QA403 and Tube Amp setup

The transformer will saturate when the magnetizing flux reaches a threshold - the magnetizing flux goes up with lower frequencies and higher voltages, since the magnetising current sees the inductance of the core. Larger cored transformers can handle lower frequencies and/or higher powers. The sudden rise of distortion at the low-end is thus magnetic saturation in the transformer core.

The baseline increase of distortion with power is likely to be circuit-related as its independent of frequency. That might indeed indicate class A to AB transition somewhere above 1W, but I think you’d need to plot in more detail at lower powers to get a better feel for this.

Thanks all for the input.

What type of plot should I need for more details on low frequencies impact?

I anticipated more THD at lower end frequency with increases in power but didn’t expect it has a such steep increases as shown.

Core saturation is a limiting phenomenon, similar to voltage clipping, so it will rapidly jump to 10% distortion or more as the waveform is truncated.

If I rewire it for Triode mode in pure Class A, does the amp still suffer the same/similar THD on low freq end as shown for the UL mode?