Return of the Vacuum Tube

Gives a whole new meaning... by Toe,+The · 2012-05-23 09:18 · Score: 5, Funny

...to the phrase "a series of tubes."

Re:Gives a whole new meaning... by Moheeheeko · 2012-05-23 09:23 · Score: 2

To quote the now very happy Space Pirates:
"TUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUBES!"
Re:Gives a whole new meaning... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 09:31 · Score: 1

In Future Soviet Russia, vacuum tubes deprecate YOU!
Re:Gives a whole new meaning... by Hsien-Ko · 2012-05-23 09:44 · Score: 1

that sucks
Re:Gives a whole new meaning... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 10:32 · Score: 1

I thought it was tubular.
Re:Gives a whole new meaning... by theshowmecanuck · 2012-05-23 14:25 · Score: 3, Informative

Since there aren't any vacuum tubes (valves for our European brethren) being made in North America anymore, guitar amp parts suppliers source new tubes from Russia and other communist (i.e. China) or former communist states (now that Putin has installed himself as supreme soviet, is Russia still non-communist?). For example two major tube makers, Sovtech and SED Tubes are both based in Russia. Most of the North American tube makers sold their equipment to folks in these countries. The tube makers who didn't just scrapped everything. I am pretty sure even GrooveTube are made off shore in one of these countries now.

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Re:Gives a whole new meaning... by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-05-23 14:52 · Score: 3, Informative

former communist states (now that Putin has installed himself as supreme soviet, is Russia still non-communist?).
I dunno how a person can be a "supreme soviet" (soviet = council; "supreme soviet" was the name for the parliament of most communist countries). Anyway, Russia is still decidedly non-communist, since it has full-fledged private property on everything including means of production. It's an authoritarian capitalist country, much like Spain and Chile were back in the day.
Re:Gives a whole new meaning... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2012-05-23 19:57 · Score: 3, Interesting

Since there aren't any vacuum tubes (valves for our European brethren) being made in North America anymore, guitar amp parts suppliers source new tubes from Russia and other communist (i.e. China) or former communist states
Hah, they probably would have done in anyway. These amps often leave the tubes visible from the outside to increase the coolness factor of the device and I can't think of many more effective ways of making it even cooler than having the tubes have strange, exotic shapes and threatening-looking Cyrillic writings on them.

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Re:Gives a whole new meaning... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-24 01:10 · Score: 1

Not totally correct. GrooveTubes are made in the US, the closest we have to the old NOS design without the cost. The Sovtech are not bad, the Chinese tubes are just awful. The Russians bought the old US equipment, but there is some still left floating around. I have a line on some that a guy has in his "garage" believe it or not. There are various small manufactures left in the US and Canada.
Speaking of this, anyone know where I can buy an affordable variable induction heater?
Re:Gives a whole new meaning... by Hillgiant · 2012-05-24 01:27 · Score: 1

Take that HIPSTERS.
Tube amps are SOCIALISM!

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Re:Gives a whole new meaning... by mcgrew · 2012-05-24 02:26 · Score: 2

To "incorrect". I'm referring to the summary, not your post. First, vaccuum tubes never went away. Look inside a Marshall guitar amp and you'll see tubes. Grandma's old CRT TV has a tube; the CRT is a tube. Second, "the predecessors of the silicon transistor" isn't inaccurate but may be misleading, as the two operate in completely different ways and have completely different strengths and weaknesses. Heat and overvotage will kill a transistor, but won't bother a tube at all. OTOH, tubes are physically fragile -- drop a tube and it breaks. Throw a transistor against the wall and it's fine. Tubes are analog amplifiers, transistors are ultra high speed switches that need additional components to become amplifiers.

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Re:Gives a whole new meaning... by theshowmecanuck · 2012-05-25 14:03 · Score: 1

If you look, groovetubes sold pretty much all there manufacturing equipment. They might assemble some tubes from parts still in the U.S.A., and they might make some of the parts there, they don't make them all there. And even these are their custom high end line. For the average tube they sell, almost all the tubes on the GrooveTubes site mention that they are made in countries other than the U.S.A. And like I said, even the tubes they sell that they say are assembled in the U.S.A... they only claim to have a "majority" of the parts made in the U.S.A.. But even these are only a small portion of the tubes they sell. Most are made in Russia or China.

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Re:Gives a whole new meaning... by divide+overflow · 2012-05-25 20:05 · Score: 1

Tubes are analog amplifiers, transistors are ultra high speed switches that need additional components to become amplifiers.
You were doing fine until you got to that last sentence. Actually, a transistor, as used in a typical amplifier circuit, is just as much an analog amplifier as a vacuum tube. A MOSFET transistor works in a very similar way to a typical amplifier vacuum tube like a 6V6 except that as a semiconductor device it doesn't require the high working voltages and glowing filament of a vacuum tube. Both tubes and transistors require additional components to function...power supplies, output transformers, feedback circuits, noise filters, etc.
Re:Gives a whole new meaning... by mcgrew · 2012-05-29 02:11 · Score: 1

FETs are different from plain NPN or PNP transistors, yes.

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Re:Gives a whole new meaning... by divide+overflow · 2012-06-01 13:08 · Score: 1

FETs are different from plain NPN or PNP transistors, yes.
So what? The same argument applies. PNP, NPN and MOSFET transistors are ALL analog devices that can be employed as digital switches or analog amplifiers, just as tubes once were used in both capacities. My point is that your "tubes are analog amplifiers while transistors are high speed switches" ignores that both function in similar ways, that transistors and tubes are both analog devices that can be employed as digital switches. One important point of the article was that the new tube-like devices can actually switch *faster* than existing transistors, making them superior components in certain digital switching applications. This is a turnaround from the historic transition from tubes to transistors due to improvements in power efficiency, switching speed and size reduction leading to integrated circuit chips and modern computing.

Sweet by Hatta · 2012-05-23 09:19 · Score: 4, Funny

Now I can have a tube amp in my mp3 player.

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Re:Sweet by aix+tom · 2012-05-23 09:34 · Score: 2

Dang. Have to undo botched moderation so I have to come up with a moderately witty reply. ;-)
So, how about:
Yeah, you can. But the backpack with the cooling system might get heavy.
Re:Sweet by Culture20 · 2012-05-23 09:38 · Score: 2

But can you have one in your transistor radio?
Re:Sweet by cpu6502 · 2012-05-23 09:42 · Score: 1

You laugh, but I would *love* to have an AM radio in my MP3 player. So far I have not found any..... now maybe with microtubes, it will be possible.

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Re:Sweet by Dogtanian · 2012-05-23 09:52 · Score: 3, Interesting

Now I can have a tube amp in my mp3 player.
Well, they released a motherboard around a decade back with integrated vacuum tube based audio.

I remembered this as being a separate soundcard, but I couldn't find reference to anything like that online, so I might have been wrong. Still, given that onboard audio isn't- or at least wasn't back then- generally considered to be the best (i.e. not what the audiophiles would have gone for), this seems like a strange mix. As if the valve/tube-based PCI card wouldn't have been weird enough, mind you. :-)

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Re:Sweet by hardtofindanick · 2012-05-23 09:55 · Score: 1

I bet Jobs could have sold iTube powered iPods and could have made people believe they sound better.
Re:Sweet by jiriw · 2012-05-23 10:06 · Score: 2

MP3 player? I want a Pip-boy with 'em tiny tubes!
And a reservation for a room in Vault 101 to go with it.
Re:Sweet by BattleCat · 2012-05-23 10:06 · Score: 1

Two suitcase-sized batteries would be somewhat inconvenient for day-to-day use, too.
Re:Sweet by Beardo+the+Bearded · 2012-05-23 11:02 · Score: 1

I remember that, they put it onboard and reduced the PCI slots because they assumed you wouldn't buy a soundcard.

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Re:Sweet by Vancorps · 2012-05-23 11:51 · Score: 2

My cell phone has an AM/FM radio in it, it also plays hours and hours of mp3s. So I'd say it's already possible and in a lot of places. If you want something specific, the Motorola Photon here in the U.S. but it is far more common on European model phones.
Re:Sweet by hairyfeet · 2012-05-23 12:03 · Score: 4, Informative

They modded you funny but any musician will tell you for guitar amps you can't beat tubes. as a bassist I prefer my Trace solid state (one of the last Brit made before they got bought by Peavey) because its hard to get a truly clean tone out of a tube but frankly that is what makes them great for guitar as even a "clean" tube tone has a warm slightly compressed midrange that is just better than solid state.
Let us just all hope that Russian Sovtek factory never goes out of business or rock would be screwed. I have heard just about every kind of modeling amp out there but none of them compare to the tone of a Marshall Plexi or a Fender Bassman or Concert, hell even a mid 70s Peavey Mace tube head sounds better than the modeling amps. Sometimes the older tech is just better, that's all.
as for TFA I'd love to see something like that filter its way down to musical applications. Can you imagine a tube amp you could just throw in a rack and that would take as much abuse as a solid state? man that would be like heaven.

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Re:Sweet by kanto · 2012-05-23 12:59 · Score: 1

Now I can have a tube amp in my mp3 player.
I'm a bit sceptical because of the blowhard advertising; how can they claim it works in outer space when we all know there's no sound in a vacuum.
Re:Sweet by divide+overflow · 2012-05-23 14:32 · Score: 2

You laugh, but I would *love* to have an AM radio in my MP3 player. So far I have not found any..... now maybe with microtubes, it will be possible.
That's what the fillings in your teeth are for, dude...listening to AM radio and the voices of the aliens telling you what to do.
Re:Sweet by dsgrntlxmply · 2012-05-23 14:32 · Score: 2

With 460GHz capability, the treble should be truly excellent.
Re:Sweet by a+whoabot · 2012-05-23 18:40 · Score: 1

Let us just all hope that Russian Sovtek factory never goes out of business or rock would be screwed.
JJ Electronic in Slovakia also makes most tubes which are used in guitar amps, independent of any Russian production.
Re:Sweet by thegarbz · 2012-05-23 19:25 · Score: 4, Interesting

Actually it's far more technical than some fuzzy "it sounds warm" bullshit you hear from audiophiles. When you overdrive a tube they have a natural tendency to round over slightly rather than hit a hard limit and flatline. This is similar to tapes which could be recorded above their maximum 0dB point. This creates an interesting form of compression and combined with distortion / overdriving creates a sound that is very difficult to replicate with solid state stuff.
Re:Sweet by Half-pint+HAL · 2012-05-24 03:17 · Score: 1

You're forgetting about the fact that these are nanoscale thermionic valves, not full-size "vacuum tubes". The traditional amplifier needs a high potential difference (voltage) to excite electrons to jump the gap. But in these, the gap's so tiny that you don't even need to create a vacuum, because no air will even fit in it! They don't specifically mention the power requirements in the Sciencemag article, but if you look at the abstract it says:

and the operation voltage can be decreased comparable to the modern semiconductor devices.
.
Of course, the academic paper calls it a "Gate insulated nanoscale vacuum channel transistor".

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Re:Sweet by mcgrew · 2012-05-24 05:58 · Score: 1

You kids crack me up! You don't need tubes for AM radios. The first transistor radios were AM only. Transistors and tubes do the same things, but in different ways and have different characteristics.
I find it odd that MP3 players don't have AM/FM radios in them, although I did see one cell phone that did.

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Re:Sweet by hairyfeet · 2012-05-24 07:05 · Score: 2

Sorry if i got your panties in a wad but I wasn't going with groupthink, i was simply describing what it sounds like to me as a musician that has been playing for 30+ years now. To me tubes DO have a 'warm" sound whereas the solid state amps have a "harsh" tone. Sorry if my not getting all technobabble pissed you off friend, but that is how it sounds to me. if you don't believe me you are welcome to fire up any decent Fender tuber, say a Bassman or Concert or Champ and see for yourself, the midrange has a nice fat sound that just sounds sterile in a solid state. i have heard a few solid state guitar amps that can do a decent clean but frankly even their cleans don't sound fat and funky like the tubes, at least not to my ears.
To my ears the solid state guitar amps sound like they are slightly..well compressed for want of a better word, like there is something "missing" in the sound. I don't know if its oversat or not as i can still hear it even on lower volumes. Funnily enough i prefer solid state bass (with a decent amp of course) because with bass i want the tone as "clean" as possible and to me even the most clean tube has a little "fuzzy buzzy' to it on the lower tones, especially on 5 string. Again if my lack of technobabble on those terms pisses you off sorry, that's just how i hear it.

