Sunday, February 10

Power Supply Design For Clean Jazz Amps

Power supply design is a broad field, requiring entirely different tools and techniques depending on what you’re working with. Creating a low-cost and compact mobile phone charger is a completely different ball game to designing the power supply for a medium-sized laser cutter, for example. [Vasily Ivanenko] has been designing a power supply for a clean jazz guitar amplifier, and has helpfully documented the process.

For a guitar amplifier which prides itself on clean tones, it’s highly important to avoid all sources of noise, to let the natural sound of the guitar come through as clearly as possible. [Vasily] notes that this requires careful component selection, as well as consideration of the placement of key parts and the construction of the power supply. Strategies to minimise inductive and capacitive coupling are discussed, as well as grounding schemes to minimise undesirable hum or buzz during amplifier operation.

The article is the first of a three part series, in which [Vasily] will then cover the full design of the guitar amp, including a focus on the design of the power amplifier stage. We’ve seen some of [Vasily]’s work before, like this discussion of how to build high quality audio amplifiers for ham radio use. 

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