It all started when I started exchanging emails with a Kiwi guy (Bruce Ward) who wants to build a copy of my SE KT88 amp based on Mikael Abdellah's design at diyaudio.com.
Bruce works for Tait communication in New Zealand (secured radio designer and manufacturer, these secured communication equipment are used by embassies and other agencies, usually, the black kind), and one day he told me they found a box of NOS tubes at their warehouse. He said the tubes are 6080. Being a very nice guy, Bruce sent me 4 pairs of 6080s and at the same time I bought another 5 pairs from trademe.co.nz (Kiwi's version of ebay.com). I intend to use them as voltage regulators for my projects!
I started reading about 6AS7/6080 and found several people have used these tubes as power tubes for amps, these tubes are designed to be voltage regulators.
I opted to do a parafeed circuit using 12at7 as driver. The project was breadboarded and stayed that way for a few months. This weekend I decided that my parafeed 6080 deserves a better chassis:
Chassis sanded and fitted on the plinth.
Aluminum plate painted with automotive clear polyurethane and the plinth oiled. The two transformers are plate chokes for the 6080.
Testing the amp. The transformer endbells underneath the plinth is used as temporary feet for the amp (This amps gets very very hot, 2.5A 6.3V 6080 heaters, and the single tube is dissipating almost 24 watts).
It sounds excellent for what it is, a tube regulator for power tube, ordinary toroidal transformer for output transformer!
In all, these amp have 8 transformers consisting of 1 power transformer, 1 smoothing choke and 4 plate chokes! All of the irons are wound on Z11 cores done by Edrel Sison. The OPTs are toroidal power transformers from RS.
Between this and my SE KT88, this amp gets more playtime than my SE KT88.