Rectifier tubes

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Why do most tube circuit designers use the standard mainstream rectifier tubes such as 5ar4, 5u4g, 274b and gz34? I have used some of these before and they can get pretty pricey especially the western electric rectifiers, but if the designers would design the circuit to use 1616, 3b22, 3b28 or something along those lines you could get better sound and at a lot cheaper prices.

mhardy6647

Usually, AFAIK, it's the voltage drop of the rectifier, the circuit's current requirements, and whether the filaments are directly or indirectly heated that drives the choice. Otherwise, I think it's just fashion.

There is a certain amount of interchangeabiltiy between 5V filament HV rectifiers (by design), so there's often some opportunity to fiddle a bit.

Here's a handy reference for 5V (EDIT: and 6V) full-wave HV rectifiers.
http://www.fourwater.com/files/fullrect.txt



It's perfectly fine to adapt/revise an HV P/S to use a different rectifier -- there are also half-wave rectifiers, of course, and weird (relative to hifi) TV rectifiers of all sorts of flavors.



EDIT: You might find this interesting, too(?).

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-Vacuum-Tube-Valley/Vacuum-Tube-Valley-Issue-17.pdf

invalid

I think there is more to it than just voltage drop, when I run 2 Mercury rectifier tubes in a full wave configuration the dynamics are much better, and it's only powering a preamp. When I use a 5 volt rectifier tube it doesn't sound near as good, less instrument separation, less dynamics and two 866 tubes are way cheaper than most nos 5 volt tubes. I can run two 1616 tubes that sound similar to the 866 tubes but a little sweeter sounding.