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Hand-Made Vacuum Tubes
djmoore writes "Over at Make Magazine, watch this video of a French amateur radio operator making and testing his own vacuum tubes. It looks like he built much of his own equipment as well. The Make poster notes: 'I love the ease with which he performs these rather high-end skills (like glass forming), the gestural flourishes (like it's hand magic), and the Zelig-esque soundtrack.'"
Over at Make Magazine, watch this video of a French amateur radio operator making and testing his own vacuum tubes.
This was covered in Make Magazine, primarily because Nature abhors a vacuum.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
While vacumn tubes are strictly in the realm of hobbyists and zealous audiophiles, nevertheless it is important for teens and young adults to understand where the electronics industry started from. They're already made to study what can argueably be considered useless information, so why not study something that is cool and informative as well? Think of it as shop class for nerds.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Yeah, like Pierre Scerri, who spent 15 years making a scale model of a Ferrari 312. Not only did he make the body, he learned to make glass in order to create the headlights, and learned to make rubber to make his own tires. It's almost unbelievable.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Perhaps we can use these hand-made tubes to make a new hand-made internets! Think of the possibilities!
Neither Make nor Slashdot have the basic decency to name the man: Claude Paillard.
What is it with acting like foreign nationals are some sort of trained monkey? C'mon folks.
Anyway, here's a direct link to his site so you can skip the non-article at Make. Site includes much information (use the fish as needed), the streaming dailymotion vid, and a download link for those who can't see streams. Enjoy.
http://paillard.claude.free.fr/
Thanks Claude! That rocks.
he also made all the necessary equipment, like vacuum pump. If you are interested in tubes, he says the "musée des arts et métiers" is a reference. This is an engeneering museum in Paris, which has an incredible collection. When I go there, I stay for hours. Do not mistake it with the science, the nature science, or the technology museum (which are also quite interesting).
The purpose of using vacuum tubes in a guitar amp is for the overdrive characteristics. When overdriven, solid state amplification circuitry clips the waveform to the voltage rails, resulting in a harsh sounding distortion due to the dissonant overtones.
A tube amp driven to distortion compresses the waveform rather than hard clipping. This results in a waveform rich in harmonic overtones - the classic distorted guitar sound.
Any person who is not tone deaf can tell the difference between solid state distortion and tube distortion. Please don't compare the basic principles of rock guitar with overpriced audiophile folly.
You can learn a hell of a lot from vacuum tubes! They are far easier to understand than transistors.
There's a reason why they're called "valves" in the UK. It's like a valve controlling a powerful stream of water; a small change on the valve leads to a very large change of current. That change in current can, in turn, control a much bigger valve that controls an even larger current.
In this case, the "valve" is a control grid (that spiral thing) surrounding the cathode (the thin hot wire in the middle). The big cylinder is the "plate". The cathode itself has a cloud of electrons around it (because it's hot), and a small signal on the grid controls how much of that can scoot across to the plate (which is positively charged due to a power supply putting a strong positive voltage on it). So a weak sine wave signal on the plate will lead to a big sine wave current from the plate.
There, now you know the basics of amplification (although I skipped some details). I couldn't have done it by describing a BJT (transistor), because they're far weirder.
Freedom amateur radio operator...
There, fixed it for you.