Tube amp & subwoofers (1 Viewer)

[Shane Morales]

Hi. I thought I already posted this, but I can't find the thread now so I'm posting again.

I listen to all my music on my PC. I have a nice external USB sound card and currently run that into a receiver. My subwoofer (with its own amp) is hooked up to the receiver.

I want to build my own stereo tube amp to replace the receiver, but I don't know how my subwoofer fits into this plan. How would I get it to work with a stereo tube amp and the sound card I have (Sound Blaster HD)?

 

[Dave Upton]

Your subwoofer is internally amplified. Most subwoofers have line-level inputs, which basically allow you to put it in-line between your tube amp and speakers. Do you have any pictures of the rear of your sub, or can you tell us what model you have?

 

[Shane Morales]

It's an Aperion. The back looks like this.

 

[Dave Upton]

Perfect. So you see the high-level in and out on the back? You'll run your speaker wires from your tube amp into the left + right high level in, and then another set of wires from the high level out beneath to your speakers. Then you can adjust level/crossover and phase using the controls on the back of your sub.

Here's my crappy drawing:

 

[Shane Morales]

Huh... that's so simple.

Thanks! Now to find a DIY amp kit.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

What are you looking to spend for the DIY tube amp?

Maybe check out Bottlehead (https://bottlehead.com/) to see if they have something that suits you. They're very responsive and helpful, and there's an entire, sizable online community that follows them, including all sorts of additional DIY tweaks, upgrades and such. And they seem to design their kits to be reasonably easy to build and mod -- I'm going to build their Crack OTL head amp (w/ Speedball upgrade) for my Sennheiser HD600 cans, and like many others, I've never gone the DIY route before (and am just now learning to solder for this)...

_Man_

 

[Shane Morales]

I wish I could do bottlehead, but they're way too rich for me. I'll have to find something cheaper.