Checking in

Off-Topic conversations about what ever you feel like talking about.

Postby KLA2 » Mon Sep 27, 2010 7:41 pm

MM_Dandy wrote:There's a moose loose about the house.


That's "hoose". Ach, laddie, yea bin awa' in the Colonies too long. :wink:
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Postby Heid the Ba » Thu Sep 30, 2010 2:15 pm

Hooeee we caught us a Kiwi, welcome tubeswell.
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Re: Checking in

Postby KLA2 » Sat Oct 02, 2010 10:01 pm

tubeswell wrote:Hi - Enzo said to tell you all that he sent me here

I am a mid-lifer in the Southern Hemisphere, where I have been all my life. I have a wife, 3 kids, a pet cat and 3 mortgages on the family house. For the last 20 years I have worked as an environmental planner (and still do). In my spare time I am a tube amp junkie and a musical has-been. I hope to attain enlightenment by visiting here once in a while. Thank you.


Tubes, care to tell us more about being a "tube amp junkie"? (I used to have one; a Saturn {cannot remember the model} that weighed half as much as I did and was about two feet high, three feet wide, and nine inches thick.It had an echo? reverb? foot switch connected to wiring? wound up in a big black plastic bag in the bottom.)

Had a fake Les Paul to go with it, which I tortured (along with any listeners) for a few years. Accounting was clearly the right choice for me. :lol:

What did you, or do you, play? (Nobody ever STOPS playing.)

Or as we said back in the 60's, "What's your axe, man?" {followed by, "Hey you going to pass that, or Bogart it all night?" followed by, "Enzo, you got those ZigZags, man?" :P } :lol:
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Postby Enzo » Tue Oct 05, 2010 8:39 am

Tubes can tell you, but he suffers from the same thing Scott and I do. We even build the things, yes the guitar amps.


You know, back I the 60s I was never much of a smoker, and never cigarettes at all, but I was known for always having plenty of matches in my pocket, the more esoteric the match book cover the better, and also I always had a couple small round brass screens in my wallet. One could easily fashion a small smoking pipe out of most anything if there was a screen handy. But papers? Not my thing, man.
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Postby tubeswell » Tue Oct 05, 2010 9:02 am

My current geetars consist of:

An'89 US strat (sunburst with maple fretboard), which is my 'the geetar'

And an old archtop (circa 1960) made in West Germany (such as it was).

I would buy more guitars, but I spend all my spare money on building tube amps. I just bought a 60mm sheetmetal bending brake to get my chassis looking a bit better (if that's not saying too much).
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Postby KLA2 » Tue Oct 05, 2010 9:11 pm

tubeswell wrote:An'89 US strat (sunburst with maple fretboard), which is my 'the geetar'



Whoh, the Hendrix guitar. Although his was 20+years earlier. :wink:

Was never a big fan of Hendrix' music or life (death :( ) style, although there was no denying his skill and artistry. The Beatles or Kingston Trio were more my style.

I heard a rumour that before Jimi burned / smashed his (favorite) Strat at the end of a performance, he would slip behind an amp and substitute it. Ever hear that?

Still curious about building amps. You can still buy vaccuum tubes ... tubes? :lol:
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Postby Enzo » Wed Oct 06, 2010 12:58 am

with your metal fingers, you'd be a natural playing slide.


And , to say nothing of heay metal.


Can you still buy vacuum tubes? A lot more choices now than there were 20 years ago. Plenty of tubes out there. BM65 builds tube amps and sells them, I provide some technical advice for that.


I am wrestling with this mental image of the Kingston Trio setting their guitars on fire and smashing them. Disturbing.
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Postby KLA2 » Wed Oct 06, 2010 1:20 am

Enzo wrote:Can you still buy vacuum tubes? A lot more choices now than there were 20 years ago. Plenty of tubes out there.


I'll be darned. Googled it.

Do they have any modern major commercial application, or is there just enough demand by hobbiests and in repairing pre-sixties radios etc. to support the entire industry?