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Re:Sweet by thegarbz · 2012-05-24 19:31 · Score: 1

Sorry I didn't mean to come across like that. I agree with your assessment of their sound, I was just trying to point out the other very good reason tube equipment is heavily favoured by guitarists.
Re:Sweet by hairyfeet · 2012-05-26 00:36 · Score: 1

No harm done, i'm the first to admit when it comes to music I'm not that tech heavy, I just know what sounds good to me. Hell the audiophiles would probably scream if they saw my bass rig as I'm running a Zoom pedal into the Trace but the Zoom pedals have a really nice fat bass compression and some good chorus and phases and being able to dial in how much effect i want in real time with the expression pedal is a plus. In the end all that matters to me is it sounds good, which is why when we finally go into the studio it'll be tubes for the guitarist and my trace for me.

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Re:Sweet by thegarbz · 2012-05-26 12:28 · Score: 1

Audiophiles need their head checked. Rigs like yours are designed to get the sound that you are after. No one is to tell you differently.
I often laugh at the the audiophile's who try to justify their expensive speaker cables after musicians run hundreds of meters of standard shielded starquad from gear to gear, or those who say oversampling destroys music because of the use of digital filtering despite the mixing desk applying hundreds of digital filters before the music gets to their hot little hands.
Re:Sweet by Max+Littlemore · 2012-05-27 14:15 · Score: 1

You're kind of saying the same thing as the technobabble but you're using a different paradigm. I agree with the valve for guitar, transistor for bass thing. The kind of compression you want in a bass sound is very different to the rounded waveform you get over-driving a tube (that warmth can turn to mud at lower frequencies). I tend towards all solid state with dedicated compression circuits for bass sounds, be they from a bass guitar or synth, and tubes for guitars.
I do sometimes like a harsh transistor distortion on guitars too, so I'm a huge fan of using a two channel set up with the choice of either a valve or transistor preamp driving a transistor power amp. If you keep the power amp well within it's range, can choose from a faithful reproduction of the valves "warmth" with the option to go for a harsher transistor sound with a stomp on a pedal. Sure it doesn't look as cool as playing through some Marshall rig that glows, but it can sound a heap better, especially if you like variety.

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Re:Sweet by Max+Littlemore · 2012-05-27 14:25 · Score: 1

---wow just replied to your previous post and then saw this where you basically outline a non orthodox rig that gets the sound you like. Nice. I agree with your assessment of the zoom compression. I don't have a pedal but I do have the same effect unit build in to my handy dandy portable four track.
Hell, I used to play into a Roland effects unit (forgot the model) and from that straight into a dual 300W RMS Jands PA power amp driving a split 1x18" + 2x10" cabinet. It looked awful but sounded awesome. Clean, fat, effortless and very loud, even down tuned 3 semis. Play bass one meter from a rig like that with loose underwear and you can generate a very pleasant sensation between your legs if you get the notes right....

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Re:Sweet by hairyfeet · 2012-05-27 17:51 · Score: 1

Thanks, you really ought to try their pedals if you get a chance, they are cheap and have some really great tone. This is the one I have and I just love the thing to death. It has a copy of all the original presets in ROM so I can tweak all I want and never lose a sound, sounds great on a 5 string, the expression pedal lets me do some frankly awesome things because i can control ANY setting of ANY effect with the pedal, from the speed of the chorus to the level of distortion to pitch of the harmonizer, its just a great little pedal.
And wow..an 18? the low end rumble you must have had had to be insane! My Trace is only a 2-10 unit but its one of the last of the Brit Trace Elliots and the tone and power is just incredible. Once my band was opening for a group whose bass player was running an Ampeg SVT Tube with the full 8-10 cab and when he saw mine he said "You sure you don't want to use mine?" and I just laughed and said "Nah, when I fire this baby up you'll see, i'm good". of course he started to drool a little when i popped the case and whipped out My Squire Pro Tone 5, its all see through red swamp ash and lovely. Sure enough the next night we are opening up for them again at another club and he waves me over to their van, pops the door...and there is the twinkie to my Trace. I laughed and said "Where's the Ampeg? And i'm shocked you didn't just go for the whole package and get the Squire as well!" and he said "Screw that back breaker, your rig was clean and powerful and didn't take a dolly to move! And as for the Squire they were all out of the pro tones but.." and he popped out a Squire Jazz 5 LOL!
In the end i don't care if its big name or no name, as long as it has the TONE, for as you know with bass tone is all. Hell I need to take a pic of my most popular bass next to the pro Tone and upload it as you'd probably die laughing, but i get more complements on that old thing than any other bass. its a 1984 Washburn Force series (it was so old I actually had to write the company to find out what it was, it kinda looks like a P bass with the horns stretched) that is white with a black pickguard which I painted the pickguard with glitter fingernail polish, replaced the cracked knobs with a couple of B&W dice, the white face has aged to a lovely yellow and I have 3 1940s pinup girls sticker placed around the face that i picked up on beale street in the late 90s. It has this wonderful road warrior look and a dark thick tone with lots of lows and I don't know how many times I've had bassists come up and say "Sell it to me" LOL! Everyone talks about how cool that bass is when it is nothing but a pawn shop special that got customized when I was bored on the road.
so screw the audiophiles, if it works good for you? Its cool. I'm sure they'd gag if they saw that Washburn or me running a $70 pedal into a Brit amp but the audience and my own enjoyment is what matters and people remember the different and the weird.

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Playing by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 09:21 · Score: 1

How will these affect my guitar tone?

Amps by Aeros · 2012-05-23 09:21 · Score: 5, Informative

These are still widely used in some of the best amps out there.

Re:Amps by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 09:34 · Score: 1

Yeah, but from an audiophile perspective its not just the use of tubes, it's the combination of the components used and the characteristics of them individually and as a whole which contribute to the pleasing tube sound. The "sag" added by the big power transformers required to develop the plate voltages being one example. And are the tubes runnin' as hot as they should be?
Too often musical instrument companies slap tubes in something small as a gimmick, but it ain't gonna do much for your sound unless you can drive those tubes at the maximum plate voltages for that punchy, harmonically rich, real tube sound.
Don't forget that various forms of vaccuum tubes (Klystron, TWT, etc.) have always been preferred in high-power applications because of their signal fidelity at high-power.
-- Ethanol-fueled
Re:Amps by EdZ · 2012-05-23 09:45 · Score: 5, Insightful

Most expensive, maybe, but best? Not if your goal is a transparent amplifier: one that takes an input, and reproduces that output as accurately as possible with a higher amplitude. Valves suck at this. An entire branch of mathematics (control theory) was developed to compensate for the horrendous non-linearities of vacuum tubes.

You may like the distortions produced by tube amps (or transistor amps outputting those same distortions via DSP), but don't pretend they're better at reproducing sound. They are demonstrably not.
Re:Amps by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 10:24 · Score: 1

I'll fix that for you; These are still widely used in some of the most ridiculously expensive amps out there, mostly used for bragging and showing off
Re:Amps by Panoptes · 2012-05-23 10:34 · Score: 2, Insightful

Tubes (or valves, as they were known in the UK) had one big quality advantaqe - noise level. A valve amplifer could produce dead silence: tranny amplifiers, even the best, had a faint but audible slushy hiss.
Re:Amps by Zordak · 2012-05-23 10:44 · Score: 4, Interesting

<memorylane> One of my lab partners in my EE Lab class played bass guitar. He wanted a tube pre-amp, but didn't want to spend $1,000 for it. So we built one as our lab project. We pulled a transformer out of an old Hammond organ, pulled tubes out of some old random stuff in a cabinet in the lab, threw in a pair of 12,000 uF caps, and four ceramic diodes for the rectifier. Then we had to code our own SPICE model for the tube so we could simulate it. That was one stout amp. Except the transformer put out a really unstable power waveformm, so one of our ceramic diodes exploded (tripping a breaker and taking out power in that wing), which was actually kind of cool. But we had to find a different transformer. Another time I accidentally grounded the 600-V node, which blew a big hole in our trace line and evaporated the solder off of one of our caps. The edges of the trace line survived, so we soldered the cap back in, powered it up, and it worked great. It was perfect except we were never able to get rid of the 60 Hz hum when it was plugged in. If you unplugged it, you could play for about a minute before the caps drained, and it sounded spectacular.</memorylane>
I miss those days. Now I just sit around writing patents and pleadings all day.

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Re:Amps by Alien+Being · 2012-05-23 10:46 · Score: 3, Informative

You have that backwards. Tubes are inherently more linear than transistors. Transistors have small ranges of linear operation and require complex bias control and feedback for audio use. In addition, the harmonic distortion of tubes is primarily even-order which sounds smoother than the odd-order harmonic distortion of transistors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_amplifier#Advantages
Re:Amps by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 11:08 · Score: 2, Insightful

I find it interesting that the wikipedia page cites some marketing material by a tube amp vendor as the source for that info. I guarantee if you speak with someone who has designed high-power amplifiers with both tubes and transistors they will consistently tell you the transistors are the only way to go for accurate reproduction.
One of the biggest problems with vacuum tube designs is that it is very hard to keep impedance linearity across the 20-20khz spectrum. When you are trying to drive a speaker which has a relatively constant impedance of 4 or 8 ohms across that range, you have to design an output transformer to compensate across the audio range. That is not an easy thing to do.
Re:Amps by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 11:08 · Score: 2, Informative

The hum was actually caused by the caps being too large. Try an additional 50 or 100 uF caps and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Power supply caps are generally sized by the rail current they're strapped to, stating in simple terms. Their should also be some very
small ceramic caps (.01 or .1 maybe) to clean up/filter the high freq noise. Remember, it's really an AC circuit you're working with; I
think the idea of big caps came from enhanced after-market car stereos - which are a true DC circuit.
Re:Amps by Alien+Being · 2012-05-23 11:33 · Score: 1

The same control theory that was developed in the tube era is applied to an even greater degree in transistor based amplifiers.
Re:Amps by Charliemopps · 2012-05-23 11:35 · Score: 1

Rarely, if ever, is anyones goal a transparent amplifier. Especially when it comes to actual instrument amplification. Tube amps produce superior sound in almost all situations. A transistor, when clipping, literally squares off the top of the wave. A Tube will still clip but does so gradually, producing a more rounded wave form. Basically when clipping a transistor sounds horrendous... you must always operate a transistor well bellow its clipping threshold (hard to do with analog instruments) where as the tube amp can actually make the tone sound better than it originally was (again, especially in instrument amplification where dynamic range is extremely large and clipping is almost a constant issue)

Their drawbacks are pretty strait forward. They require large voltages for the plate current, and therefor require large transformers... making them heavy and impracticable for small devices like portable radios. They are also a lot more efficient than transistor amps. Compare a 10watt tube amp to a 10watt transistor amp sometime. The tube amp will rattle your windows while the transistor amp will be hard to hear from across the room. This is actually a negative in my opinion. Consumers like to compare numbers so amplifier manufacturers rarely produce anything bellow 10-20 watts, and tube amps sound their best when they are hot (turned all the way up) the result is that it's rare to find a tube amp you can use at full volume. I have a 600watt MesaBoogie guitar amp that literally has shattered windows in my house. It's more appropriate for playing stadiums than bars. It's a great amp but I definitely wish I purchased the lowest wattage model they were selling at the time. Lastly Tubes are expensive, and ware out. Not a problem with transistors.
Re:Amps by __aaltlg1547 · 2012-05-23 11:44 · Score: 1

They're a simple solution for guitar amps where the distortion is intentional..players can fiddle with the bias to get the distortion they want.
Also there's an inherent capacity to deal with large overloads and high powers as compared to transistors.
Re:Amps by camperdave · 2012-05-23 11:59 · Score: 1, Informative

Basically when clipping a transistor sounds horrendous... you must always operate a transistor well bellow its clipping threshold (hard to do with analog instruments)
Sounds to me like they are using the wrong sized transistor.

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Re:Amps by marcosdumay · 2012-05-23 12:29 · Score: 2

Yep, that detail may be right. But transistors achieve a much higher gain (even more when you couple several of them), what lets you put them in bias control and feedback circuits. Inside those circuits they are way more linear.
The final result is that transistor based amplifiers are (nearly without exception) more linear than the tube based ones.

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Re:Amps by marcosdumay · 2012-05-23 12:32 · Score: 1

Rarely, if ever, is anyones goal a transparent amplifier. Especially when it comes to actual instrument amplification.
Man, could you ever create a more ambiguous phrase? Take a look on instrumentation amplifiers at the Wikipedia. My first reaction was "how can somebody be that stupid?", then I realized you are talking about a different kind of instrument.

