I didn't watch the video because... well, for reasons, but I've never found a use for a capacitor multiplier. I'm pretty sure your circuit is not a good application for a capacitor multiplier.
The type of circuit that I'm building to rectify AC to DC is the example case that Dave gave in the video on when to use this pattern.
The difference here is that I'm trying to build a bi-polar power supply, that has three outputs; a positive, a ground and a negative. His video only covers what would be the positive rail, so I'm trying to adapt it to use on a negative rail as well.
The capacitors on the input just after the rectifier are for storing the power that is needed when the input voltage drops below the voltage on the capacitor. The action of the cap multiplier is not a true capacitor, rather it uses the capacitor as a voltage reference and adjusts the transistor to drop voltage to maintain a constant output. But it does not source any current which is what is needed to supply power to the remainder of the circuit. So in this application the cap multiplier is doomed to fail.
So if I understand correctly, we still want to use buffering/smoothing capacitors to store the current on the off-cycle of the AC wave, and need enough capacitors and large enough capacitors to hold this current. So we can't use a Capacitance Multiplier
instead of real capacitors. But, I think the idea here is that when you need to get the voltage (or current?) as stable as possible, you would use the normal buffering/filter caps first to create a current buffer, but then, when there's still ripple on the supply, you use the "Capacitance Multiplier" not as a capacitor for storing current, but as a smoothing regulator to attenuate ripple before the voltage regulator, which only regulates voltage but doesn't deal with ripple at all.
So my intention is to use a Capacitance Multiplier after the buffering caps for their smoothing effect, to get as clean and stable of a 12 volt signal as possible. So if I understand correctly, what you get from this pattern, which is an RC filter into an emitter follower, is the ripple smoothing effect of a giant capacitor, without any of the current buffering that a giant capacitor would give you. So all three parts, the real buffering caps (current storage), the transistor (ripple smoothing) and voltage regulator (voltage regulation) all work together to create a clean and stable power supply.
You really should watch the video. When Dave demonstrates it, the ripple completely flat lines. He also demonstrates that is doesn't store current and is only for ripple reduction.
You will be better off using a center tapped transformer and a pair of full wave bridge rectifiers or use capacitors sized to the job. Have you done the job of calculating the capacitance required for holding the voltage required during half cycles there is no input power in each half of the circuit?
I'm actually experimenting with both dual half-wave and full wave with a center tap. 3x4700uF seems to buffer enough current for a 1amp transformer with dual half wave.
I used a calculator for full wave and it came up with 656uF or something odd like that. I rounded up to the next size that cap that wasn't special order, which is 1000uF.
The schematic I posted is for a dual half wave design. I wanted to discuss that first to keep the scope of this question/thread small, rather than trying to discuss two different patterns at once. Second, the dual-half wave has more ripple than full wave with a center tap, so if I can size a capacitance multiplier to smooth the ripple for dual half-wave, that same part should work just fine for full wave. Third, if I'm experimenting on the bench, I want to use a circuit that has a 12v sealed wallwart as a power supply first.
What's your rectifier topology?
It's not on that list in the PDF.
It's a Dual Half Wave Capacitor Input Load, intended to produce a bi-polar output. ie. the line "hot" connects to two rectifier diodes, one backwards, to create a positive and negative rail. The line "neutral" becomes the circuit ground.
The other option mentioned above is Full Wave Rectification with a center tap transformer. This uses a 24VCT (center tap) transformer into a bridge rectifier where the center tap is not connected to the rectifier, but used as the circuit ground.
What I'm specifically trying to figure out is which PNP and NPN transistors to order to build an appropriate ripple smoothing circuit, and how you go about sizing them to work with each other.