This could be the answer for the energing North Korean personal computer industry. {Smaller than a schoolbus! 12K of memory! A blazing 0.477mhz!!} :lol:
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Postby Enzo » Wed Oct 06, 2010 2:14 am

The commercial guitar amp business thrives on vacuum tubes, and the high end audiophile stereo crowd uses them. Brand new tube amplifiers come on the market every day. brands like Peavey and Fender and MArshall make them by the thousands. The demand is so great that most companies that make guitar amps now have plants in CHina and VietNam making the less expensive ones. For most of the more common tube types, I usually have a choice of 5 or 6 brands of tube to chose from.
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Postby KLA2 » Wed Oct 06, 2010 2:31 am

Enzo wrote:The commercial guitar amp business thrives on vacuum tubes, and the high end audiophile stereo crowd uses them.


Why is that, Enzo? Is it like vinyl vs. CD, a greater richness of sound (or different quality of sound) or other reasons? I assumed that the industry transistorized, or microchiperized, or whatever, decades ago.

(My remaining guitar is a "Val Dez" :oops: acoustic, so I am really not up on this stuff.)

Tell me to "go Google" if you like. But it is more fun hearing from you, and maybe Tubes. :D
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Postby Enzo » Wed Oct 06, 2010 5:53 pm

Vinyl/CD, maybe. SUgar vs high-fructose corn syrup. Maybe radial tires vs cross bias tires. (They still make those?) Broiled vs grilled.

A guitar amp is not intended to be a high fidelity amplifier. It is not REproducing sound, like your stereo does. The guitar amp is part of the instrument, it is a primary PROducer of sound. It is intended that it add its own character. All the various models and brands of guitar amp have their own sound, unlike good stereo systems which should all sound alike and ideally add nothing to the recorded sound. The dynamics of the vacuum tube are different from transistors and integrated circuits. The amp responds differently to what you play.

Both technologies perform perfectly well. And unlike the whacko audiophile crowd, it really isn't about one-upsmanship or snobbery in guitar land. Though you can turnit into that without much effort.

Maybe you prefer Veal to Lamb. I can cook lamb a lot of ways, and you might find them incredibly tasty, but at the end of the day, no matter what I do to my lamb, it ain;t veal.

There are digital modelling amps that synthesize tube sounds. SOunds pretty close. And you can go to the grocery store and find a tub of "I can't believe it's not BUTTER!" Well, that is a tasty tub of bread spread, but at the end of that same day, can't believe it's not butter? I can. Those digital amps sound good, but just are not the same thing.

We DID transistorize years ago, but tubes didn;t go away in the process. They invented automatic transmissions for cars, but they still make lots of cars with a clutch and manual transmission. I drive a stick shift, always have, I enjoy operating the vehicle. The automatics are easy to drive and convenient, and I am sure more efficient. But I feel less connected to the car, and nice as it may be, it is just not the same.
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Postby tubeswell » Wed Oct 06, 2010 5:53 pm

Sorry I'm back at work most of the time at the mo'.

There's a lot of mojo about tube amps all over the 'net. This place is good.

http://www.freewebs.com/valvewizard/index.html

So is this place:

http://ax84.com

And this place:

http://www.blueguitar.org/

And here:

http://www.geofex.com/

Here:

http://tdsl.duncanamps.com/index.php



And as far as the tubes themselves go:

http://www.tubedata.org/

And here:

http://www.nj7p.org/Tube.php

Here:

http://www.r-type.org/

Here:

http://www.tpub.com/content/neets/14178/index.htm

And that's just the tip of the iceberg
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Postby Blue Monster 65 » Wed Oct 06, 2010 7:10 pm

Here be madness, Kla2 - stay away ... stay FAR away ...

Unless you wanna come down and hang out with Enzo and I on Friday nights! :D
Is there such a thing?
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Postby wring » Wed Oct 06, 2010 7:22 pm

Blue Monster 65 wrote:Unless you wanna come down and hang out with Enzo and I on Friday nights! :D


Hey - Fridays are date nights!
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Postby KLA2 » Wed Oct 06, 2010 9:04 pm

Blue Monster 65 wrote:Unless you wanna come down and hang out with Enzo and I on Friday nights! :D


If I was in the area, I surely would - and bring the six pack. :D
wring wrote:Hey - Fridays are date nights!


