Happy 100th To The Vacuum Tube

williamw83 writes "Today, November 16, 2004 has been declared as the centennial of the birth of modern electronics by the American Vacuum Society. As the AIP Physics News Update reports, this marks 'British scientist John Ambrose Fleming's 1904 invention of the first practical electronic device. Known as the thermionic diode, this first simple vacuum tube, containing only two electrodes, could be used to convert an alternating current (AC) to a direct current (DC).' Today's celebration takes place as part of the AVS's 51st Annual Symposium & Exhibition in Anaheim, CA. Being a guitar player myself, I've come to truly appreciate the technology of the vacuum tube every time I crank up my amplifier. This 100-year-old grandfather of electronics, used by musicians and audiophiles across the world, has proven that profound advances in technology do not always render old technologies obsolete."

Comments

Relays

[spike hay]

Vacuum tubes, as big as they were, were a huge improvement of the mechanical relay-powered early computers.

modern electronics?

[Jrod5000 at RPI]

i find it interesting that vacuum tubes are considered _modern_ electronics. wouldn't the transistor be a better first milestone in modern electronics? what sort of electronics existed before 1904 anyway?? i would suggest that vacuum tubes marked the beginning of electronics in general.

Re:Obsolete! Get a grip!

[Anonymous Coward]

Vacuum tubes in all forms are pretty much the base of our electronic world, from the tube inside your microwave oven, to the transmitter tubes in TV and radio stations, to the power tubes for radar, to the ceramic triode inside the Pioneer and Voyager probes (still working after 30 years, tubes: unreliable?), to the CRT you're probably staring at right now, to the electron microscopes and the vacuum deposition chambers that build your semiconductors, I'd say you need to open your mind a little bit.
Oh, and tube amps? Go to the closest audio shop you can find and go audition a Carver with some Totem Acoustics speakers...

Audiophile nonsense!

[Bilestoad]

Actually solid-state does render vacuum tubes obsolete, to the rational mind. Once you've admitted that the sound you really like just involves lots of second order distortion it's no big deal to make a processor using opamps or discrete transistors to add that distortion to a reliable, efficient, cheap amplifier. As many manufacturers have done! Boss, Line 6, and Roland to name just 3.

You're also forgetting that the biggest contribution to the sound comes from the cabinet, speaker and transformer. Like I say, the valve just adds some nice distortion.

You're not one of these people who believes in gold-plated connectors and $2500 power cables too are you?

Re:Audiophile nonsense!

[Lisandro]

There's more to "amplifier sound" than just adding harmonics. If you like that sound, theres's a gadget called exciter that would do it for you. The distortion discussion is long and i feel, IMHO, than an amplfier that adds excessive unwanted distortion can't be called Hi-Fi to start with. But still...

Valve amplifiers have a number of design implementation characteristics that make them desirable for audio. For starters, almost every single valve amplifier is transformer-coupled at the output, which gives it a distinctive sound "coloration". Valves have much better slew rates and open-loop freq. response than transistors, which are desirable characteristics in audio devices. And, for a number of reasons, valve amps usally drive speakers much better, resulting in, yes, better sound. Class-A amplifiers (specially the so-called "single ended ones", where just one device energizes the speaker) exhibit a similar behaviour, which is why they are usually agreed to "sound more valveish" than regular ones.
Of course, valves have limited life, become microphonic over time and require manteinence. But that's part of the fun of it...

The truth is, most valve amps DO sound better. It might not be by much, but the difference is appreciable, and some people are willing to pay for it. A special case is instrument amplifiers, where valves are still unmatched. If you ever played an electric guitar, you'll know.

That being said, yes, i agree that a good set of speakers can make a bigger difference than a new amp. And the people who spend $2500 in interconnects and power cables (yes, they do) are insane, but don't think valves are obsolete. They have their place, even when in most areas transistors are more practical. For audio gear, instrument amplifiers, and power communications valve designs are still the norm. And, if you're using a CRT, you're pretty much looking at a huge device which works by the same principle as a vaccum valve.

Toronto Star Section

[tyman]

The Toronto Star did a front page write up in their @Biz section.

Re:The quality of music is dropping

[rco3]

I would disagree with that. Not that I'm a Cobain fan, but there's no reason that you should have to be a master of the Stratocaster in order to have a good-sounding amplifier. 0.001% is way too low a number. Maybe half or more of the people who own electrics are so hopeless that the amp doesn't matter, but not 9,999 out of 10,000.

Having worked as an amp tech at a guitar shop for 6+ years, I can tell you that I saw a lot of poor and mediocre players with nice amps... but I almost NEVER saw a good player with a crap amp or a crap guitar.

It's like saying that poor drivers shouldn't have good tires.

OTOH, I had a customer with a small-box Marshall 50W head that was ASTONISHING. You put it on about 3, and it was as if you were... I don't know, man, it was just beautiful. Tone, responsivity, everything. and then you pumped it up to about 7... Smoothest and creamiest, most perfect overdrive I've ever heard to this day. It was that 0.001% amplifier that cried out for a 0.001% player. When I played it for the guy who owned it (after I put new tubes in and biased it), I played it as God intended - and he was flabbergasted! He'd never actually let the amp do the dirty work, he was using some crappy ADA tube preamp! That Marshall was like Anna Kournikova in a nunnery - a complete waste of natural perfection.

Obviously I've got a bit of bias (HA! Bias! Get it? HA!) on the subject, but having two degrees in EE , 6+ years of guitar shop experience, and about a dozen albums recorded as musician or producer/engineer or both gives me what I consider to be a pretty good background in the science and art of guitar amplifier sound. However, it's all subjective. A good sound is the sound you like.

Re:Amplifiers...

[Wouter Van Hemel]

Clearly, you don't play guitar, or you would know that the raw, warm sound of a guitar crying through a tube amp close to meltdown is as sweet a sound as a woman close to orgasm.

But please, PLEASE, do tell us about those other undoubtedly equally interesting applications you had in mind. ;)

Tubes are still used...

[hpa]

... and not just for "the warm sound." They're used because they can be built arbitrarily large much easier than you can build power MOSFETs. You can build them to produce hundreds of megawatts of RF energy with a single klystron; a linear amplifier tube can easily be built to handle megawatts.

I haven't heard of any 1.22 GW vacuum tubes, but they certainly could be built. They'd be large.

Tube Amplifier Emulation != Actual Tube Sound

[TibbonZero]

This goes out to all of those that say there isn't a difference in tube amplification, and modelings of just extra 'distortion'. I offer two examples of such failures.

As proof of this, I offer the Vox AC30HW, which I have had plenty of experience playing. Now the same company, has created a Vox Valvetronix amp or whatever crap they call it. I'd only assume that the company the manufactures the AC30 would be able to emulate it the best, however they do a terrible job. Hook up an A/B amp switch, and try to achieve similar sounds. Now push the Solid state POS to higher levels, how does it react. Try different playing dynamics, etc... Now try the same with the Vox. The vox only gets better, and the emulation, doesn't act at all like the real deal, nor sound ANYWHERE as good in depth, tone, or musical dynamics. In other words, it sounds like shit.

Take a Cybertwin amp by Fender, and put that against a real 64 or 65 Fender Twin with great tubes in it, that has been maintained well. Not even in the same ballpark.

So if the manufactures themselves can't even get it right, who can? I'm sure at some point it can be done, but just the A/D and D/A conversion and poor clocking on these digital amps kills it from the start.