The purpose of the phase splitter stage is to produce two identical phase inverted output signals from the input signal. The two phase inverted signals are then passed to the push-pull power stage.
The most common schemas are the paraphase phase splitter, the long-tailed pair phase splitter, and the concertina phase splitter. For simplicity, here we will discuss the concertina phase splitter only. Despite its simplicity, a well-designed concertina phase splitter stage offers very high quality. Its only drawbacks might be that, as we will see later, it does not produce any gain on the input signal.
4.2.1 Concertina phase splitter
The basic schema of a concertina, or cathodyne, phase splitter is given in Figure 25. Two resistors of exactly the same resistance Ra=Rk are connected, respectively, from the high-tension V+ to the anode, and from the cathode to the ground. In this way, the two resistors, along with the vacuum tube internal resistance, form a voltage divider. When grid voltage increases, the resistance offered by the vacuum tube decreases. When the vacuum tube resistance decreases, the voltage at the anode decrease and the voltage at the cathode increases of exactly the same amount, provided the two resistors are perfectly matched. Similarly, when the grid voltage decreases, the anode and the cathode voltages, respectively increase and decrease of exactly the same amount. Consequently, two phase-inverted signals of exactly the same amplitude are taken at the anode and the cathode of the vacuum tube. These two signals are passed to the push-pull vacuum tubes of the next stage.
The grid bias voltage should be, as usual, negative with respect to the cathode voltage. In this configuration, the cathode voltage is higher than ground due to the effect of the cathode resistor Rk. Therefore, the voltage Vg should be lower, than the cathode voltage, of an amount equal to the wanted bias voltage. Bias voltage to the vacuum tube grid can be obtained using a voltage divider composed of the resistors R1 and R2.
The grid stopper resistor Rg has the purpose of blocking very high frequencies and parasitic oscillations, by creating a low-pass filter together with the internal vacuum tube capacitance, due to the Miller effect, as already discussed in Section 4.1.1. The grid stopper resistor must be soldered directly on the pin of the vacuum tube socket. For instance, values around 47K Ohm are generally used for vacuum tubes like the 12AX7.
The coupling capacitor Cc isolates previous stage from the bias voltage applied to the grid. The coupling capacitor together with R1 and R2, seen as parallel resistors when handling an AC signal, form a high-pass filter. Cc has to be chosen according to the wanted low cut-off frequency.
4.2.2 DC and AC loadline of a concertina
The values of the anode and cathode resistors determine the load seen by the vacuum tube, and consequently the loadline. The total load seen by the vacuum tube at the quiescent state, that is when there is only DC bias current traversing the vacuum tube, is Ra+Rk. However, when an AC signal is applied to the grid, the two output signals also traverse the coupling capacitors Ccp, placed between the concertina and the power stage, and go to the two grid leak resistors Rl of the power stage itself. The two grid leak resistors are in parallel respectively to the anode and cathode resistors of the concertina. The total load, in this case, is the sum of the resistances resulting from the parallel effect of cathode resistor and one grid leak, on one side, and the anode resistor and the other grid leak, on the other side. In a few words, as shown in Figure 26, we have two different loadlines. One loadline, which we call the DC loadline, has to be considered when the vacuum tube is in a quiescent state, to analyse the load and the grid bias needed for an optimal quiescent operating point. The other loadline, which we call the AC loadline, has to be taken into account to analyse what happens when a signal goes through the vacuum tube and traverse the coupling capacitors. Note that, since the signal oscillates around the quiescent operating point, the AC loadline intersects the DC loadline exactly at this point, identified by the red spot in the figure.
Use my loadline calculator to experiment with DC and AC loadlines.
4.2.3 Gain of the concertina phase splitter
The cathode resistor Rk puts the vacuum tube of the concertina phase splitter under heavy local negative feedback. As explained in Section 3.6.3, the cathode resistor tends to vary the cathode voltage in the same direction than the grid voltage variation, thus opposing the grid to cathode voltage variation and reducing the gain of the voltage amplifier. Given Ra=Rk, if μ∙Rk >> ra, and μ >> 2, the gain of this configuration is
.
For instance, using a 12AX7 vacuum tube, with Ra=Rk>100K Ohm, since the amplification factor is μ =100, the gain is around 0.98, at both outputs. In practice, in this case, the concertina simply takes the input signal and produces two outputs signals (one inverted with respect to the other) practically of the same amplitude of the input signal.
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