You think a Cold Cathode powersupply would work to power the heater of a vacuum tube?

Possibly, but I doubt it. You would need to check the ratings for the heater in the tube and compare to the ratings of your ccfl driver. Main thing I would be worried about is the current output of the ccfl driver. I'm just not sure if it'll have enough to power the heater.
 
Nope. CCFLs use high voltage. The heater in a valve usually runs on about 3V sometimes more sometimes less. Try it out on a 1.5V battery or two untill it glows at about the right colour.
 
A cold cathode power supply will power a cold cathode, that's about it...

Most vacuum tubes (audio ones at least) only take 5-6 volts on the heater. And the plate voltage of most tubes is limited to 400-500 volts for the "bigger" audio tubes too, which is far less than the couple KV that a cold cathode uses.
 
Most cold cathodes I've seen list specs of 400-1000v. My inverter (never measured) is supposed to put out 600v.
 
What tube? For "american" tubes, the heater voltage is the first number in the name. Example, a 6L6 is a 6 volt tube, a 5AR7 uses 5 volts for the heater. But there are some exceptions, a 12AX7 can use 6 or 12 volts, depending on how you wire them.
 
hmm...i was under the impression the heaters used a fairly high voltage (around 160-200volts)....guess not.
 
Vacuum tube heaters run from 3 to 12 volts commonly. Also, they absolutely consume current. Usually, such as in a Vacuum tube amp or the VERY old television sets, you would see either a seperate winding in the main power xformer or an entirely seperate xformer all its own providing in the vicinity of 6 amps to power the heaters for the unit. In standard transformer terms, this is a fairly hefty unit, as the wire used to wind a transformer needs to handle the 6 amps of current and there are hundreds of turns around the laminated iron core, hence the heavy weight of the unit.
 
mattg2k4 said:
Most cold cathodes I've seen list specs of 400-1000v. My inverter (never measured) is supposed to put out 600v.
Click to expand...
CCFLs put out THAT much voltage???... how do you know?
 
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