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Message started by reflective-granny on 05/11/23 at 16:55:08

Title: General Voltage Enquiry related to Ireland or UK
Post by reflective-granny on 05/11/23 at 16:55:08

Dear all
I am wondering what's the general best practice on selecting the right voltage for Decware amp. Those can be purchased in 220, 230 and 240V. Now, the standard domestic electricity supply in Ireland is 230 volt AC (frequency 50Hz) however very often if you measure the real voltage in the socket, it turns out that it is higher and reaches even 240V. And what if you move from Ireland to another European country where the voltage in the sockets is lower and oscillates around 230V? Is it better to buy the 240V version in such cases? Which of the situations is more acceptable: a 230V transformer operating at 240V or vice versa?

Title: Re: General Voltage Enquiry related to Ireland or UK
Post by CAJames on 05/12/23 at 01:51:25

That's a good question. My first inclination is this: running the transformer at a higher voltage than the rating risks actual harm to the transformer and your amp. Running at a lower voltage "only" affects performance, it isn't a safety issue. But, I suspect the transformers Decware uses would be fine with 10 volts ( < 5%) over the rating so I would be inclined to pick the lower voltage transformer and take my chances with higher actual power. JMO/FWIW and all that.

But probably the best answer would be to ask Steve.

Title: Re: General Voltage Enquiry related to Ireland or UK
Post by Carlsbad on 05/13/23 at 01:31:02

220V, 230V, 240V, it's all the same. Most components are designed to be fine with any of them. currently at my house I have 238.2. I've seen it below 230 and as high as 248V. This won't hurt your amp. Steve designs a lot of safety margin into his amps. And marketers seem to choose at random what number they put on a component. I would say that just because a component says "220V" does not mean it was designed for 220V. It was more likely designed for anything between 215 and 250.

Also, I've never seen a transformer in the audio industry that wasn't good with either 50hz or 60hz.

All that said, tube amps like the same voltage every time. Once you set the bias, then if voltage changes, the bias will change. I use a PSaudio power supply to keep my voltage stable and clean. and I recommend that for any tube amp. You can also set the voltage to any voltage you like with a PSA regenerator.

Best of luck,
Jerry

Title: Re: General Voltage Enquiry related to Ireland or UK
Post by 4krow on 05/17/23 at 15:41:02

CArlsbad,

I agree with your statements, but only to a point. Maybe this depends on the age of the component, but in my experience, I own a Cayin CD player rated for 220 volts. No problem, I got a step up transformer and used it to feed the CD22. Now, I measured the output voltage from the transformer and it was at 240 volts. After a short time, things went bad and the CD player was repaired. The engineer who worked on it said that the too high voltage caused some trouble in the audio section of the CD player. So, I had two fixes to try and deal with this. One was a PS Audio P300 as you have mentioned to feed the step up transformer. About 105-110 VAC was where I could set it to get the desired voltage. The other option was to use a good Variac, which is what I am currently using. Worked out well. I suspect that the problem is more about incoming voltage variations than anything else, as mine comes in around 120-125 VAC.
As a side note, the PS Audio P300 allows for changing the AC frequency from I think 50 to 120 hz. Very interesting to me with varying results in some equipment. Of course, it gets even more interesting using the multiwave functions that vary different parameters of the AC waveform.

Title: Re: General Voltage Enquiry related to Ireland or UK
Post by alper_yilmaz on 05/18/23 at 08:38:08

Just recently, I re-wired my SE84UFO25 from 120V to 230V (in Istanbul, Turkey). Frankly speaking, I did not measure the voltage at the time of the re-wiring, but as the officially announced figure is 230V, I used the taps for 230.

By the way, I just measured it and it gave me 229V, a very rare occasion her in Turkey that something is close to what is announced! :) I am sure this fluctuates during the course of the day, but I would not worry about it much. I would simply assume that the standard voltage as announced is closer to the average, so I would go for that...

Title: Re: General Voltage Enquiry related to Ireland or UK
Post by reflective-granny on 05/18/23 at 22:41:01

Thanks for all the answers.