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Looking for powerful audio
amplifier for a project?
Try this 150 Watts amplifier
and hear the awesome power

and faithful reproduction of

your favorite tune, Coupled
with an audio mixer, a turntable, a cassette deck, a graphic
equalizer, a pair of speakers,
and some microphones, you are
now ready to hit the stage.
"But I don't intend to use it
for a disco party, a concert hall

play, nor for a public address

system of any function. Why
do I need a 150 Watts amp
for my living room?"
If you are an avid listener of
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POWER AMPLIFIER CIRCUIT

music with a good taste for quality music reproduction, chances

are, you wouldn't like to miss

every minute details of those

soft

passages and thundering

crescendoes. With a 40 Watts
amplifier, you might missed the
dynamism of a true sonic reproduction of the tune. What you
may hear could be the clipped
level of the over-worked 40
Watts amplifier. And the poor
speaker is blamed for its short
coming.
"Great! I want to built my
own 150 Watts amplifier. But
doesn't the cost of speaker unit
be a big puzzle to my budget?"

Well, I guess you either set

aside an amount to buy a suitable speaker system,. or, wait
till next issue for the 250 Watts
speaker-baffle unit in the feature
project construction!
ABOUT THE AMPLIFIER

The complete schematic diaof the amplifier is shown

in Fig. l. The amplifier uses
an op-amp as its input amplifier
and predriver to the power

gram

driver stage. The signal from the

op amp is then pass to the driver
transistors Q3 and Q4. Resistors
Rll and R12 together with Q1
ELECTRONICS DIGEST

150 Watts AmP

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and its associated resistors R8,

R9 and Rl0, provide the necessary quiescent bias to the two
driver transistors. Trimmer resis'
tor is use to adjust the oPtimum
quiescent bias to minimize the
amplifier's crossover distortion.
Capacitor C7 across Ql's collector and emitter is used to improve the transrent resPonse of

the amplifier at the

point.
Signal from

vol-.

NO.3

cross-over

the two

driver

transistor drives their respective

power transistors which are in
complementary connection Although a single Power transistor
per side is possible, a Pair was
used to improve the heat transfer rate since the two transistors
would equally share the power
dissipation and the heat in each
transistor is dissipated to the
heatsink in two separate area
Moreover, this increase the total
curreht and power handling ca

pability of the power transistors.

Inductor Ll in parrallel with resistor R30 provides isolation to
any capacitive load that may appear across the output terminal.
The over-all gain of the amPli'

fier is controlled by the feedback network connected to the

op-amp. The network is made
up of R5, R6 and C3 from the
,.amplifier output and R4 and C2
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Power Supply Circuit f,or one

Charrnel

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kinetic soundlal:
PROFESSIOT\JAL AUD!O EQU IPM ENT

POWER AMPLNFIERS IOO-4OOW RMS/CH.

POWER AMPLIFIEfi

AUDIG IViIXERS 4IBI12Il4INPUTS.

EOUALIZERSiLI[4ITERS
SPEAKER SYSTEMS,. . ETC.
For your next instailation job, be sure to
install quality and conf !dence.
KSL audio equiprnents . . . for high quality
and reiiable pubrlic address s)istems for
churches, auditcl"iums, gen. purpose halls
restaurants, factories and shopping malls.

For particulars ciill

Tel. Nos. 86-88-94

or
AUDIO MiXER

22

88-69-72

2ND FLOOR, MAKATI ROTARYABCADE BLDG,

SOUTH DRIVE, MAKATI COMMERCIAL CENTER

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150 Watts AmP

Fig. 3 Foil Pattern of l50W

vol-.

NO.3

23

150 Watts Amp

Fig.

24

Component placement guide

for l50W Amplofier

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150 Watts AmP

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150 Watts Amp

at the inverting input of the

of the supply, is used to filter

the output of the rectifier.
Larger value of filter capacitors

op

amp. The gain is set such that

the amplifier would deliver the

rated 150 watts when the input
signal is about 0.75 volts rms.
The low power supply require
ment for the op-amp is derive
also from the amplifier supply;
scaled down with the use limit
ing resistors Rl3 and R14. The
supply is further regulated by
the two zener diodes. D I and

is possible by connecting
capacitors in parrallel.

designed, perhaps because of

separate heatsink placement

from the driver circuit, additional wiring, from the PCB to the

single bridge rectifier assembly

is used to rectify the ac voltage
from a center tap transformer
to generate the positive and negative supply voltage requirement of the power amplifier.
Two 10,000 micro farad capaci
tor, one on the positive and
another on the negative side

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necessary.

Start the assembly with the

resistors and capacitors properly
positioned and soldered to the
PC board. Checked the polarity
markings on polarized capacitors
before installing them. Make
the two jumper connections,

J3 and J4, on top of the

with a #22

PCB

AWG stranded or
solid hook-up wire. The other
two jumper connections, Jl an
12, will be done at the latter
part of construction and they
are made at the bottom of the

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power transistors, would then be

The foil pattern of the amplifier, and its corresponding parts

placement guide is shown in Fig.
3 and 4, respectively. All cornponents, except the input potentiometer and the resistor across
it, are located within the PC
board, including the four power
transistor. This minimize the
number of connecting lines to
the PC board to a minimum.
The PCB is so designed such
that the heatsink for the power
transistors would be directly attached to the aluminum angular
bar where the power transistor

Fig. 2 snows the power supply circuit of the amplifier. A

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elsewhere, other than the.original

several

CONSTRUCTION

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is sitting with the PC board (see

Fig. 5)" If it is so desired to
mount the power transistors

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Fig.
26

6a Detail

of 'A'Bracket
ELECTRONICS DIGEST

150 Watts Amp

the relative locations of

the
the
heatbrackets. The holes on
sink should match the hole on

one side of bracket 'A'. A

simple way to do this is to Posi
tion the drilled bracket onto
the heatsink and marked them
with a pencil before drilling.
Clean the drilled holes from

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DETAIL OF .8. BRACKET

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any burr, particularly the mounting holes for the transistors.

