Remembrances of vacuum tube days
As a young teenager, I developed a love for electronics which became a lifelong love affair. In those days vacuum tubes were the norm and solid state devices such as transistors weren't in usage then....
Forum Discussion
ktmrfs wrote:
tube amps tend to go into limit on max signal more gradually than solid state amps, and the harmonics generated are IIRC even order vs. odd order for solid state. Even order harmonics are less intrusive to the ear. And lots of the early transistor amps would not only hard limit, but oscillate and do really wierd things when overdriven, all of which gave rather anoying sound,
I had an early Scott transistor amp, when driven to near output limit it would start oscillating in the audio range and coming out of limits had real bad transient recovery problems.
Listening to music it was vey easy to hear when it was being overdriven.
Todays transistor stuff is much much better.
Yeah, Tube amps do a "soft limit" when over driven, does sound different from transistors harder limits.
Early transistor stuff was pretty primitive and the Germanium based transistors had quite a few oddities with oscillation issues. I had a Olson stereo receiver that used Germanium transistors in the power output that would get unstable and go into oscillation if there was a Piezo electric based tweeter in the speaker system.. Peizo electric tweeters can act like and look like a capacitor to the output driver of a amp.. If there is any instability it will show up quickly with those tweeters.
More modern transistor amps are amazing and to me, sound very well.. While I did enjoy my old tube stereo equipment, what I have now is far superior in sound quality, no output transformers that limit the frequency response or ad non linear artifacts from the transformer saturation.. Far more power and a lot less heat..
I would have kept the old tube equipment but when you have tube stuff that has 40+ yrs on it, you start facing the reality that it WILL be needing to be fully recapped.. Those old can electrolytic caps dry out and then you have to sub in newer modern ones that unless you gut the old cans new caps stick out like sore thumbs. Not to mention the tubes for some of the old equipment can be expensive or hard to find now days..
