I wrote out a new article covering:
A safe, small and sane power supply you can use for vacuum tubes. You can even breadboard with it! It’s the same supply I now use in the Phantastrons and it’s great for pre-amps, noise, oscillators, etc.. Read about it here: http://www.electricwestern.com/diytubes.html
Also, I breadboarded a tube preamp using the supply above. You can see the schematic, listen to it and read about it here: http://www.electricwestern.com/diytubes.html#preamp . You can’t define this one as “transparent and clean”, it’s tubey and warm with lots of 2nd harmonics and a little tiny fuzziness…
The New Electric Western Tube Power Supply PCB & Parts Kit (shown partially assembled).
If you’re not into building your own power supplies to get started with tubes or you want a safer supply that will limit the current on the higher voltage to less than 50mA (which still can supply 3 or more demanding non-power-amp tubes) and completely isolate you from the mains, you can also buy my PCB and Parts kit for the power supply. It’s small and easy to use and you can even pack it into a small enclosure with audio electronics and not worry about hum (I chose a good transformer for the board). Heck, it almost fits in an altoids tin (the board is 4″ x 2.75″ !!!) and just needs a 9V AC power source, like a wall wart.
… You can even buy it from me here: http://www.electricwestern.com/diytubes.html#Buy