Bob said:
Mike,
Yes, Microcap can be used for design of a circuit and apparently a wide variety of tube circuit/simulations unlike my Multisim counter part. Microcap cannot do circuit board design unfortunately but one can export files to other circuit board programs for circuit board creation. I don't recall which ones but 3 or 4 in all. I think OrCAD was one of them. Maybe someone else knows.
Bob, I should have been more clearer. I meant doing the schematics. Years ago, (like about 2002) I purchased a Valiant. It was ok but no matter what I did, I could not rid it of 120Hz hum. So the previous owner 'JS'ed' components in the speech amp and other components. However, there was no trimming of the component leads and RTV everywhere! So I gutted the entire speech amp. Come along in about 2013, I start rebuilding what I removed. Fastforward to today, I realized that it was Hi-fi'd but not exactly which one. So since I'm starting clean, I'm going to incorporate the best of Tim, WA1HLR's mod's and Keith, WA1ZHK's mods. Hopefully along the way I will have eliminated the 120Hz hum, (and yes I did replace the filter caps!). Now talking with Tim last night on 160, he said something about connecting the secondary to the centertap of the primary and making it in phase with the audio. He was just musing but it is something to try and simulate. Didn't mean to steal the thread but I'm going to use this to see how I can use it to my advantage on said project.