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Re:Amps by jenningsthecat · 2012-05-23 13:30 · Score: 5, Informative

Yes, transistor audio amplifiers are "way more linear" with gobs of negative feedback applied, if THD, (Total Harmonic Distortion), is your measurement criterion. ANY amplifier is more 'linear' with correctly applied negative feedback. The basic premise is that added harmonics are bad - if you feed a pure sine wave into an amplifier, you want a pure sine wave at the output. The problem is that in audio, THD is a fundamentally flawed measurement with very poor correlation between lab measurements and listening tests.
THD measurements are taken as the ratio of the total power of all harmonics to the power of the fundamental, with no weighting of any kind applied. The trouble is, human hearing doesn't respond to harmonic distortions in this linear fashion - our ears find higher order harmonic distortions much more apparent and objectionable.. This deficiency was noted by prominent BBC engineers D.E.L. Shorter and Norman Crowhurst in the 40's and 50's, when they proposed weighting harmonics by the square or the cube of the order; but their voices were drowned out by market forces that wanted a simple, flattering figure of merit that made the newer, more powerful pentode-based amps, (with lots of negative feedback), look better on paper than their lower-powered triode predecessors. The market won out over scientific and technical accuracy, (it usually does), and today engineers the world over, ignorant of this history, mistakenly believe that low THD is the gold standard for measuring and defining audio amplifier quality. (For a good technical analysis of distortion and the sound of an amplifier, see Lynn Olson's excellent investigation.
By the way, in the 'tubes vs transistors' debate, good triodes have the advantage of being more intrinsically linear than transistors. This means that they require less negative feedback to tame their distortion, and often sound wonderful with NO negative feedback. The THD figures of amps built this way are often quite poor, but look at their spectra and you'll see predominantly second- and third-order, with a smooth and rapid falloff of higher order harmonics. Occasionally solid-state amps can give this kind of performance, but tubes have an easier time of it. Designing a good-sounding, (as opposed to good-measuring), audio amp, requires a lot of skill, and a lot of knowledge about distortion mechanisms and how to counter them. Unfortunately the prevailing practice in HiFi is to add more gain, throw most of it away with additional NFB, get a nice low THD figure, and call the job done. Amps designed this way generally sound like shit, if not initially, then after 20 minutes or so of listening, at which time listening fatigue sets in.

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Re:Amps by rev0lt · 2012-05-23 14:02 · Score: 1

And some of the best microwaves out there. Oh wait, all?
Vacuum tubes are still common in high-power transmitters and amplifiers. Everything above a couple of KW starts to get tricky to do with transistors, and usually tubes are not only a more resilient tech, but also cheaper.
Re:Amps by dontmakemethink · 2012-05-23 14:31 · Score: 2

Fidelity and appealing sound are different issues. Most old school recording engineers hated digital recording at first because it didn't sound as good as analog tape. They deemed that digital was inaccurate and blamed it on flawed methodology, "rounding errors" etc. But the fact is that the tape, like tubes, were coloring the sound artificially in a pleasant way while digital was only trying to be neutral.
Nowadays, tape is pretty much dead, tube-based recording consoles are pretty much non-existent, as digital audio workstations can achieve similar colorations at a much lower operating cost. Tubes are pretty limited to instrument amps, mic preamps, and audiophile amps. Now digital modeling of various forms of coloration are taking over, which is of course highly offensive to tube fans.
But the simple fact is that when it comes to artificial colorations, digital systems will eventually win. There's no limit to the variations and control offered by software, we just have to figure them out because unlike analog they don't come built-in. Software processes can also be used on multiple signals simultaneously in a mix and rendered faster than realtime, while analog devices are very costly one-trick ponies that only work on a few signals and only in realtime.
There are very powerful tools in the hands of amateurs these days, and you can no longer just buy killer vintage analog gear, get "that sound" that nobody else can get, and call yourself a studio engineer. Now more than ever sound engineering skill is the greatest asset a studio can have.

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Re:Amps by Anne+Thwacks · 2012-05-23 18:00 · Score: 4, Interesting

As the former road manager of several well-known bands (in the 1960's) I can state with absolute confidence that the reason we bought valve amps (or copied the well known Vox design ourselves) was that they did not blow up if overloaded. Early transistor amps were not very robust, and typically burned out during gigs.
*AFAICR Vox, Fender, Orange, etc all uses the exact same circuit - the valves and transformers came from different suppliers, and some of the metal work was a different shape.

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Re:Amps by daem0n1x · 2012-05-23 21:55 · Score: 1

You may like the distortions produced by tube amps (or transistor amps outputting those same distortions via DSP), but don't pretend they're better at reproducing sound. They are demonstrably not.
You're assuming people want something better at reproducing sound. Maybe then don't. That's why people still have nostalgia for old analogue gear, like electromechanical organs and synths, tape reel recorders, vinyl discs, etc. Analogue equipment adds side bands to sound, which people consider "warm" and "rich".
Hell, one way to make an instrument's sound richer is to copy the track to another, detune it slightly and add it in the mix with the original track! How "imperfect" is this?
As a guitar player I can tell you I wouldn't change my valve amp for the best transistor amp. The sound is simply not the same, regardless of the technical details.
Re:Amps by daem0n1x · 2012-05-23 21:57 · Score: 1

Valve amps don't feed loudspeakers directly. They can't output the current for it. A transformer is always needed.
Re:Amps by Slugster · 2012-05-24 02:10 · Score: 1

Yea but,,, transistor amps don't sound right.

You gotta be older to know that tho'. Like,,,, 40+ years old? Tube amps were used in TVs long after they fell out of favor in home hi-fi setups. Old TVs had a 'sound' that you can't get out of any transistor amp. Playing with the EQ doesn't do it.

And a lot of commercially-released music nowadays is mastered to play on transistors, and it is mastered retarded and tragically, and sounds like shit because they flatten it to raise the levels to make it sound louder.
So there is no dynamic range to overload a transistor,,,, so if newer music on transistor amps is all you've ever heard, then you don't ever know that anything isn't there.

Back in the 1980's, transistors (cheap shit) audio and tube audio fought a war, and cheap crap won.
(sigh)
Someday you will hear an old recording played on a tube amp, and you will listen in awe and wonder "why don't any of the stereos I've ever had sound like this?"
Re:Amps by Palamos · 2012-05-24 02:33 · Score: 1

Well my valve amp goes all the way up to 11.
Re:Amps by whitelabrat · 2012-05-24 03:14 · Score: 1

I think folks get into trouble when trying to compare transistors and tubes from a sound perspective. Electrically tubes are fine and dandy. Each has some advantage, but good circuit design usually overcomes most of the the problems.
With regards to audio amplification folks neglect the importance of the output transformers used in an amplifier. Yes, and some transistorized amplifiers use them too. My point is that the output transformers generally contribute more to the final product that any other part of the amplifier.
Just to make a point, I have a "class D" amplifier that uses output transformers, and replacing the cheap originals with top quality items, things got better in a big way. Tubes are great in preamps, and headphone amps.
Re:Amps by Ellis+D.+Tripp · 2012-05-24 03:34 · Score: 1

The exploding rectifier was probably due to oversized caps, too. The caps look like a short circuit until they charge, so the inrush current through the diodes could easily be hundreds or even thousands of amps depending on how stout the transformer feeding them is.
If you really want huge filter caps (which weren't typically used in tube gear), you need to have some kind of "step-start" circuit in the transformer primary to limit the initial charging current surge.

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Re:Amps by Half-pint+HAL · 2012-05-24 04:08 · Score: 1

Tube amps were used in TVs long after they fell out of favor in home hi-fi setups. Old TVs had a 'sound' that you can't get out of any transistor amp.
I suspect that this was more down to circuit design constraints than quality issues. The cathode ray tube was a very similar technology to the thermionic valve, both featuring an electron heater and accelerating the electrons with a high-voltage anode. As such, you'd probably be able to run the picture tube and the valves off a single high-tension transformer. Transistors, however, would need a completely different transformer to give low voltage DC. For the TV manufacturers it was a question of balancing the cheapness and reliability of silicon against the cost of that extra transformer. When the prices balanced out, they switched.

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Re:Amps by Zordak · 2012-05-24 04:11 · Score: 1

Not that it matters now (this was about 10 years ago), but I don't think the caps were responsible for the exploding diodes. It had been up and running for a while, and the caps were already saturated. It was humming pretty loudly just before it blew if I remember correctly, so we put the transformer output on an o-scope. The waveform was just nuts, and it was hammering the diodes with a huge back-emf (it was a full-wave rectifier, so we weren't just clipping the negative voltage). But we actually got a pretty smooth DC out of our circuit until the diode blew. It settled down quite a bit after we got a new transformer.
The caps may have been responsible for the hum. I don't remember why we used such huge caps, except it seems like we were chasing a particular RC so we could get a smooth 600 V output. And I do recall it being awfully smooth. But every time we turned the thing off, my lab partner would play his guitar on it until it drained, or we would drain it through a grounded resistor, because none of us wanted to get near the thing until we were sure it was cold.

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Re:Amps by oldmac31310 · 2012-05-24 05:55 · Score: 1

You destroyed a Hammond organ just for the transformer? Scary.

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Re:Amps by Zordak · 2012-05-24 08:44 · Score: 1

You destroyed a Hammond organ just for the transformer? Scary.
Well, we cannibalized an old, dead Hammond organ just for the (faulty) transformer. I don't think that's quite the same thing.

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Re:Amps by oldmac31310 · 2012-05-25 04:07 · Score: 1

Maybe it's just me, but I would be very much more inclined to attempt to repair the organ than pillage it for parts.

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Vacuum tubes have never left! by mpoulton · 2012-05-23 09:22 · Score: 5, Interesting

Almost every TV broadcast transmitter and most FM radio broadcast transmitters still use vacuum tubes for the high power output stages. Every microwave oven uses a vacuum tube to produce the microwaves. Most radar transmitters use vacuum tubes for the output stages, and often for signal generation too. The fact is that semiconductors have simply not been able to catch up to vacuum tubes for high power applications at UHF frequencies and above. 1960's technology still reigns supreme.

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Re:Vacuum tubes have never left! by Ihmhi · 2012-05-23 09:33 · Score: 1, Informative

Don't forget guitar amps. You're not gonna get the same aesthetics out of silicon. The best amps all pretty much use vacuum tubes.

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Re:Vacuum tubes have never left! by jslarve · 2012-05-23 09:37 · Score: 1

Yeah! Tubes are the only way to go on a guitar amp.
Re:Vacuum tubes have never left! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 09:47 · Score: 5, Informative

Uh... Microwave ovens use a magnetron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven#Design I've repaired many a Microwave ovens and I have never seen any vacuum tubes.
Too smart for your own good. A magnetron is a vacuum tube. Not all vacuum tubes are transparent. Hell, the "vacuum tube" in the article has neither a tube or a vacuum!
Re:Vacuum tubes have never left! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 09:47 · Score: 2, Informative

As long as we're quoting Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavity_magnetron
The cavity magnetron is a high-powered vacuum tube that generates microwaves using the interaction of a stream of electrons with a magnetic field.
Re:Vacuum tubes have never left! by digitig · 2012-05-23 09:53 · Score: 4, Informative

Uh... Microwave ovens use a magnetron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven#Design
I've repaired many a Microwave ovens and I have never seen any vacuum tubes.
Nathan
Indeed they do use magnetrons. And to quote from the first line of the Wikipedia article on magnetrons" "The cavity magnetron is a high-powered vacuum tube..." (my emphasis). Do you repair the microwaves with your eyes closed?

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Re:Vacuum tubes have never left! by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · 2012-05-23 09:53 · Score: 4, Informative

1960's?
The amplifying triode vacuum tube was invented near 1907.
The transistor itself in 1947.

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Re:Vacuum tubes have never left! by n6kuy · 2012-05-23 09:55 · Score: 2

...and linear proton accelerators. Vacuum tubes are still used for particle accelerators.

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Re:Vacuum tubes have never left! by Pentium100 · 2012-05-23 10:03 · Score: 2

The device that produces the microwaves is called a magnetron and is a vacuum tube (vacuum tubes do not have to be made of glass, in fact, a lot of early vacuum tubes used in radios were metal).
Re:Vacuum tubes have never left! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 10:46 · Score: 1

You've retroactively earned it.
Re:Vacuum tubes have never left! by Pentium100 · 2012-05-23 10:49 · Score: 3, Informative

So, why not combine dozens (or hundreds) of transistor output stages to get the equivalent of a single valve-based amplifier? That way, you get the same output power, but you never need to replace any burned-out tubes.
Because then the circuit would be much more complex (the need for matching all the small transmitters so they all work well in parallel) and a failed transistor could result in a lot of failed transistors. Tube circuits are simpler and tubes can tolerate overloads better.

