In Phase vs Out of Phase

[jckid649]

In pictures of Francesca I notice Ken wired the heaters out of phase, but many other builds and layouts (like Ceriatone for example) wire them in phase. Why and what is the difference?

[da Geezer]

In pictures of Francesca I notice Ken wired the heaters out of phase, but many other builds and layouts (like Ceriatone for example) wire them in phase. Why and what is the difference?

Ken may have done it purposefully, or it may have been a "mistake" (gasp!)..... Keeping the heaters in phase is considered "best practice" to avoid noise, but I have yet to hear a difference, though some swear by it.

That said, I do try to observe proper phasing if at all possible.

$0.02

Geezer

[jckid649]

In pictures of Francesca I notice Ken wired the heaters out of phase, but many other builds and layouts (like Ceriatone for example) wire them in phase. Why and what is the difference?

Ken may have done it purposefully, or it may have been a "mistake" (gasp!)..... Keeping the heaters in phase is considered "best practice" to avoid noise, but I have yet to hear a difference, though some swear by it.

That said, I do try to observe proper phasing if at all possible.

$0.02

Geezer

I will respectfully disagree on one thing here. While I grant that we may not have a sure answer for why he did it. I'm quite sure he did nothing by accident. Any man that tells you that the color of the PVC coating on a wire affects the tone certainly isn't going to wire something wrong by accident.....lol

[Clyde]

No difference.

[rawnster]

I doubt it makes much difference in the grand scheme of things, or in and of itself. Having said that, I believe that a lot of little things like this may have some effect on the over all outcome of the amp. Push pull power tubes tend to cancel hum just because of the way they operate but the preamp tubes are a little different because you have basically 2 heaters in parallel with each other when you run them off of 6v. Any hum that is passed on or amplified from the plate of one triode stage (between two different tubes) could be canceled out in the next stage if the signal (60hz) were out of phase. This would be a lot more inportant in tubes that have a directly heated cathode. This isn't the case with a 12ax7 but maybe Ken just learned to do it this way for those directly heated cathode tubes and carried on the tradition in all of his builds. I guess we will never know for sure why he did it that way but he did.

[Jana]

I think it was just a phase he was going through when he wired it.