Pill Amp Electricity

[unit100]

I've just moved into pill amps after many years of those dangerous tubers. I would like to know where I can "get popped" by voltage , if at all, inside a transistor amp. I have already been fooling around in them for about a year.. Maybe just been lucky, but how can I get popped if I make a mistake? Touching input under load? OR output? What is the greatest amountof voltage, say in my 4 pill? and where?

Thanks,
Buddy

 

[Beetle]

Shouldn't have any problems with the DC end of things. However, watts is watts, even with RF. You could well get RF burns just about anywhere if you're foolhardy enough to play around in there without knowing exactly what you're doing.

If you can't calculate the "greatest amount of voltage", or don't have the correct tools to measure it, maybe you should get some training before you get a really nasty and painful RF burn.

 

[dudmuck]

I've just moved into pill amps after many years of those dangerous tubers. I would like to know where I can "get popped" by voltage , if at all, inside a transistor amp. I have already been fooling around in them for about a year.. Maybe just been lucky, but how can I get popped if I make a mistake? Touching input under load? OR output? What is the greatest amountof voltage, say in my 4 pill? and where?

Thanks,
Buddy

RF at 50ohms: a thousand watts is around 220volts at 4.4Amps of RF energy.

Cant be hurt by 12 volts DC unless you're really wet and your body is in a direct connection between + & -, even then probably not.

Plate voltage for tubes is certainly deadly if you touch it. This is why the chassis cover has a switch that disables this high voltage when the cover is opened. Yet also those big capacitors need to be discharged. If you follow simple safety steps, then tubes are safe. Tubes are more efficient for high power, and signal is cleaner.

 

[Captain Kilowatt]

All above is true. The 12 volts will NOT hurt you BUT the current providd by that 12 volts can be a surprise. remember the 12 source can provide many,many amps. Accidently shorting it to ground can be very bad especially if the path to ground is through a wristwatch or ring.lots of heat in a fraction of a second equals burnt flesh. Speaking of burnt flesh,Beetle is correct about the RF burns.RF does not burn like heat does,it actually cooks the flesh in a split second AND it burns painfully and smells real bad.I spent 22 years in the broadcast business working on AM/FM high power transmitters and have gotten my fair share of RF burns.

 

[unit100]

Well, thanks guys. I have been touching tops of pills for overheating under load, and other little things like feeling how hot the outputs get after a lengthy keydown, but have not touched the traces when keyed. Once I touched a block resistor after a fairly long keydown and thought I got popped, but that sucker was just hotter'n a 45.
Anyway, I'm glad I graduated to pills after many years of expensive, dangerous tube ubits.

Thanks again.
Buddy

 

[Justme]

What is dangerous about tubes?
JUst use sense and the usual precautions...
The rebuildt SB-1000 i use is 23 year old, now with the second tube just put in, just the yearly cleaning out dust discharging capacitors first and using an dead mans stick to keep them discharged during the cleaning process.
Looking forward to the next 23 years of use