Tube Selection and Power Supplies

I had my first meeting with my professor this Monday. It seems the best place to start in amplifier design is power supply and vacuum tube selection. Considering vacuum tubes have special needs (high voltages, max inputs before overheating, other stuff I don't know about yet, etc.), deciding which tubes I will use is essential in design.

But honestly, I've been wandering a bit. Even with a starting point, I still find many of the resources I have collected overwhelming. There is a lot of jargon in tube circuits and I'm still catching up.

I've read the first three chapters of the ancient "Vacuum Tubes" by Karl Spangenberg from 1948, which was helpful, but very theoretical. (http://www.tubebooks.org/Books/Spangenberg_vacuum_tubes.pdf) I'm attempting to find the happy medium between theory and practical application. As my professor said, engineers aren't necessarily good at getting stuff to work, we are more interested in the scientific method. Prediction, implementation, measurement, analysis. When do I apply this? After I've actually got something to predict!

Power supplies seem less mysterious than tubes. I've studied half wave and full wave rectifiers in EECE 3211 (Electronics 1) and transformers in EECE 3201 (Circuit Analysis). I get the basics of those and the power supplies I've been looking at make sense.

The basic function of a power supply seems to be the following:

120 V 60 Hz "wall" input signal ==> transformer to step down/up voltage ==> rectifier to change AC signal to DC signal with lots of ripple ==> some kind of filtering capacitor to smooth out ripple ==> DC signal to power circuit ==> Face-melting guitar solo

I guess that ripple reduction stuff my prof was talking about during filter design in EECE 3201 last semester was important... Not that I didn't pay attention or anything...

I'm thinking my best option is going to be choosing a common, simple tube amp design that can get me comfortable with the basics. Dave Funk's Tube Amp Workbook, which I've read most of this week, mentioned the Vox AC15 being the simplest of simple designs:

What do you guys think?

I'm thinking: Get Behind Me Satan! If this is simple I've got a LOOOOONG way to go.

About lunch time. I'll see you folk later!
-Mark