Oh, and another thing. HVDC substations replaced their mercury valve rectifiers many years ago because new silicon-based technology could do the same job, at the same power level, with much less hassle. That's a higher level of power than broadcasting.
As the result of a rectifier is DC, it is simpler to combine a lot of smaller components in parallel and they dissipate less power than a transmitter would (since the output devices have to operate in linear mode in a transmitter, while they are on or off in a rectifier)
Re:Vacuum tubes have never left! by mirix · 2012-05-23 11:21 · Score: 3, Informative

A lot of microwaves have a vacuum tube for the display too.
(The erie blue-green ones) VFD

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Re:Vacuum tubes have never left! by Osgeld · 2012-05-23 12:12 · Score: 1

um yea, I am often called a audio snob and even with players doing a side by side in a studio I can barley tell the difference, let alone half sloshed in a noisy bar with some shit PA humming over everything
Re:Vacuum tubes have never left! by Osgeld · 2012-05-23 12:14 · Score: 1

if you mod and then post the mod undoes itself, just FYI ... I await my cursing cause you are uninformed
thanks
Re:Vacuum tubes have never left! by sjames · 2012-05-23 12:59 · Score: 1

At some point it becomes cheaper, more reliable, and gives you a higher quality signal; to go with the vacuum tube. Consider the effect on phase if you have a hundred transistors each with slightly different signal path lengths.
Re:Vacuum tubes have never left! by smpoole7 · 2012-05-23 13:09 · Score: 4, Informative

> At low power levels (e.g. 10kw) transistorised VHF/UHF output amplifiers are fine. Additionally, you can get a higher power output by operating multiple VHF/UHF output amplifiers in parallel - which also gives some redundancy for transmitter maintenance.
See Pentium 100's reply; he hit the high points. But it's essentially a matter of cost-effectiveness. If you tell me, "I need 30,000 watts at 100 MHz (a typical FM arrangement), I'm going to use a tube. Even after paying $5,000 for the tube and building a 10,000 volt, 5A power supply, I'd still come out ahead. Combining enough 100-200W solid-state modules to get that kind of power level would be far more expensive.
There's a practical matter, too -- for example, or 50 KW AM stations *do* use solid-state, and they're done as Pentium100 describes: you combine bunches and bunches of modules to get that power level. That's at a much lower frequency, and they can be made very efficient .. . .. but with full modulation, our Nautel transmitter runs a 300V primary supply and draws in excess of 300 amperes(!). There are giant 3/0 cables (they look like booster cables!) running all over the inside of that thing just to handle the current.
Can't cheat physics: power = voltage times current.
But I'll add this: Some competitively-priced solid state high power transmitters have begun appearing, so I have hope for the future. (We're looking at some of the new Nautel FM units ourselves; www.nautel.com if you're curious.) But seriously, even as recently as 2 years ago, there was no question that a 4CX20000 tube in a tuned cavity was far more cost-effective than trying to do it with solid-state.

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Re:Vacuum tubes have never left! by sleigher · 2012-05-23 13:50 · Score: 1

Right. Turn the amps up, and drive them. Sure, at low volumes modeling/transistor amps sound great. Turn them up and drive the amp during a side by side comparison. Many a great engineer has attempted to recreate the tube effect in solid state and failed.

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Re:Vacuum tubes have never left! by rev0lt · 2012-05-23 14:11 · Score: 1

So, why not combine dozens (or hundreds) of transistor output stages to get the equivalent of a single valve-based amplifier?
To a smaller scale, that is already done. A darlington configuration will give you a nice amplifier (given that you don't mind about distortion). Class D amplifiers will usually have 2 symmetrical darlington sets that drive the output, but with a ton of other issues. Multi-stage darlington (H configuration?) will often give you a pretty powerful noise generator.
Re:Vacuum tubes have never left! by pcjunky · 2012-05-23 17:07 · Score: 1

Magnatrons are a type of vacuum tube. They have a heater, and cathode, and an anode. No glass to see these things through so you can't see them.
Re:Vacuum tubes have never left! by Half-pint+HAL · 2012-05-24 04:38 · Score: 1

There is more than one person on Slashdot -- so why did you assume it was the same guy that responded that modded you down? Makes you look like the jackass.
And as others have said, you can't post and mod on the same thread. Makes you look like the jackass.

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Re:Vacuum tubes have never left! by dave87656 · 2012-05-24 17:51 · Score: 1

Thank you, very informative.

But in outer space... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 09:25 · Score: 3, Funny

aren't they just called "tubes"?

Re:But in outer space... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 09:33 · Score: 1

I believe they become pressure vessels.
Re:But in outer space... by jslarve · 2012-05-23 09:38 · Score: 1

Not a good enough vacuum (particles, gasses, solar wind, etc)
Re:But in outer space... by Ihmhi · 2012-05-23 09:39 · Score: 2

And if we could align them in a series, we'd have Internet in space! BRILLIANT!

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Re:But in outer space... by compro01 · 2012-05-23 10:00 · Score: 4, Informative

No, space is a far far harder vacuum than anything we can currently manage on-planet.
A vacuum tube still has between 1 million to 1 billion molecules per cubic centimetre, depending on tolerances. The best vacuum we can currently make has about 100k molecules per cubic centimetre.
Interplanetary space has about 10. Interstellar space has about 1. Intergalactic space has about 1 per cubic metre (10,000 cubic centimetres).

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Re:But in outer space... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 10:36 · Score: 1

> 1 per cubic metre (10,000 cubic centimetres).
1,000,000 cc
Re:But in outer space... by compro01 · 2012-05-23 10:49 · Score: 1

You're correct. Not sure how I put 10k in there.

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Re:But in outer space... by Beardo+the+Bearded · 2012-05-23 11:05 · Score: 1

Well played, well played.

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Re:But in outer space... by Nivag064 · 2012-05-23 20:07 · Score: 1

The people at the LHC might disagree with you!
Re:But in outer space... by vandamme · 2012-05-25 13:59 · Score: 1

Not true. The space around a spacecraft is usually contaminated with clouds of outgasses and crud. So tubes that go in them are pumped down on earth better than you can reliably get up there.

500 GHz by Dr.+Tom · 2012-05-23 09:32 · Score: 2

low power, high frequency, rugged, ... I say, these things might be useful

Re:500 GHz by ninjackn · 2012-05-23 10:36 · Score: 1

Low power? Maybe compared to traditional vacuum tubes. TFA says the nano vacuum tubes have a threshold voltage of 10V. Modern FETs are a magnitude less.

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Re:500 GHz by dryeo · 2012-05-23 17:48 · Score: 1

Considering a "portable" radio commonly used a 90 volt "B" battery and a high amperage "A" battery (usually lead acid, rechargeable) they are low power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_battery

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Reel to reels as well by John3 · 2012-05-23 09:35 · Score: 4, Informative

And they are used in some of the best old-school reel-to-reel recorders. I don't know if they are making new components with tubes, but older tube pre-amps for Ampex and Scully tape recorders are prized by some audiophiles for their "warm" sound. They are also great for creating distortion...over-driving tube pre-amps creates some nice distortion effects which digital components would just clip.

But (and I'm speaking as someone who has been out of radio and audio for many years...I own a hardware store), from what I've seen and heard there are some pretty awesome digital programs that can duplicate nearly any pre-amp ever made. Based on what my daughter can do with her Mac (Protools, FInale, etc) I am pretty impressed at the sounds that can be processed even in a home environment with no need for tubes.

On the other hand, my tube pre-amps do keep the basement warm. :)

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Re:Reel to reels as well by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 11:58 · Score: 1

Sorry, guitar player here, digital modeling of tube guitar amps "sound" sorta' kinda' like the amp being modeled, but they fail for most guitar players.
See the popularity of Marshall and Fender tube amps. Solid state amps are cheaper, and modeling is popular, but tubes react to what the player is doing in ways silicon cannot.
You may need to be a guitarist to appreciate this.
Re:Reel to reels as well by stanjo74 · 2012-05-23 13:04 · Score: 1

And yet, more Line6 pods are being recorded than people like to admit. And Line6 is just the bottom of the barrel for professional grade stuff.
Re:Reel to reels as well by theshowmecanuck · 2012-05-23 14:13 · Score: 2

It's probably a matter of economics. Most of the people recording are new/young bands with not a lot of money doing demos so they can try to be rock stars. These are the people who use a lot of Line 6 stuff because it doesn't cost as much as a real tube amp. Not just the price of the amp but these are the folks who want a zillion effects to go through the amp too. However I know quite a few professional musicians whose sole job is playing music. Out of a a couple dozen (at least) guitarists in this category that I know, I know of only one who uses a Line 6 amp. All the rest use either Fender (the vast majority) or Marshal amps. All tube. And these folks I find tend to use less effects. Generally they've found a sound they like and usually use it. They don't need the million and one sounds on a pod.

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Re:Reel to reels as well by Darinbob · 2012-05-23 14:14 · Score: 1

"Warm" sound basically means filtering out frequencies rather than having highly accurate recreations of the original sounds.
Re:Reel to reels as well by beerbear · 2012-05-23 19:56 · Score: 2

A tube amp alone won't do much. You also have to have a nice cabinet. And a good microphone. And know where to place it. And have some space where you can really turn it up, so the tubes go into overdrive.
With a Line6 pod, you go directly into the console and that's it.

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Re:Reel to reels as well by tlhIngan · 2012-05-24 04:25 · Score: 1

And they are used in some of the best old-school reel-to-reel recorders. I don't know if they are making new components with tubes, but older tube pre-amps for Ampex and Scully tape recorders are prized by some audiophiles for their "warm" sound. They are also great for creating distortion...over-driving tube pre-amps creates some nice distortion effects which digital components would just clip.
But (and I'm speaking as someone who has been out of radio and audio for many years...I own a hardware store), from what I've seen and heard there are some pretty awesome digital programs that can duplicate nearly any pre-amp ever made. Based on what my daughter can do with her Mac (Protools, FInale, etc) I am pretty impressed at the sounds that can be processed even in a home environment with no need for tubes.
That's primarily the reason why tubes sound better - they distort far more harmonoisly than transistors. Overdrive a transistor and it clips. Clipping distortion is extremely harsh on the ear, which limits dynamic range of the transistor (you need to prevent them from clipping).
Early MP3s people made sticking cords from CD players to their sound cards often suffered from clipping, and the MP3 process made them sound even worse.
Overdrive tubes and they distort the audio (dynamic range compression) at the peaks. This kind of distortion is much more pleasant sounding to the ear and makes for more cool effects (hence why guitar amps use them).
it's also why the loudness wars sucked - because instead of using DSP to distort the peaks, they just clipped it.
And yes, once a preamp is characterised (either through impulse response and convolution, or modelling), you can use DSP to make the sound of any pre-amp. However, the input signal must be recorded in such a way to not exceed the dynamic range of the ADCs, because you don't want clipping (and no amount of DSP can fix that). Once you have a clean signal in though, it's easy.
Re:Reel to reels as well by mcgrew · 2012-05-24 07:51 · Score: 1

I don't think it's a matter of economics, it's a matter of ignorance. A lot of guitarists I know who couldn't afford a Marshall use a small tube amp with a mic in front of it feeding a higher powered solid state amp. It doesn't sound as good as a Marshall, but a lot better than Line 6.

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Re:Reel to reels as well by mcgrew · 2012-05-24 08:39 · Score: 1

Er, you might want to read a few comments in this thread, I think you'll find many of them educational. Your comment is completely wrong, and I'd explain it but others have already.

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Re:Old is new by Dutchmaan · 2012-05-23 09:38 · Score: 1

I saw a kid the other day wearing the *exact same* Members Only jacket that I wore in middle school in the 80's... I felt a mix of surprise and sadness... with just a touch of annoyance.

Re:Old is new by SomeJoel · 2012-05-23 09:40 · Score: 5, Funny

Keep seeing all these whippersnappers nowadays wearing the same clothes I wore years ago.

You should have thought of that before you donated them.

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Ahistoric Hyperbole Rant Warning by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 09:42 · Score: 1

Vacuum tubes did not go the way of the dinosaur in the 1960's. The 60's were just the beginning of the end. You could still buy vacuum tubes in the late 70's and early 80's. I have distinct memories of the tube tester kiosk (lots and lots of sockets) at our local K-Mart in Arlington, TX.

The failure mode was almost always the heater element burning out. So you'd just look for the one that didn't glow, pull it out, and take it to the store and buy a new one, just like getting a replacement oil filter for the car.

Vacuum tubes have always been radiation-hardened due to their large size and high voltages; typical supply voltage is 300 V.

Also, I call bullshit on the speed of electrons being a factor. It's the speed of the electromagnetic wave that matters, and light travels at light speed (which is around 2*10^8 m/s in copper).

And seriously, NASA and the military jumping on this? With what money? Both have switched to commercial off-the-shelf components for a lot of their work, and there isn't the budget to make custom chips like the old days. There's not enough volume there to get the kind of low prices from mass production you get for consumer gear, so this would only lead to more stories of "NASA's wasting taxpayer money buying $50000 computers that are less powerful than your desktop."

