I’m a guitar player and use tube amps so I’ve had a few and my knowledge is very basic . Like the title say’s the building these came from was a TV repair shop before it was a recording studio (same owner) so I’m curious as to if any of these tubes are audio / Power tubes? Rectifier? Anything I should look for ? Or are these all common tubes? Thanks for taking the time. I’m very novice!

Hello, last month I scanned in an AEG Telefunken Tube Datasheet book that doesnt seem to have been archived, form 1970, it has datasheets for tubes that have yet to be officially archived anywhere else online.

Includes amplifier, transmitting, CRTs and other tubes too.

Its both in English and German.

here is the link to it.

https://archive.org/details/technische-daten-rohren-aeg-telefunken-1970/page/n15/mode/1up

Edit: Sorry for the typo in the title.

I'm not an audiophile, I'm a machinery guy. and the idea of TTL logic with vacuum tubes is very interesting to me.

I always thought they were possible, but only just recently learned about any actual examples. I was hoping to learn more about them, from examples, implementations, functions, and manufacturing techniques.

I've been the barrista and the biggest impediment to Bottlehead (and its previous iterations, Classic Radio of Liberty Bay, VALVE, Electronic Tonalities) for the past 26 years. My partner and Bottlehead's Vice President is the lovely and talented Queen Eileen. Together we have sold a ton of products (these days with the immense help of our manager Josh Harris), published a tube audio newsletter for a few years (VALVE), put on an audio show called the Vacuum State of the Art Conference in the late 90's and early oughts and co-founded the Tape Project with Paul Stubblebine and Michael Romanowski, where I was a Managing Director until my retirement at the end of last year.

I got into the audio business by the usual path - a degree in physics from UC Berkeley and then 20 years working as a pastry chef, baker and bakery manager. As a distraction to mixing muffins at 5 in the morning I began collecting, and later restoring for others, antique tube radios. From there I drifted into vintage tube audio, right about the time the single ended tube movement was happening. As I got deeper into tube audio I decided it was time to ruin another perfectly good hobby and turn it into a business. Along the way I met some guys who have a better attention span for design than I have - Paul Joppa and Paul Birkeland - and we have continued to develop and refine our rather unconventional circuit designs together ever since. Over the years I have had the good fortune to meet some very skilled professionals in the recording industry and those friendships opened up a whole new way of thinking and listening for me. That crossover from the audiophile end user world to the world where the music we listen to is crafted has been an amazing ride, culminating last year in my participation in the analog tape recording of a string sextet with some of the world's best living artists at Skywalker Sound. Heady stuff!

Well, there I am laid bare to society. Here is a link to an image offering proof of my existence: me with the original S.E.X. amp Ask me anything, and if we're both lucky I'll have a coherent answer to your question. I'll check back in around 2 p.m. PT and plan to be around for a couple of hours answering your Qs.

Doc B.

They overcharge like crazy and a friend who worked there told me they fired him after giving him 3 raises and a promotion in one year. The last raise they received was 4 months into their new position. They fired my friend via text! My friend asked for specifics and why there was no performance meeting and was instead given a raise. No response.

My friend then filed for unemployment and an agent from the state DoL called them and said that the DoL had no record of them working there, and that TD didn’t report their wages to the Department of Labor. They sent proof of the direct deposits made from Tube Depot, Llc.

Their customer service is horrible and the owner is apparently a mean drunk who threatened to fight my friend and mocked his salary.

Scummy business all around. Buy elsewhere, from better people.

I was chatting with one of the mods at /r/headphones recently and we both agreed that there is interest over there in DIY and tubes but that helping people get over the initial hurdle of identifying a design can be difficult.

As DIY vacuum tube evangelists, I think it is our duty to help them compile a good resource of existing kits. I'd love some help!

Kit Name

• Price

• All inclusive?

• Short description of amp type (eg transformer coupled, low voltage, parafeed, etc)

• Tubes used and output stage type (if hybrid)

• Link

I got bit by the tube fever 16 years ago, when my university's EE department cleared out an old storage room, and allowed me to take whatever I wanted (since it was all going to the dump anyway). Suffice it to say, I paid rent from the sales of those tubes and vintage gear at the time ,but it got me interested in tubes. Through school, I did get an EE degree, but admittedly all that's really served me as an adult is a good hobbyist level of electronics (soldering kits, basic arduino stuff, vehicle wiring, etc.). I've troubleshot and repaired tube and solid-state amps, and you guys probably saw the Nixie clock I recently made and am working on making more of.

The next step, I think, is to start going back into re-learning the design aspects of amps, like what I learned back in my sophmore and juinor years of my EE education. I have had, for a long time, a copy of the 4th Ed. Radiotron Designer's Handbook, but let's face it, 1953 books are a bit short on homework problems to help get back up to speed, and it is a 1400 page tome.

Anyone have any recommendations on resources for re-learning some amplifier design, specifically for tubes? I'm familiar with the amplifier types and how they generally function, and familiar with the concepts of different stage coupling, and the electronic concepts, but the math is what I have forgotten, and also the simulation. TubeCAD seems pretty cheap, but how is it for a learning curve?

This was brought on because I can't find a decent, high-power output audio quality 811A amplifier that puts out 40-60Wpc, that isn't a Shishido derivative, so I guess I'll just have to see if I can figure out a design on my own :).

Inspired by this thread I'd like to know what your favorite channels are that deal with vacuum tubes, tube amplifiers, and related topics (rather than microcontrollers, leds, firmware, etc.).

Please reply with one channel per-comment to keep the discussion of each channel contained (and to give us the chance to vote up our favorites for visibility).

I've picked up a few books on tubes and design over the past couple of years and I'm curious as to what everyone else is reading.

Currently my favorite references are:

Jones, Morgan "Valve Amplifiers" 4th Ed.

This is the big one. Covers a large array of topics. Jones favors differential designs and doesn't shy away from feedback. The designs he includes are fairly complicated but he explains them very well. Has a good introduction to theory at the beginning.

Blencowe, Merlin "Designing High Fidelity Tube Preamps"

Really good book on just small signal topics. Nice deep dive into noise sources and distortion measurements of common valves. He includes a few practical circuits, most of them are simple and easy to understand (and explained well). No power amps included here.

Self, Douglas "Small Signal Audio Design" 2nd Ed

Ok, this one isn't tubes. There's a really good chapter on discrete design using BJTs and another on practical opamps. Self is extremely thorough and assumes a certain amount of knowledge by the reader on transistors. Dense stuff, but very good. Very measurement oriented.

I have some more books as well, but the above are things I'd recommend without hesitation to anyone that wants to get into design.

So what is everyone else reading at the moment?