Frankenstein
(as my friends in college would call it)
a vacuum tube home theater system
Summary
At the age of 21 I built an all-tube home theater system (except for the DSP stuff). My friends in college called it "Frankenstein," because it look absurd sitting in the corner of my college dorm room. It consists of 5 class AB tube power amplifiers, tube pre-amps, and a Dolby 5.1/DTS digital signal processor, for a total of 27 vacuum tubes. Each power amplifier is capable of over 400 watts peak output. All of the equipment is mounted in a 7' tall WW2-surplus equipment rack.
Publications
Press
B. Benchoff, ‘Frankenstein, an all-tube home theater amplifier,’ Hackaday, January 2, 2012.
Make Magazine Blog, ‘Frankenstein, an all-tube home theater system.’
Engineering Notes & Schematics
Caution! High voltage. Do not attempt to build anything shown here unless you have taken proper high voltage training. The high voltages present in these tube designs are deadly.
See also:
block diagram
annotation for block diagram
Transfer switch and preamplifier schematic
Power distribution schematic
first deployment in the college dorm room
next deployment, at a rental appartment
