Burned Out
Thirty years of tube amps, here’s what I think about tube rolling. If diodes were on the outside and could be as easily swapped that would make a lot of sense. These rather inexpensive little parts can make a huge difference in image depth and liquidity, far in excess of anything I have heard from swapping tubes. But diodes are inside. You need a screwdriver and solder. Too much trouble. Plus nobody calls them diode amps, even though a tube is a diode. So they have the name recognition all wrong. If caps were on the outside and could be swapped as easily, same thing. Caps make as huge a difference as diodes. Way more than tubes, that’s for sure. But again, screwdriver. Solder. And the image thing. Caps and diodes are for "tweakers" and "modders" lower forms of life not like the sophisticated respectable tube rollers. Transformers, now you’re talking! The transformer easily has the single greatest impact on sound of anything in a tube amp. All the output, all the music, goes out through the transformers. They must be of the highest quality or dynamics and details suffer. Unfortunately, if you think caps and diodes are hard to change, you ain’t seen nothing yet! The transformer is literally a black box, impenetrable, nobody knows really what one is, how it works, or which one is better or why. I’m talking about audiophiles. Top guys in amps know perfectly well. It’s us who are clueless. So clueless in fact that of all the things we can change for the better, the one we pick to do the most is the one that makes the least difference and costs the most and nobody knows which one is any good or indeed if it will work at all. Clueless don’t even begin to cover it. You think the people making tubes don’t know this? They prey on your ignorance like, well I don’t know what but something greedy with a big appetite. You want to play with tubes? Do it right. Get yourself a Raven. Dave Thompson has a huge selection of some of the world’s best NOS tubes. Knows them like the sommelier in a fancy French restaurant, or a John Wick movie. https://youtu.be/aZnVM3THZSg?t=13 Seriously, that is the way to go. Anything else likely to be a big waste of time and money. As you seem to be in the process of learning. |
