30-50-80

About a month ago I needed some 49% nickel in a smallish size to do some prototypes for JC. I called my supplier and he only had a small amount in stock. He tried to sample it to me but alas I am barely a minnow in the nickel pond. He sensed my need and shipped the stock and everything was fine until the balance of the minimum order showed up a few weeks later. I now have an endless supply of something I don't really have a need for.

Yesterday the man in the big brown truck dropped a box of brass channels on my doorstep for this very size and my mind started wandering.



As some of you may know, I got into nickel by hearing a Nature Sound nickel PS choke many years ago and ever since I have been craving/using nickel as the last PS choke in my filters. I'll be 100% honest with you that I have no idea why nickel sounds so good in that position and I will not put forth any of my hairbrained possibilities and say you just have to hear it. This got me thinking about how these little buggers would fare as an economical solution in this position so I wound up and measured a few. Like all of my stuff the gaps are user adjustable and for the pictures below, the test conditions are 5vac@120hz.




If nothing else, the pics above show a nice relationship between DCR inductance and current for a given sized core. Make the core bigger (read more$$) and you can get lower DCR for a given L vs. I selection.