I did provide a thermister to limit turn-on in-rush and I am absolutely NOT convinced that "cathode stripping" of electrodes is anything to worry about (I have yet to see ANY data that says it is a problem).
I get 465 volts (see below for more data) on the plates of the output EL34's and am using 12AU7's on the driver board with even lower gain parts than is specified. I cannot imagine how much gain there is to contend with (as in big loud with little preamp volume turn-up) with the 12AT7's and glad I did the 12AU7's.
Transformer is BUGS old one (thanks BUGS), outputs A470's. Paint is rust-oleum hammertone on the chassis. Sockets are Omron PL08's but holes are enlarged some via sanding cylinders to fit.
FYI, the EL34's shown had some weird distortion going on with loud but not too loud listening. Bias adjustments did not seem to help. These EL34's are not new though. Put in some Westinghouse 6L6WGB's biased at 40 mA and huge difference sounds better. Disclaimer...I did not have the OPT's grounded, see below.
Last edited by tomlang on Tue Nov 17, 2009 11:35 am; edited 2 times in total