PL36

All tube operating points below are by no means definitive good sound recipe for your particulate tube project. Lowest THD point is not necessary best sounding one and there is always some variance even in a NOS tube batch from the same manufacturer! Below information is only useful as a general starting point and is ment to get you in a ballpark when no measurement equipment is available.

Lowest THD operating point spectrum

46mA, -40V BIAS, 221Va

Recommended operating point spectrum

7.5mA, -2.95V BIAS, 263 Va

Other operating points

46mA, -18V BIAS, 140Va

Traced plate curves

Comment

TV line output pentode (=EL36 with 25V heaters). In triode mode linearity is excellent, but spectrum suffers from high level of uneven harmonics (5th particularly) that you can’t get rid of no matter what operating point you choose. This is common to all line output pentodes I have measured and could be culprit of “harsh” sound reported by a lot of users. Quite microphonic but because of low μ still usable. Watch out for early models as these didn’t had grid holders and are notoriously microphonic and not really usable for audio.

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