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07-17-2020, 12:51 AM
Hi jmcd
Yes, absolutely place traces on either side of the board under component foot prints.
The solder mask provides some voltage insulation as does the component body itself. Just follow the voltage spacing guidelines when routing traces near pads or other traces of dissimilar voltages.
Only components that get hot need to be elevated from the board. If you are dealing with voltages over 2kV, then component elevation might be good to do. Since the arc voltage for an EL-34 is 2kV, and this is similar for KTs and other tubes, I make sure there is >2kV spacing around output stage anodes and screens and related components.
There is also no rule about the function of top or bottom traces for audio PCBs. You might see "conventions" followed by people laying out multi-layer boards for computers and similar, but they may have up to 16 layers and need to connect to 1,000 pins (or balls) under a large IC. For them, voltages are extremely low and trace widths will be much smaller than what we use for audio, and especially for tube circuits.
Have fun
Yes, absolutely place traces on either side of the board under component foot prints.
The solder mask provides some voltage insulation as does the component body itself. Just follow the voltage spacing guidelines when routing traces near pads or other traces of dissimilar voltages.
Only components that get hot need to be elevated from the board. If you are dealing with voltages over 2kV, then component elevation might be good to do. Since the arc voltage for an EL-34 is 2kV, and this is similar for KTs and other tubes, I make sure there is >2kV spacing around output stage anodes and screens and related components.
There is also no rule about the function of top or bottom traces for audio PCBs. You might see "conventions" followed by people laying out multi-layer boards for computers and similar, but they may have up to 16 layers and need to connect to 1,000 pins (or balls) under a large IC. For them, voltages are extremely low and trace widths will be much smaller than what we use for audio, and especially for tube circuits.
Have fun
