects. It also shows how you can measure various parameters of an output transformer quite simply, although I was a little disappointed that after the effort of measuring these things it doesn't present more info on the behavior of the final test circuit -only one oscillogram (at the very least I would have expected a plot of frequency response).

It's not really a circuit design book, it's more a concept book or even a lecture course, designed to give you a penetrating insight into the dynamic behavior of overdriven circuits. Even so, it does present an alternative topology for getting overdrive with relative freedom from blocking distortion, while still allowing the dynamic, compressive effects to be tuned to taste -the Low Impedance Overdrive, or LIO concept.

It makes an excellent accompaniment to the more conventional amp design/analysis books like mine, Kuehnel's, and O'Connor's. It is somewhat academic and prosaic at times, and some of the images could do with annotation to reduce the effort of swapping back and forth between text and pictures, but these are small criticisms. If you value design and engineering know-how above mojo and mods, then this book is a well of wisdom. "

[Chuck H]

Ok... I'm in! But as a designer, builder with no "official" technical training, will I be lost? Or is it written in plain speak rather than physics major terminologies and calculus formulas.?.