Guitar Vacuum Tube Distortion Pedal -- Episode 518

Takes me back to my schooldays when we used to visit a TV repair shop and ask to rifle through the bin of old valves/tubes pulled from TV sets.

ECC82 was a great find, ECC83 was rare but turned up now and again.

Great video, thanks for the nostalgia trip!!

Neil

DAB  wrote:

...Some purist claim that only tube based audio amplifiers give you the best sound....

 

They are wrong . But I adore analogue sources and valve amplifiers.

Once you understand the operation theory, there is good correlation between tube based applications and semiconductor applications.

I found systems still using tubes up to present day.

Some purist claim that only tube based audio amplifiers give you the best sound.

I know that in TV sets, a tube based UHF receiver was better than the solid state amplifier well into the 1990's.

In avionics, I was seeing tube based systems up to the time I retired in 2003.

I know the Russians did some incredible work with tube based technology.

In RF, tube and solid state devices were used in many systems, depending upon the requirements you had.

DAB

the transition times must have been weird, what to learn what to focus on, you will get in contact with a whole older ecosystem and need to dive into a completely different realm to keep up with changes.

DAB  wrote:

 

... It takes me back to my tech school days where we did everything with tubes as semiconductors were the new technology and the curriculum had not been upgraded at the time I went through the classes....

When I went to school the tubes hadn't been taken out of curriculum yet. The focus was on semiconductors, but there was still a mandatory tubes section. Our teachers tried to fill that as much as possible with CRT theory - a technique that was still the current state-of-the-art in first half of the 80s

Good show.

It takes me back to my tech school days where we did everything with tubes as semiconductors were the new technology and the curriculum had not been upgraded at the time I went through the classes.

DAB

thanks, there could indeed be some projects building upon this.

The most awesome stuff I've seen on this site. Tube distortion effect was the reason I started electronics. Can't wait to see more projects of guitar effect diy. Keep up the good work.

Can you point me to the specific shots you are refering to?
I think I don't really get what improper techniques you exactly mean. I use a lto of different methods depending on material components and number of hands I have available during filming.

A project like this is a good entry into using tubes as it is a low voltage low cost application.

I figured it would not make much sense if people could not hear the difference, so I opted to prime  the video with a little demo.