Ranting aside, the most amusing thing about this technology? It's what they used in the Lensman series.

Re:Ahistoric Hyperbole Rant Warning by scharkalvin · 2012-05-23 09:56 · Score: 5, Informative

Actually an open heater was NOT the way most tubes died. The coating on the cathode that emits electrons when heated gradually decays and emission drops off to the point that the tubes transconductance is too low for it to operate. But the heater rarely burns out, at least not in indirectly heated tubes. Another way they die is that air gradually leaks in and the vacuum becomes too poor. The silver flashing on the side of the tube will then turn a milky white as the chemical "getter" that absorbs air has absorbed all that it can. Once the getter coating is depleted the tube will become gassy. A tube can also die from shorts when closely spaced elements break loose from vibration and touch. Over heating will soften the elements and cause the same effect. Tubes can handle a much higher percent of overload than solid state devices however. Tubes computers were never faster than solid state ones even if the tubes themselves were faster. Because of their size the total wiring in a tube computer is much longer than in a solid state system. In transistors it is the "holes" in the crystal structure that "move" and the speed of light in silicon is lower than in a vacuum for electromagnetic waves. Still these waves have less distance to propergate in an IC than a bunch of interconnnected tubes. Finally note the description of this new tube technology, it is really a "vacuum state" IC. I always wondered when nanotechnology would be applied to thermionic "valves" (as they say across the "pond").
Re:Ahistoric Hyperbole Rant Warning by evil_aaronm · 2012-05-23 09:59 · Score: 1

and light travels at light speed (which is around 2*10^8 m/s in copper).
Um, light travels in copper? How's that work?
Re:Ahistoric Hyperbole Rant Warning by Pentium100 · 2012-05-23 10:11 · Score: 2

I have a few devices that use vacuum tubes and I have not encountered a tube that heats up but does not work due to low emissions. They all either work acceptably or not light up at all (a tube full of air also does not light up, at least from the nominal heater voltage). Maybe in the USSR made tubes the heater is the first to go.
Then again, I do not have a tube tester (always planning to build one, but always find something better to do), so maybe most of the tubes in my devices have really low emission, but the devices work OK, so I don't bother replacing the tubes with unused ones to see if the performance changes.
Re:Ahistoric Hyperbole Rant Warning by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 10:30 · Score: 1

>In transistors it is the "holes" in the crystal structure that "move"
Incorrect. The carrier could be holes or electrons depending if it is the P type or the N type.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_junction_transistor#NPN
>To allow for greater current and faster operation, most bipolar transistors used today are NPN because electron mobility is higher than hole mobility.
Re:Ahistoric Hyperbole Rant Warning by Trax3001BBS · 2012-05-23 12:15 · Score: 2

I looked for the heater of the tubes as well, replacing once that weren't glowing orange;
99% of the time it fixed what was wrong.

I was young and repaired TV's to sale for cheap. If all the tubes heaters were working;
I took them to the local grocery store as they had a tube checker (as did most places at the time).
If the tube showed bad, I'd picked up a replacement at Radio Shack, more often than not making a profit.
Re:Ahistoric Hyperbole Rant Warning by Pentium100 · 2012-05-23 17:11 · Score: 2

I have replaced a total of two tubes in my devices, both of them were dark. One was a tuning indicator (I got the radio with it bad) and the other was a Soviet version of EL84 - that worked for a year or so and then burned out. In all of those devices I have not seen a tube that does not work but lights up.
Also, the tubes in my headphone amp are on at least 12 hours per day (sometimes I do not turn it off for weeks) and in use 6 years already and they still work. One tube (it was used when I got it, it has a black spot (burn?) in the getter) sometimes starts to act up (becomes noisy) but a slight tap gets it back in line. Granted, those are low power tubes (two 6N23P/6DJ8 and one 6N2P (kinda similar to 12AX7)) but still, they are quite long lived. The 6N23Ps are not even military grade.
Re:Ahistoric Hyperbole Rant Warning by dryeo · 2012-05-23 17:56 · Score: 1

It used to be common that when your TV or radio died, all the heaters still worked and you'd have to remove all the tubes and go to the drug store and test them all.
Some radios also had the heater circuits in series so if one heater did burn out, none would light.

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Re:Ahistoric Hyperbole Rant Warning by hackertourist · 2012-05-23 22:28 · Score: 1

The failure mode was almost always the heater element burning out.
Fun fact: this was what held back the adoption of tube-based logic circuits. Before WW2, Tommy Flowers at the UK Post Office research lab was working on a tube-based telephone exchange to replace the relay-based machines. He believed he could solve the burning-out problem by never switching the heating elements off. The phone exchange went nowhere because WW2 intervened, but Flowers applied his ideas to the Colossus computer, at the time the largest collection of vacuum tubes ever (by an order of magnitude, iirc). Colossus ran very reliably throughout the war, with tube replacements being relatively rare.
Re:Ahistoric Hyperbole Rant Warning by ncc74656 · 2012-05-24 02:21 · Score: 1

You could still buy vacuum tubes in the late 70's and early 80's.

'70s and '80s? You can still buy them today. There are even companies (mostly in Russia, other former Warsaw Pact countries, and China) that still make tubes, so you can get brand-new ones for your gear.
That's just the one company I've bought from in the past to fix my old radios; there are others as well that should turn up with a little bit of google-fu.

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20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Re:Ahistoric Hyperbole Rant Warning by scharkalvin · 2012-05-24 05:05 · Score: 1

It may have been common in AC/DC sets for heaters to open because if the heaters did not all warm up at the same rate one of the tubes had to absorb almost the entire line voltage for a split second, so it would eventually fail. Tubes were made with controlled heater warmup times to avoid this problem, but it only worked if ALL the tubes were of the same brand. Also the 35Z5 or 35W4 rectifier tubes had a tap on the heater to connect a pilot lamp. If the lamp burned out then that portion of the heater would be slightly overloaded and disturb the warmup time of the entire chain.
In radios and television sets that used a power transformer with all the tube heaters in parallel an open filament was very rare, except in the case of certain rectifier tubes such as the 5U4 or 1B3.
Re:Ahistoric Hyperbole Rant Warning by Pentium100 · 2012-05-24 06:02 · Score: 1

As I said, my experience is that the heaters fail first (or the tube starts leaking, which makes the getter white or transparent). Maybe the tubes made in the USSR have weak heaters, or very rigid other parts?
Re:Ahistoric Hyperbole Rant Warning by dryeo · 2012-05-24 11:52 · Score: 1

Could be the heaters are actually designed for slightly lower voltage then western mains supply. I don't know what power Russia uses, 110 vs 120 or 220 vs 240? The tubes I remember were usually GE or RCA IIRC.
Also possible that the amplifiers you're building don't stress out the other parts of the tube as much. In a TV there are some pretty high voltages.

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Re:Ahistoric Hyperbole Rant Warning by Pentium100 · 2012-05-24 12:16 · Score: 1

The USSR used 220V mains. I only built one amplifier, the two bad tubes were in a radio (one was bad when I got the radio (heater failure) the other went bad some time later (heater failure again).

Re:But will they be able to run Linux? by X0563511 · 2012-05-23 09:43 · Score: 1

It's not mandatory. It's also not applicable to components.

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For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...

Interesting by Bob-taro · 2012-05-23 09:43 · Score: 1

It mentions that the scale of these things is 150nm, which sounds pretty large compared to modern cpu features. Still, it's a very interesting development.

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Re:News for who? by X0563511 · 2012-05-23 09:44 · Score: 1

No, it's simply a copy-paste of the article's first paragraph.

Fucking lazy, is what it is.

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For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...

Really??? by gooner666 · 2012-05-23 09:46 · Score: 1

Vaccum tubes left in the sixties? Only to idiots who weren't paying attention.

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Lets get this over with... Fuck Off

Able to survive the harsh radiation of space by olsmeister · 2012-05-23 09:48 · Score: 1

And is still used there.

Re:Able to survive the harsh radiation of space by scharkalvin · 2012-05-24 05:08 · Score: 1

The Voyager spacecraft use an RCA pencil tube in the transmitter that is STILL going strong.

Not really a vacuum tube by eclectro · 2012-05-23 09:50 · Score: 2

There is 1) no vacuum and 2) there is no "tube." While there is an electron emitter, this device should be called a MOSFET.

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Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"

Re:Not really a vacuum tube by Beardo+the+Bearded · 2012-05-23 11:08 · Score: 1

a Metal Oxide / Silicone Field Effect Transistor? 0_o

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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Re:Not really a vacuum tube by eclectro · 2012-05-23 14:26 · Score: 1

From the article the parts have three leads called a source, gate, and drain which FETs have - which is quite different from vacuum tube's grids and plates.

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Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"

Remember this? by neros1x · 2012-05-23 09:54 · Score: 1

I wanted to build a HTPC around this mobo back in the day:http://www.retrothing.com/2007/07/vacuum-tube-pc-.html, but AOpen didn't continue it for very long. Maybe now someone will bring it back.

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The penguin made me do it.

Outer space is not the limit by Cochonou · 2012-05-23 09:54 · Score: 4, Interesting

From a radiation engineering point of view, outer space is not the most stringent environment. It is actually significantly more forgiving than a lot of useful earth orbits or the radiation belts of the gas giants (but of course, you can hardly replace a failed transistor in space...).
These "vacum tube like" diamond field emission devices have shown radiation tolerance from 10 to 100 Mrad (1 MGy in SI units), so we are more talking about the levels required for operation in nuclear reactors or close to the beam of particle accelerators.

Re:TFS by thestudio_bob · 2012-05-23 10:04 · Score: 2

Vacuum tubes went the way of the dinosaurs in the 1960s [...]
Wrong. If you're going to be act like a goddamn know-it-all, at least get your facts straight.

Hey, it's ok cffrost. Just calm down.

We all know dinosaurs still exist.

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The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains /.

EMP by stevegee58 · 2012-05-23 10:07 · Score: 1

Not to mention they'd possibly be immune to the effects of electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear explosion.

Re:News for who? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 10:11 · Score: 1

I believe that anyone younger than 30 now stands a damn good chance of never seeing a vacuum tube or even know of their existance.

You are the idiot.

Obligatory science fiction reference... by dpilot · 2012-05-23 10:14 · Score: 3, Interesting

"Tales of the Flying Mountains" by Poul Anderson

It's a collection of short stories about the "Asteriod Republic" wrapped in a frame of the first interstellar flight. One of the stories features a military vessel whose electronics were built with "TEMMs" - Thermionic Emission Micro-Miniaturized - featured for its radiation hardness.

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The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.

O... M... G... by JamesP · 2012-05-23 10:22 · Score: 3, Interesting

The article is painful in some aspects

Electrons move more slowly in a solid than in a vacuum, which means transistors are generally slower than vacuum tubes; as a result, computing isn't as quick as it could be.

I'm flabbergasted.

Meyyappan, who co-developed the "nano vacuum tube," says it is created by etching a tiny cavity in phosphorous-doped silicon. The cavity is bordered by three electrodes: a source, a gate, and a drain. The source and drain are separated by just 150 nanometers, while the gate sits on top. Electrons are emitted from the source thanks to a voltage applied across it and the drain, while the gate controls the electron flow across the cavity

This is really a vacuum tube if you add a high dose of immagination. Really

The separation of the source and drain is so small that the electrons stand very little chance of colliding with atoms in the air

Makes me wonder if tunneling plays a part here

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Re:O... M... G... by ChatHuant · 2012-05-23 12:41 · Score: 2

This is really a vacuum tube if you add a high dose of immagination. Really
Well, maybe not so much a classic vacuum tube, since electrons are generated through field electron emission, not thermionic effect. It does look similar to some cold cathode devices though, like neon lamps or maybe plasma display cells. The interesting parts are the very small size and the addition of the gate which allows modulation of the electron flow.

Makes me wonder if tunneling plays a part here
Maybe a bit, but AFAIR electron tunnelling happens at really small scales, in the sub-nanometer range, maybe up to a few nanometers. The gap mentioned in the article is 150 nm, two orders of magnitude above that - which would make the probability of quantum tunnelling through the gap extremely small.
Re:O... M... G... by JamesP · 2012-05-23 12:54 · Score: 1

True, it's field electron emission!

