Building Valve Amplifiers - Morgan Jones
This book is a compliment to Valve Amplifiers, where Valve Amplifiers focuses on the theory of valve (tube) amp design, Building Valve Amplifiers instead focuses on everything you probably would like to know about how to build them, pointers, lots of things you probably didn't even think of even if you've been at it for a long while.
The second half of the book, which I haven't yet finished focuses on measuring amps, test equipment and diagnosing problems in tube amps. Again, the book doesn't assume too much, but does assume you are intending to build a tube amp.
I highly recommend it to anybody that likes to build tube gear, even if just from kits. Its under $40 and have a multitude of tips and pointers and just downright useful things to know, based on real science and engineering, not audiophoolery. There is also a great chapter on grounding. I admit that I found the chapter useful because I have already read up on the subject some but might find it a little terse if I hadn't read anything on the subject. I only say that because the point about only only point in a system being tied to earth ground is implied but not specifically spelled out. I do not know if that was intentional or not. The author suggest you experiment and gave you everything you needed to draw that conclusion yourself without specifically spelling it out.
I had some time over the last weekend and read the first half of the book and into the second half. I already feel like I got my money's worth and many of the tips I have experimentally figured out myself, but the ones I haven't solved a lot of problems I was pondering still.
The Valve Amplifiers text that this book is made to compliment I have mentioned a few times before and is highly recommended to anyone who wants to understand how tube amps work and how tubes work and even how tube are made with some history of the manufacturing process.
