Although I love me VR tubes something fierce, they aren’t in current production and I’d like a simple (or well as simple as possible, I guess) shunt regulator alternative for things like phono preamps or line stages (20mA of load current or thereabouts).
This shunt regulator uses an EL84 for the heavy shunt lifting and a 12AX7 differential amplifier (using non-inverting output) to amplify any ripple on the output (which the EL84 ‘cancels’ across Rs). Quick calculations look like about 100V of headroom would be nice to have so rectified 250Vac with the shunt should be good for about 250Vdc regulated output.
Update: Putting the differential amplifier before the shunt will unload it a bit and provide more B+ headroom for higher gain.
wauwatosa tube factory 