The interesting parts are the very small size and the addition of the gate which allows modulation of the electron flow.
Absolutely. I would describe it more as a "new type of transistor" than a "small vacuum tube" (and the fact that it's solid state and apparently can be integrated with other devices)

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Re:O... M... G... by pcjunky · 2012-05-23 17:14 · Score: 1

I agree. These sound more like a different type of Field Effect Transistor than a vacuum tube. No tube, no heater, not even a vacuum.
Re:O... M... G... by MattskEE · 2012-05-24 05:14 · Score: 1

Field emission is indeed a tunneling process. Old vacuum tubes used thermionic emission - as the cathode is heated some of the electrons have enough energy/speed to escape the potential barrier that ordinarily exists between the cathode and the vacuum. At room temperature essentially none of the electrons have enough energy to be above that potential energy barrier. When the bias voltage is applied it must decrease the potential energy past the barrier which will make the barrier thinner. With enough voltage the barrier is thin enough to tunnel through.
To use a gravity and beach ball analogy: Think of the electrons as beach balls confined to a canyon, they are bouncing around a bit because they're not at absolute zero temperature, but they're not going anywhere. With thermionic emission, heating it up is like blowing a big fan at them which gets them bouncing around at much higher speed - so much so that some of them bounce right out over the top of the canyon. For field emission, with an applied electric field you are decreasing potential energy on the other side of the canyon wall. Since I'm using a gravity analogy, that's like digging out the other side of the canyon past the canyon wall, which thins the canyon wall until some of the beach balls can break right through it. In either case in this analogy, once they're out of the canyon the electric field is like a downward slope, and they just roll down the hill to the anode.

Re:Vacuum tubes are very much alive by epyT-R · 2012-05-23 10:27 · Score: 2

If you're' looking for that 'classic' sound with its harmonic distortions, then yes.. if you're looking for accurate sound, then no.

light, not necessarily visible by Chirs · 2012-05-23 10:32 · Score: 1

"light" is another term for "electromagnetic radiation"

Although one could quibble about whether or not a EM radiation travels in a copper wire, and technically the speed of progagation of the signal in a copper wire is roughly 0.96c while in a coax cable it's more like 0.66c.

Small light bulbs? by cvtan · 2012-05-23 10:33 · Score: 1

Really? This is pitiful.

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Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.

Soviet Russia by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 10:33 · Score: 5, Interesting

When Viktor Belenko defected to Japan with a MiG-25 fighter jet in 1976 (state of the art Russian aircraft back then, meant to counter our F-15) it was discovered that most of the electronics onboard the aircraft were built with micro-miniature vacuum tubes! The reason being that the fighter jet was designed for presumably nuclear war situations, and the Russians wanted to ensure that EMPs from nuclear explosions would not permanently damage the electronics, so the aircraft could still fly and fight even after exposure to any nearby nuclear explosions that were still distant enough to not physically destroy the aircraft.

Re:Soviet Russia by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 12:03 · Score: 2, Insightful

...it was discovered that most of the electronics onboard the aircraft were built with micro-miniature vacuum tubes! The reason being ...
blahblahblah
The actual reason was that the vacuum tubes were proven technology and the Soviets didn't use "cost plus" defense contracting. Nobody involved had an economic incentive to reinvent the wheel.
Re:Soviet Russia by _merlin · 2012-05-23 12:12 · Score: 3, Interesting

Sorry to be a whiny bitch, but the MiG-25 was actually designed to shoot down the XB-70 Valkyrie. The XB-70 project may appear to be a failure in that it only produced two prototypes at enormous cost, but it achieved what it was supposed to in that the USSR spent a fortune building a fleet of interceptors to shoot it down.
Re:Soviet Russia by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 14:48 · Score: 1

Your post and the GP's post are in agreement, I think. The XB-70 Valkyrie was designed to drop nuclear bombs on Soviet cities. The MiG-25 was designed to shoot it down. If one XB-70 dropped a nuclear bomb, and the EMP disabled the transistor-based radars of all nearby MiG-25s, then the other XB-70s would be able to reach their targets unmolested. So the MiG-25 radar was built with vacuum tubes instead.
The part of the original post that was wrong was "MiG-25 fighter jet in 1976 (state of the art Russian aircraft back then, meant to counter our F-15)"
It wasn't, it predated the F-15 and was a pure interceptor, not a fighter like the F-15. The MiG was fast, and could get to high altitude, but wasn't designed to dogfight or engage maneuverable targets.
The F-15 was actually the one designed as a counter the MiG; to outperform what the west mistakenly assumed the Mig-25 could do as a fighter. (So in some ways the original post had it totally backwards)
Re:Soviet Russia by fluffy99 · 2012-05-23 16:19 · Score: 4, Insightful

Sorry to be a whiny bitch, but the MiG-25 was actually designed to shoot down the XB-70 Valkyrie. The XB-70 project may appear to be a failure in that it only produced two prototypes at enormous cost, but it achieved what it was supposed to in that the USSR spent a fortune building a fleet of interceptors to shoot it down.
And now Al Queda does the same thing to use. They employ a few guys with piloting skills and box cutters and we spend trillions trying to hunt down their boss and securing our airports against a non-threat.
Re:Soviet Russia by AHuxley · 2012-05-23 16:43 · Score: 1

Yes at some point the US must have allowed its vision to shift from nuclear shielding to very adaptive hardware and software.
With that change Soviet methods could be countered on one airframe with the change of a device, not a total new aircraft.
Russia was stuck with hardware, the US could update software as needed.

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Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Re:Soviet Russia by careysub · 2012-05-23 17:40 · Score: 4, Interesting

Your post and the GP's post are in agreement, I think. The XB-70 Valkyrie was designed to drop nuclear bombs on Soviet cities. The MiG-25 was designed to shoot it down. If one XB-70 dropped a nuclear bomb, and the EMP disabled the transistor-based radars of all nearby MiG-25s, then the other XB-70s would be able to reach their targets unmolested. So the MiG-25 radar was built with vacuum tubes instead.
And in addition, it was a tremendously powerful radar - 600 kilowatt continuous beam - well beyond the capability of solid state electronics of the day.
It was an extremely well designed radar system - it is hard to see how any possible design of the period could have improved upon its many advantages.

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Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Re:Soviet Russia by Anne+Thwacks · 2012-05-23 17:51 · Score: 2

They employ a few guys with piloting skills and box cutters and we spend trillions
I strongly advise you not to come to the UK, as you obviously have "information which could be of use to terrorists" - an arrestable offence in the UK.
(I strongly suspect that common sense falls into this category, which explains why so many people in the public eye haver so little of it!)

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Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Re:Soviet Russia by careysub · 2012-05-23 17:53 · Score: 4, Insightful

Sorry to be a whiny bitch, but the MiG-25 was actually designed to shoot down the XB-70 Valkyrie. The XB-70 project may appear to be a failure in that it only produced two prototypes at enormous cost, but it achieved what it was supposed to in that the USSR spent a fortune building a fleet of interceptors to shoot it down.
This analysis is flawed - the threat of the XB-70 accounts only for the development of the Mig-25, not its production. The B-70 program was cancelled in 1962 but production of the Mig-25 did not begin until 1969.
It is debatable whether the money spent on the full 1100 Mig-25 production run was the best investment in air power that could have been made, but the Mig-25 has proved to be of historic importance as a reconnaissance aircraft. Overflights of Israel were pivotal moments leading up the Six Day War, India uses them regularly to monitor Pakistan in peacetime and in war. Its ability to outrun opponents has proven to be valuable in battle.

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Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Re:Soviet Russia by Palamos · 2012-05-24 02:13 · Score: 1

Yes you could be arrested in the UK but only held for 72 hours, that evidence wouldn't be enough take someone to court. However, in the US you could be locked away forever without even so much as a phone call.
Re:Soviet Russia by Creepy · 2012-05-24 02:28 · Score: 2

Interesting... probably also why, in the 1980s/early 1990s when tube amps started to make a resurgence because of their warm distortion, the only place you could still get vacuum tubes was a supplier in Russia. I remember this distinctly when I obtained three 1970s era vacuum tube amps in the late 1980s and had to order vacuum tube parts from a site in Russia while the cold war was still going on because there were no remaining vacuum tube manufacturers anywhere else in the world (that I could find at least - note this was pre-internet, so I spent a lot of time on the phone with electronic suppliers and paging through catalogs and even shopping surplus stores). Needless to say, commerce was not exactly easy and it took almost 6 months to get them, end-to-end time. We (as in my brother and I) had to modify a few things like the vacuum tube connectors to make it work (the size and connector was different from the originals), but we built our own connectors to replace the existing ones with electronics store parts and the 2 amps we managed to successfully recycle out of the three were awesome.
Re:Soviet Russia by kraut · 2012-05-27 05:23 · Score: 1

In the UK they can put you on pretty much indefinite house arrest ....

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Television circuit boards: 1975 by michaelmalak · 2012-05-23 10:33 · Score: 1

Vacuum tubes went the way of the dinosaurs in the 1960s

Cutting the summary writer some slack, ignoring audiophile amps, ignoring guitar amps, ignoring microwave ovens, ignoring broadcast equipment, and even ignoring cathode ray tubes (which still outnumbered flat panel sales through 2004), consumer television sets didn't go "solid state" until 1975 (I remember it being a big deal to have the "solid state" badge on the front of a new-fangled TV because it meant you didn't have to wait (as long) for it to warm up).

Re:Television circuit boards: 1975 by mirix · 2012-05-23 11:50 · Score: 1

Many sets were already hybrid or entirely solid state by '75.
GE kept making the portacolor until 1980 or so, but it was the last of the tubed sets (In North America anyway - I imagine Soviet sets were still tube for a while yet, but maybe not). I presume GE just rode out the existing tooling, and when the portacolors finally quit turning a profit/selling they tooled up for more SS sets (or got undercut by Japanese SS sets, either way)...
Though as I've mentioned earlier in this thread, any TV with a CRT isn't technically solid state - the CRT is a vacuum tube, too.

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Sent from my PDP-11
Re:Television circuit boards: 1975 by Ellis+D.+Tripp · 2012-05-23 12:26 · Score: 1

The big holdout preventing TV sets from going solid state (besides the CRT) was actually a simple diode tube--the high voltage rectifier. Because of the very high voltages required (up to 25-30 kV in a 25" color set), long series strings of (first) selenium or (later) silicon diodes were needed to replace the humble 1B3, 1X2 or 3A3 tube. Early solid state HV rectifier stacks were expensive and unreliable, compared to a tube that cost a buck or so and often outlasted the rest of the set.
MANY sets (particularly early small-screen Japanese sets) were all solid state except for the HV rectifier tube. Larger sets still retained tubes for high power sweep stages for a few more years, until transistors improved enough to meet the demands of the application.

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Re:Television circuit boards: 1975 by Alioth · 2012-05-24 04:05 · Score: 1

My grandfather's job was repairing TVs, and we usually got a free TV from him (an old rental set). It was always fairly old, but he repaired it and it worked. As a kid during the 80s, I had my home computer plugged into a valve based TV. Even the analogue stage was valves, it took about 30 seconds or so before you got sound, and another 30 seconds or so before the picture began to appear after turning the TV on.
We had one set that had both tubes and a couple of integrated circuits in it. I think we got rid of our last valve (tube) TV in the early 1990s when it finally expired for good.

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That makes my house Jurassic Park by marxzed · 2012-05-23 10:38 · Score: 1

Three valve/tube loaded guitar and bass amps means I've got a dozen or so "Dinosaurs" living in my lounge room. Not like they are relics either two of the amps are post 2000 designed and built units (Blackstars).

Re:News for who? by dyingtolive · 2012-05-23 10:45 · Score: 1

I'm 28 and I've seen my grandfather's old television repair kit from "the good ol' days". Thing is full of them. Having that been said, I've never actually PERSONALLY had a vacuum tube TV.

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The Tube Dance by Tablizer · 2012-05-23 10:46 · Score: 3, Interesting

When I was a young kid, my mother would fix the TV by pulling out all of the TV tubes, wrapping them in news pages, and then carrying them all down-town to a big drug store which had a coin-operated tube-tester machine. She'd plug them into the matching slots one by one and see which ones were good and which were sour. I couldn't help her because I was too short.

Then she'd go to the back of the store to find matches for the sour tubes based on the codes printed on the tube slots. (Often the label was worn/cooked off the tube itself such that the slot labels on the tester were the only way to tell.)

I'd generally consider her a "technophobe", but she did it in a very routine fashion as if she'd done it dozens of times before. People just got used to tubes back then.

At least TV's were partly repairable. Now the repair costs are often more than a new TV. Oh, and Get off my lawn!

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Table-ized A.I.

Re:The Tube Dance by rubycodez · 2012-05-23 12:40 · Score: 3, Informative

easy to do for anyone who could follow the instructions that were on the machine and quite clear. sad she had to pay money, the Radio Shack ones were free. I used to collect TV and radios that were stood by the garbage cans the night before collection day for my electronics hobby, did the "tube dance" as a kid. Yes, I did solid state (discrete and integrated) based experiments and creations too.
Re:The Tube Dance by Tablizer · 2012-05-23 18:15 · Score: 1

Well, I'm not sure about the coins. It was a long time ago and my memory may be mixing things up: I have a tube brain.

