Introduction and powersupply question

[schorsch]

Hi folks!

nice forum here! Let me first introduce me, for this is my first post in this forum. I'm in the age of 45, my wild musical years has been a few years ago now (in the eightees), but I'm still alive and playing. Powered by the never ending search for the perfect sound, the love in playing guitar, and maybe my profession (i'm a radio-tv-service-guy) - i've catched the "tubeamp-building-virus" two years ago or so. Since that time I've built various stompboxes and 4 amps: the first one was a deluxe-reverb-clone, followed by an 18-Watt-clone, and two SE-amps 5 and 10 Watts. I prefer playing single-coil-type-guitars like the strat and tele - even though i never owned an original one.

A few days ago i decided to dismantle my 18watt-clone, because i never "really" liked his sound, take most of the parts in it and building kind of an ODS with a switchable 6V6-fixed-bias / EL84 self-bias output-stage and an integrated tube-driven fx-loop.

After studiying various schematics here, there's one thing I'm asking me now for some time:

Is there any TONAL reason in using 2 filter-caps in series in the first stage of the power-supply? Or is the reason for this a more historical one, due to the max. voltage definition of the caps in days of yore ?

It would be nice if someone here is able to open my eyes in this point.

Greetings from germany,
George

[heisthl]

IMHO Caps are caps, the filter design you use doesn't matter as long as it gets rid of the ripple. There is 3 advantages to the "totem pole" (2 caps in series) 1. you get a higher working voltage - typically 700v in the Dumble style 2. the bleeder resistors used to balance the caps also serve to make the amp safer to work on because it discharges the caps and 3. it can be cheaper to use 350v caps instead of trying to find caps larger than 500v (remember the B+1 voltage is way higher in standby).
Other things to keep in mind:
too much filtering can actually change the character of the amp and make it sterile sounding. My experience has been the least capacitance you can use results in the most overtones.