I thought that was what he meant. :glp-1rof1:
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Postby Enzo » Thu Oct 07, 2010 1:11 am

And after date night, and I send you packing , dear, Scott and I make amplifiers.

Probably about lunch time for tubeswell.
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Postby Blue Monster 65 » Thu Oct 07, 2010 2:50 am

Uhh ... all this sounds awfully bad ...
Is there such a thing?
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Postby KLA2 » Thu Oct 07, 2010 3:12 am

Blue Monster 65 wrote:Uhh ... all this sounds awfully bad ...


The commas make ALL the difference ... although the pronoun "you" is somewhat ambiguous after wring's post ... :lol:

Geeze, guys, we have got to get beyond this cheesy locker room humour ...

Ah, what the heck. :wink:

And will NO one think of tubeswell ... :shock:

Hang in there with us, tubes. We joke ... or at least, try to trade shots with Enzo. :P
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Postby Мастер » Thu Oct 07, 2010 3:18 am

Enzo wrote:They invented automatic transmissions for cars, but they still make lots of cars with a clutch and manual transmission. I drive a stick shift, always have, I enjoy operating the vehicle. The automatics are easy to drive and convenient, and I am sure more efficient. But I feel less connected to the car, and nice as it may be, it is just not the same.


I know what you mean, but it's awfully tough driving through the toll booth with your beer in one hand, tossing the money in with the other hand, and still trying to shift gears, not to mention steering. I guess that's why they invented these electronic toll collection systems, so we wouldn't have to give up manual transmission.

Years ago, the manuals were more fuel efficient, but I'm guessing the technology in the automatics has improved to the point where they may well be more efficient. Not sure.
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Postby KLA2 » Thu Oct 07, 2010 3:31 am

Enzo, thanks. I love to learn. And I learned a lot. 8)

Tubes, thanks for the links. I will follow them. 8)
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Postby KLA2 » Fri Oct 08, 2010 12:05 am

Mactep wrote:
Enzo wrote:They invented automatic transmissions for cars, but they still make lots of cars with a clutch and manual transmission. I drive a stick shift, always have, I enjoy operating the vehicle. The automatics are easy to drive and convenient, and I am sure more efficient. But I feel less connected to the car, and nice as it may be, it is just not the same.


I know what you mean, but it's awfully tough driving through the toll booth with your beer in one hand, tossing the money in with the other hand, and still trying to shift gears, not to mention steering. I guess that's why they invented these electronic toll collection systems, so we wouldn't have to give up manual transmission.

Years ago, the manuals were more fuel efficient, but I'm guessing the technology in the automatics has improved to the point where they may well be more efficient. Not sure.


Or, as I like to say (on my cell phone, with my more rowdy friends), with my cock in one hand and my beer in the other, the steering wheel between my teeth. :lol:

{Well, that darn rooster won't stay in his seatbelt. What. You thought I meant WHAT? :shock: }
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Postby tubeswell » Fri Oct 22, 2010 11:00 am

Ok its been over a month and I'm still the newest registered user. I'll check back in another month.
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Postby Enzo » Sat Oct 23, 2010 10:30 pm

Oh we can go a long time without a new member, we're glad you came along. Feel free to bring along a friend or two.
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Postby tubeswell » Tue Nov 30, 2010 2:35 pm

Over another month and its the same tale of woe. I'll probably get over it in another month, by which time it will be xmas.
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Postby KLA2 » Wed Dec 01, 2010 3:43 am

For me, tubes, it's quality over quantity. Lots more members on GLP (gag) or BAUT (a fine board, but mostly over my head with scientists)

Here, I can keep up with posts and flatter myself that even I can make a (noticeable) contribution.

Good, sane, thoughtful, considerate, educated, polite folks posting here.

I like it. :)
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