Jungson Hedo/Duro
Power Amplifier Tweaks and calculation of class A operation
My Jungson Hedo/Duro was
bought May 2012 as I was getting tired from moving the 30 kgs JA88
from our living room to my workshop - and back again. The Hedo/Duro is the
power amp section of the Jungson
JA88D-09, stripped to the bones to keep cost low. Fortunately the
good sound is not impaired.
The Hedo/Duro comes with both
single ended and balanced inputs, the latter designed for the
Jungson Primo pre-amp. I use my
WOT
line stage and run the Duro in balanced mode. The single
ended input (phono sockets) runs through a small circuit as seen above to the right.
This turns the single ended signal into a balanced signal, which is
connected in parallel to the XLR input sockets.
Left: Speaker terminal board also holds speaker relay and probably some protection circuitry. Better leave this as is. Only thing I miss is a second pair of speaker terminals for bi-wiring. I'll add another pair as I often use this with the Jenzen speakers. Download power amp section schematics here. Thanks to Mark, the schematics can be downloaded above. This displays two nasty electrolytic caps at the SE input, protecting the power amp from DC. Now, if we have a line stage with coupling caps at the output - or a transformer coupled line stage like my WOT - then these caps are not necessary. I removed the caps and inserted a bridge. If your line stage is not AC coupled, leave the caps in place.
2013: I've changed the yellow coupling caps by 3.3 uF/250V Silver/Gold from Jantzen Audio. By doing so it appeared there's an error on the print layout as one legs of the second cap (from bottom) is soldered directly to the nearby resistor, encircled in red. I wasn't aware of this when I made the photos and haven't got a close-up. If your amp has a similar issue, make sure soldering the new cap to the same resistor. I didn't take photos of the session but you can see a similar operation for my Jungson JA88D-09. As for the JA88 you should consider size of your replacements, e.g. max 17-18 mm diameter. As suggested below you may go down to 1 uF. I know 8 super caps just do not appear in your mail box for nothing, but if you really want to hear what your JA88/Duro/Hedo can do, short the input caps and replace the electrolytics with modern super caps. I later replaced the Silver/Golds by Silver-Z and didn't notice much change, if any.
The 80-100mV tells us how much idle current you will have through the output transistors Q92/106, and as Q91/106 is driven by the same voltage as the precious pair and have the same value emitter resistors, the idle current will be the same, i.e. 100mV/0.25 = 0.4A, and we thus have 0.8A bias current in total. This idle current is set by the Vbe-multiplier:
And you can trim idle current with *R. But I would not change the
0.4+0.4A idle current unless you have full control of thermal
stability!
Using RW3 you can trim DC offset at the Output_L+,
and RW4 to set the DC offset at output_L-.
To trim, first short the inputs so that the inputs are not floating
picking up noise and hum. Let the amp warm up with casing closed for
several hours in the place where it is to be used – stereo rack?
Floor? Makes a difference! Then remove casing lid (if needed) and trim
the pots individually. They are not linked together so you can trim
each individually so that the output voltage
measures as close to zero as possible (<50mV or so), and then put on
the lid, and let the amp be powered on for some hours and then redo
the trimming if needed. If you cannot trim DC offset down to <50mVDC or so, trim both output to the same value, as they will then cancel out when you connect the speaker wires to the + and - outputs, and thus get cancellation (for ex 50mV – 50mV = 0mV). I wonder about the class A power from the
30kg beast. Now that we have the schematics with component values, we
can easily calculate how much power the amp really outputs in pure
class A (and B if we want). Here are my findings. The power dissipation without music playing is high and that not only depends on the relatively high Irms but also because we have 4 amps.
Here's a simulation showing how the low cutoff is affected by the design having 1u, 1u5, 2u2, 3u3, 4u7, and 10F caps for all four of the “4u7” electrolytic caps in the middle of the schematic.
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