Ducati Sporting Club UK > General > Idle Chat > Any Electrician Type Gurus Out There???

[phil_h]

fiscus is right about the voltage spec - 230Vac is pan-european now.
Check the spec on your valves : 230V is 220V + 4.5%
and ... you dont say how much power they consume - which is a rather important factor if you want to drive them through any kind of intermediate device. Almost everything you put in the way will get hotter than you would like, especially if its cheap far-eastern stuff, as their manufacturing policy seems to be to see what they can get away with, and then charge you an arm when you come back with a tighter (reasonable) spec.

[Ian Harris]

Originally Posted by phil_h

aand ... you dont say how much power they consume - which is a rather important factor if you want to drive them through any kind of intermediate device. Almost everything you put in the way will get hotter than you would like, especially if its cheap far-eastern stuff, as their manufacturing policy seems to be to see what they can get away with, and then charge you an arm when you come back with a tighter (reasonable) spec.

Power consumption is about 210 watts at 220 volts per amp...this will be fairly constant, as they are class A (meaning they always run at full blast, irrespective of how much sound is coming out)...does that make it about 1amp ??? I'm hoping 2amp plus a tiny bit more for the pre-amp will not create too much heat in the additional transformer.

As for quality...this is a bit of a gamble, ... I believe the stuff I am buying is pretty near to US / American standards of construction, but it definitely has 220 volt power supplies (which suit Europe fine, but sadly not us in the UK). The gear I am buying does not currently have a formal UK importer, so is not available with 240 volt freindly supply. If its good stuff, I'll upgrade components in due course...if its not, I'll live and learn and stick it on ebay with a suitably realistic description.

[phil_h]

Originally Posted by Ian Harris

As for quality...this is a bit of a gamble, ... I believe the stuff I am buying is pretty near to US / American standards of construction, but it definitely has 220 volt power supplies (which suit Europe fine, but sadly not us in the UK). The gear I am buying does not currently have a formal UK importer, so is not available with 240 volt freindly supply. If its good stuff, I'll upgrade components in due course...if its not, I'll live and learn and stick it on ebay with a suitably realistic description.

I think you missed our earlier point ...
the uk and europe came to an agreement several years ago to all change our mains voltages, and we met in the middle at 230V.
So all of europe and the british isles have run at 230Vac for quite a while.
What you will find of course is that local supply voltage regulation can be variable
UK and germany for instance are better than spain and italy.

So ... if you know people in europe using these valves ok, then they _should_ also be fine here.
The caveat emptor is still there - as you always need to know how much overvoltge a power device will cope with (P = Vsquared / R)

btw
the 'CE' mark on a device which is mains powered _should_ be your guarantee.
If the valves are not CE marked, then it is my understanding that they are not legal in europe (or whatever)

[Ian Harris]

Originally Posted by phil_h

I think you missed our earlier point ...
the uk and europe came to an agreement several years ago to all change our mains voltages, and we met in the middle at 230V.
So all of europe and the british isles have run at 230Vac for quite a while.
What you will find of course is that local supply voltage regulation can be variable

If we are indeed running at a mean level of 230 volts then , as you say, all should be well...but my understanding was that there was a European decision to "harmonise" electricity supply, but it was too expensive for either mainland Europe or the UK to change, so the -6% / +10% leeway just enabled both sides to remain as they were, so any UK volt fluctuations will be around our long-standing 240 volt standard, not the suggested 230 volt.

European Union fudge? Surely not!

Regarding CE approval, at the end of the day, I'm just being hyper-cautious to maximise valve longetivity ... if they're optimised to run at 220, I'd rather feed them 220 (or at least have any fluctuations centred around 220 , not 240).

Thanks for all your input, its much appreciated.