Tubes are warm, they are not cold. That is why we are attracted to tubes as to the other sex. Tubes are clean, they contain vacuum, completely unpolluted. Tubes use heaters. In the cold climate this adds electric heat to the room, and we need to burn less wood or coal in our houses to keep it warm, reducing pollution near our place. In the warmer climates less energy is needed to bring the cathodes to the same temperature / emission level. So tubes are enviro friendly. Tubes uses electrons, tubes are not full of holes like semi-conductors, but are sealed properly, even air cannot get in, so much better quality. Tubes use sockets, you can simply just replace the tube if a problem occurs, and not have to dump the whole Chinese made impossible to decipher 208 pin flat pack + board + whatever expensive thing it is in. Tubes give light, some tubes it is even possible to read by in the dark. The more power the more light. Tubes start glowing all red like blushing if you overload them, unlike semi-conductors that just fail and then blow your fuses. Tubes are made of glass, you can see what you buy, and can see what happens inside. Glass can also be melted again and re-used. Tubes are easier to manufacture then semi-conthings, no very expensive plants needed. Tubes allow more profit to be made, for example a bad tube amplifier sells for more then good transistor amplifier. Tubes are beautiful, the art of glass blowing presents itself in wonderful shapes in tubes. Unlike trans-sisters, now so small you cannot even see these. Tubes allow for extra connection on the top, saving on through holes in some designs. Tubes can be manufactured for much higher power then trans-sisters, tubes are the item of choice in many high power applications.
Tubes are hot. You burn yourself on them. Transistors are very cool.
What you mean "we" paleface? Are you sure the reason isn't that they look like little phallic symbols.
If vacuum is clean, why do they make vacuum cleaners? Answer me that!
Yes but these heaters are run on 6.3V which is the squareroot of 39.69 and therefor obviously evil.
Smart people move to a warm climate.
When the tubes light the house on fire, a lot of wood gets burned.
Very few house burn coal for heat any more. Coal burning is a dirty nasty way to make power much like tubes are a dirty nasty way to make music.
temperature / emission level.
The same is true of transistors. If you lived in a place that was about 5 degrees K, you'd have to heat the transistors in your radio. We all live in a warmer climate than that, even the foolish ones who live in the north.
Tubes cause puppies to die.
Those holes let the good sound pass through without effort. Tubes contain magnetic materials. These lead to distortion.
They suffocate the sound.
You mean "when" not "if". Tubes are all sealed up so you can't use Draino on them to keep them clear.
[....]
No they don't. They light up with blue things crawling around inside and then there is a bright spray inside finally, the side walls melt and suck in.
Long time ago I picked up this story...Never bothered to get it confirmed. Here goes: Apparently the US takes apart some Russian jet from a defected pilot. (Sorry.. forgot when I heard this...maybe 20 years ago??) Lots of tube technology was found in the jet. The theory being that tubes are more resistant to damage from a nuclear EMP. D from BC
Er, you'd be wrong. At least every second woman I've met has an icy heart. Dunno about you, but I find cold sheilas to be completely unattractive.
However, tubes seem quite able to carefully preserve the warmth of an acoustic musical event. Some say tubes add warmth, an artifact, and this can be excessive, like a boring cloying lover.....
But not so simple inside when you examine the messiness of the cathode emission and the graceless way the electrons hit the anode.
less wood
So more pollution from coal burning power stations then occurs elsewhere out of sight, out of mind, and the resultant acid rain kills trees in foreign nations.
But at least you may as well use a tube amp to help warm your room in winter. It only helps. My 300 watt amps draw about 550W for each channel and thus give 1,100 watts of heating, and for someone in a house my size in a NY winter, its nowhere near enough heat to stop them freezin their balls off.
A 5050 amp would only make 200 watts, so its like having only 5 x 40watt light bulbs on, and on many nights, I'd have that many lights on. Otherwise I trip over in the dark.
temperature / emission level.