The burrs are sharp :enough to
pierce through the mica insulator of the transistors and can
cause a short circuit between
them.
Assemble the four bracket
members as shown in Fig. 5
and fasten it to the PCB with
3 mm diameter screws on four
corners. The holes are intentionally made bigger to conrPensate for any errors when the
holes are drilled. Use metal
washers on the screws so it will
not fall onto the hole. The
screws must be insulated from
the PCB and this is done bY inserting a plastic transistor spacer
to the bolt before the nut. The
transistor mounting detail in

Fig. 7 illustrate a similar

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OF.D.BRACKET

Fig. 6b Detail ot 'ts'& 'D' Brackets

PCB.

Install the two zener diodes

in its place and caretullY checked their proper orientation. Use
just enough heat to soldier semiconductor devices! An trC Socket
is recommended for IC1. Be sure
to orient pin 1 of the IC socket
to its correct location' This

would help facilitate the Proper

orientatigning of the IC when
it is to be installed. After sol-

ICl.
Before continuing, the angu-

dering the socket, install

lar bars for the transistors has to

be prepared first. Fig. 6a and

vol-.

No.3

6b shows the details of the angular bars or brackets that will

be needed. Two Pieces of 'A'
bracket and one of each of 'B'
and 'D' brackets is required Per
channel. Bracket 'A' is a 1 inch
x 1 inch x 1/8 inch thick alurninum angular bar. While brackets
'B' and 'D' uses a 314 inch x
3 4 nch x 1/8 inch thick alumi
num angular bar.
Prepare the brackets following the dimensions and drilling
hole guide in Fig 6a and 6b.
The exploded view of the amPli
fier construction in Fig 5 shows

se-

quence of hardware comPonents

in mounting the brackets to the
PCB (less the transistor and the

mica insulator). Test for anY

short circuit connections between the bracket and the foil
traces near the screw nttts with
an ohm-meter. Re-do the screw
assembly until no short circuit
is found.

Next, mount the driver

and

power transistors to the angular

bars. Insulate the transistors to
the brackets with mica insulators (refer to Fig. 7 for details).
The mica insulator for the Powel
transistors is cut from two TO-3
rnica insulator to conform to
its shape, since there is no commercially available mica insula27

150 Watts Amp

tor of

such outline. The hole

can be punched with an office

paper puncher. Put

grease

silicone
com-

or similar heatsink

pound on the both side of the

mica insulator and also to the
transistor and the heatsink. This

will improve heat transfer from

the transistor to the heatsink.
Test, again, for any short between the bracket and any terminals of the transistor including its' mounting screws. Remove any short circuit before
soldering the transistor terminals in place. The driver tran-

Check if the screws on the PCB

touches the heatsink which can
cause a short circuit. If so, you
either have to make hole adjust
ment on the bracket or on the
heatsink, or try using a shorter
length of screws for the transis'

bottom of the PCB.

The ground connection strould
be made last. If this is made
first, any measurement between
any transistor terminals to the
bracket, would yield some resis
tance measurement, which is the
resistance between the transistor
terminal and the ground. This
can mislead you to believe that
there is a short or a partial short
between the transistcr and the

tors. Now you are ready to

make the test.

TESTING AND CALIBRATION

The power amplifier can

bracket.

Finally, mount the

heatsink

be

tested and operated with a power supply lower than the recom.

to the bracket with 4 mm screws.

sistors are similarly mounted.

Re.check for any short circuit between the bracket and

transistor terminals and the foil
trace where the rnounting screws

3mm0 x l4mm STOVE

are located. Transistor Ql

should also be mounted to the

bracket (see Fig. 8). Removed
the screw on one corner of the
bracket assembly where Ql is
to be iocated. Mount Ql using
the same proceedure as used in
mounting the other transistors.
Solder three wires to Ql terminals and connect them to the
PCB. Be sure to check the correct terminal designation of Ql
before soldering them to the
PCB. Check again for any short
circuit between the PCB foil
trace, the angular bracket, and
any terminals of the transistors.
If the transistors has been
properly installed and no short
circuit exist between the bracket
and the transistors, a ground
connection can now be made

to the
shown

angular bracket,

in Fig.

fr

C BRACKET

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b__

a,__

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also

the PCB. Also, make the jumper

connections, J'l and J2, using
#18 AWG stranded wire at the

MICA INSULATOR

TRANSISTO R

8. A short piece

of #22 AWG wire can be bolted

to any part of the bracket and
soldered to a ground path on

28

2.TG3

BOLT

PLASTIC

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BOARD

SPACER

WASHE R
LOCX WASHER

HEXAGONAL NUT

Fie.

7 Transistor mounting details

to heat sink

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