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Table-ized A.I.
Re:The Tube Dance by adolf · 2012-05-23 19:57 · Score: 1

At least TV's were partly repairable. Now the repair costs are often more than a new TV.
Hmm. A few months back my big LCD TV stopped working. I pulled the back off of it, did a casual visual inspection and found two bulging capacitors. I removed the capacitors, put them in my shirt pocket, and walked over to a nearby electronics shop to get new ones.
A little while (and $2.00) later, the TV is still working fine.
So, that's one repair in five years, and something like fourteen thousand hours of actual use. How many dozen times did your mom fix a TV, again?

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Kid-proof tablet..
Re:The Tube Dance by Alioth · 2012-05-24 04:08 · Score: 1

On the other hand, my last computer monitor (a big 21 inch Trinitron) lasted 12+ years before it started going bad - I suspect it was bad capacitors (it had all the hallmarks), I didn't repair it because I wanted to upgrade to a higher resolution 16:9 LCD. (I don't know exactly how old it was, I bought it second hand about 11 years ago). I didn't have to do anything to that monitor the whole time I had it, it just kept going.
My Trinitron TV in my living room I bought new in 1993 and it's still working fine. It did get repaired once.

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The big snag by phriedom · 2012-05-23 10:53 · Score: 1

I love the way the big snag is barely mentioned near the end of the article. They need about 10V to power up. That makes them rather unsuitable for Terahertz computing.

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Re:But will they be able to run Linux? by Beardo+the+Bearded · 2012-05-23 11:07 · Score: 1

Only if you get a Beowulf cluster of them.

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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.

Re:News for who? by mirix · 2012-05-23 11:29 · Score: 1

If you want to get technical, if you've had a CRT based TV, you had a 'vacuum tube' TV. It just wasn't entirely hollow-state. ;-)

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Sent from my PDP-11

Re:Integrated Circuits by mirix · 2012-05-23 11:34 · Score: 1

The germans already did this in the 20s. Although it is a simple circuit... it is an integrated circuit.

Loewe 3NF

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Sent from my PDP-11

The military never stopped using Vacuum tubes. by GrpA · 2012-05-23 11:41 · Score: 1

Vacuum tubes aren't that unusual. The US Military has been using them for decades for Night Vision equipment and the best NV equipment is still based on vacuum tube technology. This is what Image Intensifiers are, which comprise more than 90% of new NV equipment.

Less commonly ( and more historically ) the Image Intensifier is a particular type of tube known as a photodiode, but more modern tubes incorporate a lot more technology including electron multipliers ( microchannel plates ) within the tube itself.

But it's still all 100% vacuum tube technology and hasn't changed much over the past century.

GrpA

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Re:News for who? by BlueStrat · 2012-05-23 11:54 · Score: 4, Interesting

I believe that anyone younger than 30 now stands a damn good chance of never seeing a vacuum tube or even know of their existance.

Wrong.

If they ever attend a rock concert or watch a video of one (or if they ever take up electric guitar or bass) they'd see walls of them. Usually with big script logos that say "Marshall" or sometimes logos that say "Fender", "Soldano", or "Mesa-Boogie", with a few other brands that are less well-known and typically considered more "exclusive" like Matchless, Framus, Dr. Z, Top Hat, Divided by 13, Bad Cat, Victoria, etc etc.

All the top guitar-amplifier makers' top-of-the-line pro-level models brag of being "all tube". DSP has not yet been able to equal the tone, "feel", and response to the player's nuances that vacuum tubes exhibit. It's really, REALLY hard to model all the variables that affect the sound of an electromechanical device like a vacuum tube with digital signal processing.

I build and sell custom vacuum-tube guitar amps myself, as well as provide service and repair for vintage & modern tube guitar and bass amps. I can also occasionally be found on a stage in a club, or on a festival stage somewhere, playing guitar. I've been doing both for about 4 decades now.

Strat

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Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.

Yep! (mod parent up a bit more...) by PaulBu · 2012-05-23 12:18 · Score: 2, Interesting

And the funny thing that it was even not that "secret" of a technology (application was, of course!), I remember reading about "new life of a vacuum tube" in Soviet magazine for technically-inclined kids ("Yunyi Technic") sometime in my early teens, late 70s - early 80s -- I definitely remember reading about thin-film integrated vacuum tubes technology, and, I think, about it's rad-hardness (not using that word, of course, or better half of the reason why it is important ;-) ).

Paul B.

OFFTOPIC: Moderation by rjames13 · 2012-05-23 12:19 · Score: 3, Informative

Thanks for modding me down jackass. You could have INFORMED me of that fact without punishing me with a -1 whip. (And if it wasn't you, then I direct my comment to the other fucker that did it.)

You can't post and moderate in the same article. Posting removes all your moderations in that article.

Pure marketing by Sycraft-fu · 2012-05-23 12:24 · Score: 1

One tube isn't enough to do both channels of audio. You'd need at least two and more assuming you weren't doing a single ended amp. As such all it was doing was maybe supplying power. So it wouldn't be doing anything useful. It was just a marketing gimmick to get wanna be audio heads to say "Oh this board is cool" and buy it.

Re:Pure marketing by Prune · 2012-05-23 17:29 · Score: 2

What the hell are you talking about? Many tubes have multiple gain devices within the same envelope. I remember building a hybrid tube/MOSFET headphone amp a couple of years ago using a single 6DJ8, which has two triodes in it. There's no doubt the motherboard in question only used the tube for VAS and not as an output stage, so there's no reason to use a push-pull configuration.

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"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Re:Pure marketing by Ellis+D.+Tripp · 2012-05-24 02:52 · Score: 4, Informative

The tube on the AOpen mobo was a 6DJ8/6922, not a 12AX7.
The 6DJ8 is also a dual triode, but it has much higher transconductance because it is a frame grid design. Those tubes were widely used as input amplifiers in vintage Tektronix scopes because of their low noise and high linearity.

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Re:Pure marketing by Ellis+D.+Tripp · 2012-05-25 10:22 · Score: 1

Hey, you cant spell "geek" without "EE"...:)

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No kidding by Sycraft-fu · 2012-05-23 12:34 · Score: 2

A good modern transistor amp can do precisely what a good amp should: Disappear. They can have distortion low enough, noise low enough, be linear enough, and so on that they don't introduce any audible artifacts of their own. You can swap well built ones around and hear no difference.

That's what you want out of a good reproduction amp, just a wire with gain effectively. It should introduce no changes of its own. Of course you can't have one that is flawless and does NO changes but you can have one that the changes are so low you can't hear them.

Don't have to break the bank for it either. You don't have to but some $5000 monstrosity, a couple hundred dollars and the right design gets a transistor amp that just vanishes.

Now if there's a reason to want the distortion, then maybe you want a tube amp. Electric guitar can be such a case. The signature sound they have doesn't come from the guitars themselves, they sound very flat and boring plugged right in to a mixer. It is the speaker and amp that give them their sound. You take tubes and drive them in to the non-linear range on purpose.

Fair enough, but not the goal of reproduction. Also these days, it is getting cheaper just to DSP things. We have a rather good idea of how various things create the sound that they do and we have powerful and cheap DSPs that can throw math at the audio signal and make the same thing happen. Often the way to go, particularly since you get flexibility.

Re:TFS by epine · 2012-05-23 12:58 · Score: 1

went the way of the dinosaurs

I'm not reading one more word from a glib duffus prime who still thinks the dinosaurs went the way of the dinosaurs.

Great doco about making the old ones by GrahamCox · 2012-05-23 13:18 · Score: 1

If you haven't seen this, turn in your geek card now: Mullard tube factory.

False claims by ChrisMaple · 2012-05-23 13:49 · Score: 1

The claim of 0.8 THz being 10X faster than existing technology is wrong. Here's a 2006 report of an Indium phosphide device. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061212091344.htm. Also, tubes can't make the equivalent of P-channel or PNP devices, greatly reducing their utility in logic circuits. Finally, the 10V switching threshold severely limits the amount of future shrinking possible.

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Re:TFS by Randle_Revar · 2012-05-23 14:10 · Score: 1

Yeah, I see flocks of them every day

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Climate Progress - Hell and High Water

Re:News for who? by rev0lt · 2012-05-23 14:26 · Score: 1

All the top guitar-amplifier makers' top-of-the-line pro-level models brag of being "all tube". DSP has not yet been able to equal the tone, "feel", and response to the player's nuances that vacuum tubes exhibit. It's really, REALLY hard to model all the variables that affect the sound of an electromechanical device like a vacuum tube with digital signal processing.

It has more to do with reputation than with "can't be done otherwise". A 50 cent-a-pop DSP probably has enough power to simulate the good ol' vacuum tube sound. Of course, that's today's reality, and not when transistorized power amplifiers started to be common. At that time, many respectable brands did produced superior high-power amplifiers using vacuum tubes, and people liked their sound. It also helped that most of those brands produced crappy transistorized amplifiers (often using generic switching power transistors, instead of high-quality audio ones), so the warm sound of tubes caused even more contrast with the metallic sound and lack of dynamic range of transistorized versions.

I build and sell custom vacuum-tube guitar amps myself, as well as provide service and repair for vintage & modern tube guitar and bass amps. I can also occasionally be found on a stage in a club, or on a festival stage somewhere, playing guitar. I've been doing both for about 4 decades now.

And yes, I do prefer the vacuum-tube amps, not only because of the sound, but also the warm feeling of old electronics :)

The Nice Thing About Vacuum Tubes... by IonOtter · 2012-05-23 14:39 · Score: 1

...is that you can make your own.

Both videos are about 8 minutes long, with a lovely soundtrack, and it goes through the entire process. From raw metal to finished tube.

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[End Of Line]

The Last Question. by bejiitas_wrath · 2012-05-23 16:35 · Score: 1

http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

One of the computers in this story was composed of microscopic vacuum tubes. Will it be possible to create a massive analogue computer like that instead of using digital chips?

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liberare massarum ex ignorantia, clausa descendit molestie.

Re:News for who? by BlueStrat · 2012-05-23 20:02 · Score: 4, Interesting

It has more to do with reputation than with "can't be done otherwise". A 50 cent-a-pop DSP probably has enough power to simulate the good ol' vacuum tube sound.

Well, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree here. For 40 years I've worked at music stores and been in bands, never mind being an amp tech/designer/builder, even worked in avionics and military-related high-end electronics systems, heard many of the very best DSP studio rack processors made costing many thousands of dollars, and my ears and everything else I know and have learned so far during all this time convinces me that, although DSP has gotten much, much better compared to even 5 years ago, it hasn't arrived yet at the point where the human ear can't tell the difference.

DSP guitar tone, clean or overdrive/distortion/effects, does not sound like real tubes *yet*. They will probably get there, I'm not saying it won't happen, maybe quite soon. It's just not there yet.

There's one solid-state amplifier made starting in 1975 that sounds great for jazz guitar. The Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus 120 amplifier. Beautiful clean sounds. It does have a distortion function, but *nobody* used it once they heard it! :)

Don't get me wrong. If you're in a local small-town working bar/dive band that is mostly there for the $40 to $80 a man per night, and not trying to impress anyone with your tone except the bar owner...just enough, that is, to pay you and keep you on the booking rotation, and you don't want to carry any more than absolutely necessary nor tie up more money than you absolutely have to in an amp, something like one of the "Line 6 Spider" combo amps will "get it done". Sorta like when old people...well, never mind. :-/

Those type of DSP solid state amps are also great for those just starting out, as it has a bunch of effects in software already, no effects pedals or rack effects, cords, etc to bother with, and they're dirt-cheap as amps go. If it breaks, throw it away and buy another just like a disposable lighter.

And yes, I do prefer the vacuum-tube amps, not only because of the sound, but also the warm feeling of old electronics :)

Here's my personal amp that I built recently.

http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h103/stratman_el84/Testament%2030/cabhead03.jpg

4 tubes total. two 12AX7 dual-triode preamp tubes (one a parallel-triode preamp gain stage, the other is the "long-tailed pair" style dual triode inverter/driver tube) and two KT66 beam tetrode power tubes in cathode-biased push-pull Class AB, producing around 30 watts. Volume and Tone controls, Standby/On and Power On/Off toggles. That's it. It sounds fantastic. You can't find a Volume/Tone control setting combination that sounds bad. I keep finding wonderful new tones and sounds almost every time I play it.

The sealed-back dovetail pine cab finished with Tru-Oil gunstock finishing oil with a Baltic birch plywood baffle has a pair of Celestion G12T-75 12-inch 8 Ohm guitar speakers wired in parallel for a 4 Ohm total impedance. It sounds absolutely gorgeous. Combined with that amp, some serious guitar tone-heaven.