Rubbish, tubes operate with 900C cathodes and operating a tube in Antartica uses barely more power than in Jakata. Tubes are anything but enviro friendly; they are a pollution menace. However, tube gear is owned now by only 0.01% of the world's audio listeners, so they represent a tiny fraction of a large problem. My house where I live and a house mate the electricity consumption is an average of about 1 kilowatt hour per hour all day and one wonders where it all goes, but life would be uncomfortable below this level. Using my tube gear is a very small % of the problem, and hot water and heating are the main problems.
are sealed
But in fact the vacuum inside a tube isn't all that clean. Lots of dirty big gas molecules whizzing around, and they hasten the tubes' ultimate demise.
and not have to dump the whole Chinese
thing it is in.
I'll agree here, service is easier with tube gear but seldom does a tube replacement cure a fault; its so often some other darn thing causing a problem. But if you damage an OPT or PT, expect the repair bill to be high... The Chinese made new amp may cost a lot less than a tube amp repair job.
Ambience light, but reading beside 813 tubes isn't for eveyone. Most tubes most ppl use hardly give any lighting effects.
semi-conductors that just fail and then
How many amps have you repaired?
Tube melt-down can be quite a disaster, and can occur before a fuse blows.
inside.
I have a friend who knows each electron flowing from cathode to anode by name.
But an EL34 uses far more resources than a power transistor.
needed.
Then how come virtually no tube factories exist in western developed nations?
OK, WE still makes 300B in the US, but they want $300 each. Where oh where is any sign they are cheap technology?
more then good transistor amplifier.
It depends where you shop. A 40w+40w stereo amp can be had via direct marketting ex hong kong for usd $500. The same watts from Jolida in stores here costs $3,000, and so if the chinese perfect the bypassing of western middle men, who makes any profit?
shapes in tubes.
At least I agree with you here....
Have you seen trans-brothers? they are the latest thing in China...
designs.
Wrong, a top cap makes a tube more expensive.
the item of choice in many high power
The Russians developed tubes so big they are about 8 feet tall, and have halves that unbolt, for service to the cathode and grid and they are good for a very large rock concert indeed.
In the bad old dark days of the Soviet era, such multi kilowatt tubes were used for RF transmissions, often as jamming signals over the top of western nation broadcasts because they didn't have rock concerts. If the Politbureau knew someone they didn't like much, they'd lead him down to the transmitter undegoing service, and into the dark of an opened up triode. Without warning they'd bolt up the tube, apply vacuum and power, and transmit the poor bugger. Fzzz, and your'e gone, no more politiaski mistakzi.
The sole-and-only advantage I see with tubes is that they are great- good-fun. Far more fun than transistors in the same way that a 1968 VW Beetle is more fun than a 2008 VW Beetle.
That they can sometimes sound well is an accidental pleasure.
Whether a 1968 VW is more fun would be strictly in the eye of the beholder. My youngest son had a 1968 VW van, which at 40 mph felt less controllable than a modern car at over 100.
When one is immortal (30 and under), that makes no nevermind anyway. if you have gotten too crusty over the years to understand that most basic premise-of-youth... or even the memory of it... that is an unhappy condition.
My 1969 Westie would do a sustained 65 with no troubles back in the day. Of course, I drove it as if I were an Aztec sacrifice exposed on the front bumper (i.e. with great caution and care). Much as I drive our 1987 Westie wasserboxer now. The 1999 Winnie with all its bells and whistles (AC/Front Engine/FWD/Air-bags/ABS/Traction and so forth) is far more inviting of complacency.
And, we maintain both the Westie and the Winnie to have fun, no other reason whatsoever. They are hardly necessities. Much as I keep, experiment with, maintain and repair my tube equipment as it comes and goes. Also hardly necessities.
They can be a more workable technology for the small manufacturer and hobbyist to build certain types of electronics. They are capable of enduring some kinds of abuse solid state can't. But their range of economic application today is quite limited, and successful marketing of them does depend on nostalgia a little.
A 1968 Beetle can be kept running in an environment, such as after an economic collapse or limited nuclear exchange, that would stop the modern one either from EMP or lack of sophisticated parts support. It is much easier for a hobby mechanic to keep going. But it does require regular maintenance, and if stock, will require total overhaul much sooner. The rebuilt version with hydraulic lifters, Chevy rocker arms and valves, an oil filter and improved cooling blower and a five speed transaxle will give the new one more of a run for its money. You still cannot air-condition it without making engine maintenance impossible.
