Retronics

For experimenting with electronics, solderless breadboards are my preferred way of temporarily connecting components and modules. Such boards are most commonly used for low voltage circuits, but the datasheet for the breadboards I’m using , a voltage rating of 300V is specified. This means they can handle the voltages of small vacuum tubes. One problem, however, is that tube sockets don’t fit in to the 1/10″ spaced holes on breadboards.

For easy connection of noval and octal socket tubes, I designed small breadboard adapters for these sockets, using Kicad PCB design software.

In the voltage range these may be used, proper spacing between pads is important, and I used 5.08mm pitch for the pins that connect to the breadboard.

I ordered the noval and octal adapter boards from PCB manufacturers oshpark.com and jlcpcb.com respectively. Both of them produce high quality boards for a reasonable price.

To these boards, I soldered tube sockets and pin headers.

Two random tubes plugged into the breadboard:

Prototyping a tube amplifier:

I did like the way it sounded, and decided to build an amp based on this prototype. This amp will be described in next post.