I took the amp head into the local Guitar Center store shortly after I'd finished it. They had *nothing* that sounded anywhere near that good. The manager finally noticed the small crowd gathering, and (gently) asked me to cease after he started hearing a couple people asking if I sold amps like that one. :D

Oh, and since you mentioned a "warm feeling from old electronics", here's a little something that's sure to make wherever it is at just a little warmer. And louder. A *LOT* louder.

http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h103/stratman_el84/Junk/monster.jpg

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Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.

Re:News for who? by adolf · 2012-05-23 20:08 · Score: 1

If they ever attend a rock concert or watch a video of one (or if they ever take up electric guitar or bass) they'd see walls of them. Usually with big script logos that say "Marshall" or sometimes logos that say "Fender", "Soldano", or "Mesa-Boogie", with a few other brands that are less well-known and typically considered more "exclusive" like Matchless, Framus, Dr. Z, Top Hat, Divided by 13, Bad Cat, Victoria, etc etc.

Last time I was at a concert and saw a wall of Marshall full stacks with big heads on top, there was a microphone pointed at one of them. The rest of the cabinets were empty -- just props. As they loaded in and out, you could see daylight through the holes which were cut for the speakers.

(Modern PA plus a desire to reduce stage volume (and setup complexity, and weight, etc), etc. (and so on, and so forth))

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Kid-proof tablet..

Re:News for who? by BlueStrat · 2012-05-23 20:18 · Score: 1

Oh, and just to keep my geek-card and cred up-to-date and current, in that first link to the pic of my personal amp, that monitor on the floor to the left and the big blue-green box behind and to it's right, partially hidden behind the footstool, is a working SGI Octane system.

I pull it out every once in a while and fire it up.

Strat

--
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.

MIG's electronics by Yvanhoe · 2012-05-23 21:26 · Score: 1

I don't know if this is a urban legend or not, but the story says that when some Russian pilots deserted with their airplanes, this was the first time when US scientists could look into a MIG. They saw that the electronics was made thanks to tubes. They first thought it was the sign of an obsolete technology but then learned that it was part of their hardening to be able to fly even in a radioactive atmosphere in case of nuclear war.

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The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.

Omission by ThatsNotPudding · 2012-05-23 23:40 · Score: 1

And now Al Queda does the same thing to use. They employ a few guys with piloting skills and box cutters and we spend trillions trying to hunt down their boss and securing our airports against a non-threat.

You forgot one step:

3. Profit!!

Nano-tubes by Nephrite · 2012-05-23 23:56 · Score: 1

So the word "nanotubes" now has new meaning.

Re:But will they be able to run Linux? by Half-pint+HAL · 2012-05-24 04:43 · Score: 1

Not applicable to components? Perhaps we need a Beowulf cluster... no, you're right. This is silly. We need a more appropriate meme. Car analogy, anyone...?

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Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'

Re:News for who? by Half-pint+HAL · 2012-05-24 04:49 · Score: 2

I believe that anyone younger than 30 now stands a damn good chance of never seeing a vacuum tube or even know of their existance.

Wrong.

If they ever attend a rock concert or watch a video of one (or if they ever take up electric guitar or bass) they'd see walls of them.

I've never seen a human pancreas, but I've looked at untold thousands of people during my life. If I hadn't done biology at school, I'd probably not even be aware that there was such a thing as a "pancreas", even after looking at all these people.

The previous posters point is that most modern geeks don't know about tubes. Most modern computer geeks aren't guitar geeks (although some of us are -- I even built my own electric guitar once!)

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Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'

Re:Integrated Circuits by Half-pint+HAL · 2012-05-24 04:56 · Score: 1

Well, if you're going to be a bigot, you might as well be an uneducated one. The Nazi's didn't gain any real political power until 1930.

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Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'

Re:Soviet Russia woodpecker by scharkalvin · 2012-05-24 04:56 · Score: 2

That radar caused tremendous interference on the ham short wave bands. It got the name "the Russian Woodpecker" since that is what the interference sounded like, a flock of angry woodpeckers.

Re:TFS by Half-pint+HAL · 2012-05-24 05:04 · Score: 1

Indeed. After all, the devil didn't make vintage amplifiers to convince us that solid state ones "evolved" from tube ones...

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Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'

Re:News for who? by BlueStrat · 2012-05-24 05:55 · Score: 1

I've never seen a human pancreas, but I've looked at untold thousands of people during my life.

Great analogy!

Wait, except that pancreases are *internal* organs and so impossible to see without imaging or surgery/autopsy, and Marshall tube amplifiers with their legendary logo is the backdrop for innumerable concerts seen by untold numbers of people the world over, and that Marshall has become part of the cultural lexicon because of numerous musical icons, Jimi Hendrix (James Marshall Hendrix) being among them.

But, yeah, other than those little things, it's a perfectly valid analogy.

It would seem to me to be natural "geek-behavior" for geeks to note the technology disconnect on a piece of electronic equipment that has become so iconic, embedded, and ubiquitous in musical and popular culture (Spinal Tap? "It goes to 11! That's one louder, innit?"), and later use that factoid "Sheldon Cooper"-style, "Did you know, that...?" in an awkward attempt to participate in a conversation with a group of non-geeks talking rock bands and guitarists.

Strat

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Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.

Re:Old is new by dave87656 · 2012-05-24 17:56 · Score: 1

Yes, how true. I was reading recently that tape (as a backup medium) is making a comeback because it lasts longer, the transfer speed is very high and you can store terabytes of information on them. I'm wondering if there will be a return to tape for household use, perhaps for similar reasons. Archiving your own pictures and home videos on a longer lasting medium seems like a good idea.

Russian Fighter Jets by dave87656 · 2012-05-24 17:58 · Score: 1

Don't Russian Fighter Jets use vacuum tubes so they won't fall out of the sky if a bomb does go off?

Re:News for who? by Stuarticus · 2012-05-24 20:51 · Score: 1

They need to make a +1 awesome mod for your post. What design did you use for the amp? I've been considering building one myself, and keep looking at replicating a Trainwreck, the costs of the transformers are quite prohibitive though. I have quite a few old valve amps spare, but they never seem to have enough current on the HT

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If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.

Re:News for who? by BlueStrat · 2012-05-24 22:35 · Score: 1

They need to make a +1 awesome mod for your post. What design did you use for the amp? I've been considering building one myself, and keep looking at replicating a Trainwreck, the costs of the transformers are quite prohibitive though. I have quite a few old valve amps spare, but they never seem to have enough current on the HT

Sorry, just noticed your reply.

Wow, thanks for the kind words!

Unless you plan on gigging in some fairly large venues, a Trainwreck clone may be a bit much power/volume-wise. Those things are *loud*! I know from personal experience. And, they don't really get into their "sweet-spot" until you get some serious volume going. A basement/garage/bedroom amp it is not. I don't even know of a club in my area where I could really play one.

Now, the Phat-Ass is much more bar/club and even home-jammer friendly, depending on which power tubes you stick in it.

The design is a custom design based partially off of a combination of a Matchless Spitfire/Lite-IIb preamp utilizing both triodes of the 12AX7 preamp tube in parallel, rather than the more common cascaded triode gain stages found in most guitar preamp designs, with a custom power supply and custom power amp sections based on the Weber Speakers "Smokin' Joe II" 18 watt EL84-based amplifier and the legendary Marshall 1974 18W amp.

As a matter of fact, the majority of parts for the build can be sourced through Weber.

Here's a rough BOM (Bill Of Materials): https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?hl=en&hl=en&key=0AvaJlN_t-xVwdDR1T05nN2UwcGNDd1EtY1o4MmVSNGc&single=true&gid=0&output=html

Here's a chassis layout: http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h103/stratman_el84/Tech/PhatAss16_layoutfromsjII.jpg

And a schematic: http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h103/stratman_el84/Tech/PhatAss16rev3.jpg

One of the Weber Kit Builders Forum members, ScottVA, did most of the development and prototyping of this design, with some help and suggestions from me via the Weber forum, I'm quite proud to say.

Most people buy the basics of a Weber "Smokin' Joe II" amplifier kit, with some items of the SJ-II BOM either dropped or substituted as shown in the above PA16/PA26 BOM link. For instance, instead of the stock Chinese electrolytic power supply filter caps, I used much higher quality German F&T brand electrolytic caps, and instead of the stock generic Chinese coupling caps, I substituted them for Mallory 150 series caps.

Weber is extremely flexible in this regard, and will let you substitute or drop/add just about anything in their amp kits. You don't have to buy stuff you don't need or don't want. The big advantage is the savings in getting almost everything needed from one source and with one shipping charge.

You could probably buy 90%-plus of the entire PA16/PA26 BOM for the prices I've seen just for one of the Trainwreck transformer sets from some boutique suppliers. It's ridiculous. The Weber iron works fine, costs a fraction of those "boutique" transformers, and sounds fantastic.

The same Weber iron set also works great for all the common power tube choices for this design...6V6, 6L6, EL34/6CA7, and KT66. Just change the power tube cathode resistor value (or add a switch to change between values) to use a different power tube set.

Whatever you do, please, *PLEASE* learn and observe electrical safety rules and procedures. Even a small tube amp can kill you easily or cripple you for life.

You can start here: http://www.weberorders.com/forum/index.php?topic=944.0

(I'm the first poster)

There's

--
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.

France's Airforce? by DarthVain · 2012-05-25 01:47 · Score: 1

Its ability to outrun opponents has proven to be valuable in battle.

Re:News for who? by Half-pint+HAL · 2012-05-25 23:56 · Score: 1

Great analogy!

Wait, except that pancreases are *internal* organs and so impossible to see without imaging or surgery/autopsy, and Marshall tube amplifiers with their legendary logo is the backdrop for innumerable concerts seen by untold numbers of people the world over, and that Marshall has become part of the cultural lexicon because of numerous musical icons, Jimi Hendrix (James Marshall Hendrix) being among them.

But, yeah, other than those little things, it's a perfectly valid analogy.

You realise that tubes are, like the pancreas, internal components, right? Just because you can see the logo on the box doesn't mean you know what's inside the box. This Was The Point Of My Analogy.

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Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'

Re:News for who? by BlueStrat · 2012-05-26 02:58 · Score: 1

You realise that tubes are, like the pancreas, internal components, right? Just because you can see the logo on the box doesn't mean you know what's inside the box. This Was The Point Of My Analogy.

Marshall amps became famous in the '60s when *everything* used tubes, at least for consumer electronics, and unless you're from another planet and never read/heard any guitar-god interviews, everyone knows the old Marshalls are the best, just like old guitars. It's become part of the social culture and lexicon. Which. Was. *MY*. Point.

You can stop random people on the street and ask them; "We use integrated circuits and transistors for our electronics today. What did they use instead of transistors and integrated circuits back in the 1950s and 1960s for televisions, radios, and stereos?" A surprising number, even 20-somethings, will answer correctly.

Look, I'm sure there are numerous examples of both types of people, and that we're both right to some extent. I simply think there are more that have some clue due to the rock music culture and the way so much of the minutia surrounding "rock gods", including the instruments and equipment, has become part of popular culture.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to troubleshoot my PC. I think there's a bad vacuum tube in one of my central-processor arrays causing random segfaults, and it's a long walk to the CPU building. :)

Strat

--
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.

Re:News for who? by rev0lt · 2012-05-26 16:58 · Score: 1

Sorry for the late reply, but let me start by saying I share the +1 awesome idea of the other guy :) your post and your work is awesome, respect :D

I'm not an expert on valve amplifiers, but I do recognize shitty transistorized works when I see one. My last post was based on what I've seen from maintenance schematics from big brands like marshall. Crappy crappy designs. Guitar and bass players usually don't know shit about both good sound and electronics, so if a given amplifier happens to produce a more suitable tone, they'll be all over that - usually that warm fuzzy sound is a valve amplifier, and there is little to no incentive into having DSP's (the rack-mount appliances you mentioned, not the ICs I mentioned) cannibalizing that market and taking advantage of those .005% THD transistorized amplifiers. And the funny thing is, they will even plug in effect pedals between the preamp and the guitar - effect pedals that use ampops, transistors and crappy, crappy, CRAPPY power adapters. I'd like to receive your feedback on that one - do you think effect pedals are evil, or a source of random noise?

Regarding louder :D (yeah your pics are awesome) I'm a big metal fan. The "norm" is to have hi-quality mics pointed at the valve guitar amps, and then have the unique sound propagated to whole stadiums via transistorized amplifiers. I see no problem there :)

Btw, thanks for the schematics, it is rare to find such an insightful post here :)

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