How did you get into tube gear?

[kkregsg]

Yep, I remember the tube tester at the grocery store.

I started playing guitar on my dad's much abused 30s vintage plywood archtop. In seventh grade, I got my first electric, a 63 Gretsch Corvette single pickup with Bigsby, and a Gretsch 2X10 amp. I never messed with the amp. Later I bought a Vox Essex bass amp, and managed to fry some components by putting the output of a small practice amp into the input of the Essex. A friend of my Dad's had an electronics school, and he let his students troubleshoot and repair it.

I played mostly acoustic guitar for many years, but January 1, 2012, I decide that tube amps weren't rocket surgery (malaprop intended), and I decided to systematically scour the internet for every possible scrap of info I could find on said subject. Rather than systematic searching, I find my best info stumbling from link to link, running across things I'd never find otherwise. To paraphrase Mayor Daly of Chicago, I back up early and often so I don't lose what I've amassed. I've had a lot of help from members of various boards, and great encouragement from close friends. So the journey continues.

[Bob S]

56 for me too. Was forced into learning valve theory in college.
Passed the exam then promptly forgot it all & sold the books.
Microprocessors were the new thing.
Funny how things come full circle.
Be Well guys.

[Bob Simpson]

Ok.
Born in 53 in the middle a wheat field....
Smolan, Ks.
Look that up on Google for a laugh...
We'd take the tubes from the radio...
AM & Shortwave... big as a freaking...
what'd they call it .. had 45 rpm records in it...
in to the grocery store and test 'em...
had new ones underneath all in slide down racks...
take em home so's we could listen to Amos & Andy...
and Loved the SW... mostly dits and dahs but every once in a while,
somebody was broadcasting in English... or Portugese....
grew up to junior high school, built a pa w/ heathkit speakers
had to plug the voice coils into the wall sockets...
and EV compound diffraction horns stolen from the top of the school....
what is a crossover?...
had to test to get my CB operators license...
shortly after that fell under the influence of Casey Young
building Dynakit MkIII's powering cabs built from EV Eliminator
specs... one MkIII / Eliminator...

And every once in a while an A7 Voice of the Theater cab....

Still using some Allied / Radio Shack Gold Plated Lifetime tubes...
Lifetime means lifetime, dammit...

Nevermind...

Never done nothin'....

Bob

[Gibsonman63]

I too was born in 1963. I have vague memories of the tube tester at the local hardware store. I started playing guitar when I was nine, but I was sixteen before I got my first electric guitar. I went through a couple of transister amps before I could afford a used tube amp. In Houston in the early to mid 80's Marshalls were the thing, but I never had the money until much later. For some reason, the pawn shops were flush with blackface and silver face Fender amps. For several years, I found amazing deals on Fender heads. I was regularly finding Bandmaster and Tremolux heads for $100 or less. I bought, sold and traded them around until I had the Fender amps I wanted. I had a local guy that would repair them for me, but by around 2000 he had retired and most of my amps needed someting. I started researching and opening up the amps to see what I could see. Mainly repairs that had componants clipped out, with the replacements tacked on to the old leads. I started buying books and seeking out forums. Within a couple of years, I had all of my Fenders up and running again and I felt the need to keep soldering. I found you guys and built an Express and a Liverpool. I haven't been finding time to build lately, but the interest has not left.

[brewdude]

I remember the tube testers at the front of the super markets...

My first tube amp was a used Fender Super Reverb that had an issue. I removed the chassis and sent it away for repair. Weeks later it returned. Had a blown speaker, which I repace with a crappy speaker. It worked for about month before it crapped out again. I think I gave it away.

Next was a Peavey Triumph 120. 3 channels and way too loud for what I needed.

I think this was late 1980's and I bought Aspen Pittman's Tube Amp book. I really wanted to build a Fender Champ at this point, but the internet didn't exist yet and I didn't have any resources for information or hardware such as transformers. So, I abandoned this crazy idea of building my own amp.

I traded the Triumph 120 in on a Peavey Classic 50 4x10 (the only music store in town only stocked Peavey amps). That amp sounded pretty good on the clean channel with all the controls on "12".

Sold that amp for Mesa Blue Angel. Never could bond with that amp. Sold it.

Then the dark days--I bought a Line 6 DuoVerb. Was fun at first but quickly got frustrating. At this point I kind of gave up playing guitar.

Years later, I was looking to buy a small tube amp. Found the Epiphone Valve Jr was developing a community of modders. Bought a combo, plugged it in and played it for about 60 seconds before I gutted it and started my addiction to solder fumes.

Thanks to forums like this one, I have learned a ton of stuff. I'm in the debt of all of you that contribute so selflessly.

[ampdoc1]

My dad was an electrician by trade, but he was always futzing with things. In my teens he bought a few books and equipment, and started repairing all things electronics for the local Good Will. If he needed any parts, he'd just buy them and kept a record of expenses, and if something was interesting he'd keep it and take it off what GW owed him. After he died, I found his scratch book, and he had a couple of thousand $ in credits.

So, I started getting interested when I was about 20 a friend gave me a beat up Sears amp. Luckily, my dad's collection of Sam's Manuals had the very one I needed. Fixed the amp and used it for a year of two. After a few years of working at desk jobs with some repairs on the side, I opened a repair shop inside the largest music store in town. I loved the work, but as a one man shop, the wages were pretty small.

After that I worked for a couple of Audio Video companies in town, doing Bid Estimating, until I retired last year.

[Ken Moon]

I was born in 1956 also. When I was in 6th grade, I had a Washington Post paper route with over 200 deliveries every morning, so I was suddenly "rich" for a kid in DC at that time.

After I bought a bicycle (Schwinn Sting-Ray of course), I bought a Heathkit AM/FM radio kit. The instructions were superb, but I still managed to put a diode in backwards and had to take it to the Heathkit store to get it fixed. But I did learn how to solder (sort of).

Then I got the urge to get an electric guitar (to impress girls), so I went to the local store and bought a new sunburst Strat for about $300, a fortune in 1969. They threw in a strap and a '68 Champ amp.

Fast-forward to 1976, and I trained to work in the Calibration Lab in the Air Force after Basic Training. It was a 9-month training school at Lowry AFB in Denver, and it was all tubes all the time. The instructors mentioned transistors, but dismissed them as a "fad".

When I got out, I got a job at Fluke for 2 years, fixing all sorts of test equipment. Then I used my GI Bill and went to SUNY Albany to get an EE degree, so I was 30 years old when I graduated.

When Aspen Pittman wrote his tube amp book, I bought it for the pretty pictures. I actually managed to reach Aspen by phone, and we talked for about an hour, mostly about where I could get transformers and other parts. The schematics and layouts in his book were what got me interested in building amps, and I built about 20 5E3s over the next decade, selling them by word of mouth, usually for $400 - $500.

I didn't actually design any amps from scratch until AX84 came along, where there were people like Merlin, Paul Ruby and Alex Kenis (and many others) willing to answer all my questions.

And now we have kids building high-gain amps who don't even know Ohm's Law.

My, how things have changed

[Buschman]

I realized my Roland JC 120 just wasn't doing it for me anymore and I played a friends BF super reverb. Besides I started out on a single ended Kalamazoo with tremolo and a Heathkit fuzz that I soldered up when I was 9.