The Type II VW was never meant for American driving conditions. Hippies bought them for, well, you know why.
They were not cheap, then, and aren't now.
There is as much room in a Suburban, or IH Travelall as in a VW Bus. The old Bus didn't get exemplary mileage, a fact now mostly forgotten. Most years had serious isssues of one sort or another and the fix was a major upgrade. Various years of engine, transxle, and front end had problems. And in high winds the poor bus was a menace to life and limb.
IMO the most successful VW product was the Karmann Ghia. If they had used the Type IV engine from the start and the IRS, the car would have been a Porsche 356 killer. Probably that was why not.
Guess you haven't been using ceramic external anode valves...
Oh, yes...that's a fun thing to do with valves. Connect filament transformer to 833 bottle. Connect -200V--+200V variable power supply between the grid and the filament transformer center tap. Connect
3000V power supply between the plate and the filament transformer center tap. Apply power to the filament transformer; allow the filament to warm up to normal operating temperature. Turn on the grid power supply and adjust it so the grid is -200V relative to the filament. Turn on the plate power supply. Monitor the current in the plate supply. Make the filament voltage more positive, stopping when the plate current reaches 0.3 amps. If nothing spectacular happens within fifteen minutes or so, crank up the grid voltage a bit more till the plate current reaches 0.4 amps. Continue in this fashion till something happens. Observe the new shape of the glass envelope. You've done the first part (the "melted" part). Now try to figure out the "re-used" part for this sample.
Can add another old time advantage. Working in aerocraft industry have seen opened radio equipment on planes with the good glass envelopes smashed with a hammer. On querry got an answer: It was a time for replacement so the checking worker made sure they will be replaced! Simple?!
There is a lot of truth in that theory; i heard there were ceramic versions of the Nuvistor with ring-like connections in the lelment stack that were made expressly to runin EMP environments in satellites and such.
The same reason that they make hot-water-heaters. It's a marketing demonstration that shows that good sales ability beats a product name every time. Getting people to buy something they obviously don't need.
That's a rumor mindlessly passed thru the generations. If you check, you'll see that they actually run on 6.48V which is the square root of 42, the most-perfect number.
That's what I thought, then I moved to houston. Smart people live anywhere else.
Right, we now burn coal on a much more massive scale. We use it to inefficiently generate electricity from heat, then transport it over long distances while losing a large percentage to resistive/emissive losses. This is usually done on poles cleverly placed so as to be directly in the path of wayward automobiles, but then power company procedures are another subject themselves. Then, what's left of the electricity is used to power a heat pump and further reduce efficiency to a record low since the dawn of heat generation. It's called progress.
But what would you heat them with?
Tubes should not be taken orally or rectally.
Which is precisely what you want when you're an axe grinder.
No, they provide space for the sound. How much head-room could possibly be built into a to-92? It must be like passing a kidney stone the size of a grape. Imagine the excruciating effect on the sound. Tubes provide unprecidented clarity too, have you tried looking thru a transistor lately? How could sound pass thru something like that and not come out all muddy? I mean really......
Russian Air Tower: "Vladimir stole an old jet and is heading to the US." Russian Commander: "Let him go.....His flying sucks.. Besides, it'll fool the Americans into a false sense of security in believing Russian technology is inferior". D from BC
Do you think the fact that it was a van had anything to do with that? centre of gravity and all that... Any van with unpowered steering will be hard to drive in cross-winds (especially erratic cross-winds). Those VW vans were light in the front too which didn't help much erither unless you wanted to take them off-road.
There is a measure of truth to that, particularly for equipment that is powered down. EMP itself is not all of the problem, it is preceeded by a blast of high energy quanta, ionizing air, water, solids and more. While everything is still jangling around really uncommonly large voltages are induced, leading to breakdowns of many kinds of parts, especially semiconductors.
--
JosephKK
Gegen dummheit kampfen die Gotter Selbst, vergebens.
--Schiller
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