How did you get into tube gear?

[Structo]

How did you get into tube gear? (Or back to it)

Or, Memories of a 60’s Kid.

For me, it was early on.
I grew up in the 60’s-70’s and was born in 1956.
Pacific Northwest.

Of course in my early years, everything was powered by tubes.
TV, Radio, everything.
Even your precious VTVM meter that was very accurate.

When your TV went on the fritz, you pulled every tube out of the set and took them in a brown paper bag to the closest
place that sold tubes. (usually the nearest grocery store or pharmacy)
You tested each one and replaced any suspects. (if the needle was in the red, you bought new tubes)
When you got back home you installed all the tubes back into their perspective sockets and with crossed fingers you pushed the on switch.
Then if everything is ok, you move on.

Since the TV was the biggest tube user in the average home, it was also the most costly to maintain.

I accompanied my late father many times when a vacuum tube was suspect.
If you were lucky it was one tube that was bad.
Medium bad was when it was more than one tube.
My dad always thought the tube testers were rigged so you would buy more tubes.

It is really bad when the picture tube is bad.

My dad determined that the picture tube in our Zenith black and white set was bad.
He got the new CRT and when he was carrying it into the living room he bumped the neck into
the doorway.
Of course it lost vacuum and destroyed the picture Tube!
I never heard my dad cuss as much before or since that incident!:shock:
It was like Christmas Story!

My dad was pretty smart/ handy, but not a brain surgeon.

Miraculously, the TV it was working again a couple days later, but I suspected a trained TV repairman was
involved.

Just like years before with the radio, families gathered around the boob tube and watched things together in the evenings.

Color TV was still years away, at least for us.

I bought my first guitar tube amp when I was 14. (so around 1970)
My sister co-signed.
It was a Sunn.
It was repossessed.

Anybody else remember stuff like that?

Or should I fade into obscurity?

But wait, there's more......

I actually like stories from other people experiences.

[stretch2011]

I started playing guitar at 16, I mentioned to the girlfriend at the time that I wanted to learn and she gave me an acoustic she didn't play. When the relationship ended I gave it back and bought a beat up Appalachian acoustic and a bc rich bronze from a good, but odd fellow I went to school with for $70.

Fast forward, to 19 years old and I currently own my first tube amp, a peavey classic 30 I bought for $350, God I thought that was awesome.

I then joined a band on fb when I was 20 and the drummer so happened to be the one and only Dana Hall. I met him once before at a gear swap but didn't know who he was. I then sold the classic 30 to buy his microplexi.

Afterwards I quit the band for my first internship as a plastics engineering student (this is where it gets interesting). Moving away from home for the first time I knew no one or no places to go. So upon buying my current girlfriend a gift I passed a hole in the wall guitar shop with a long haired death metal looking guy and an old man, I asked if it was a guitar shop, they replied yes, and I told them I would be back next week.
I hung around that place because the owner was very cool (death metal guy who was surprising a people person age 26).
Then one day the old man was in there. I thought of him rather strange at first and reserved. I could tell he was forming his own opinions of me. Turns out he built many of the wonderful tube Amps in the shop and played all the music I loved playing. I told him one day I would love to learn how to build tube amps and the rest is history.

I found my mentor and good friend In a hole in the wall music shop that was so broke they could barely afford to buy strings to sell. (Needless to say he left that place!)
Sorry for the long post! I felt like it was story time: )

[gui_tarzan]

I'm a little younger than Tom (circa '63) but I also grew up on tube radios, TVs and my first bass amp was an Alamo Paragon 75 that I still have the head for.

I fondly remember taking tubes to the local TV shop and testing them on the big tester when I was a pre-teen. I don't know, it's just something about the glow, the sound and the miracle that a few pieces of metal inside a glass housing can actually produce sound. It's sort of like they're alive.

[stretch2011]

Are you suggesting that they might NOT be alive!?

[Leo_Gnardo]

Similar to you Tom, I was a '53 kid. Soon as I could walk, I found my way to the back of the family's '48 DuMont TV, peeking thru the holes in the back cover to see dusty glowing glass bottles, plus the smell of heat and old dust. Of course Mom gave me hell about it, they were worried you'd be X-rayed to a crisp if you were too close to an operating TV back then. Naturally I had to continue doing whatever bothered dear ol' Mom, so it's been vacuum tubes ever since. That DuMont was so primitive, it didn't even have channel switching. There was a knob you'd turn while looking thru a little glass window at a strip of cloth with channel numbers on it, backlit by a pilot lamp, and fine tune your way to each channel. There was a gap I think between channels 5 & 6 where the picture went blank but there was the FM radio band. By the time I was in chickengarden or 1st grade, I found a daily "scary story" radio show called Beyond the Green Door, and got permission to rev up the set and listen. I was ordered to keep the volume down and sit close to the speaker. Funny thing, no X-ray paranoia if you were listening, not looking. Back up a couple years, I remember getting annoyed at watching Mighty Mouse. It was clever and entertaining all right, but even at age 3 or 4 I understood something: the good guys don't always win. That's a hell of a profound truth for a little kid to grasp. Already disillusioned with TV entertainment and it was still a couple years 'til 1960. Also used to sneak downstairs and watch over Mom & Dad's heads while they watched Perry Mason. That's where I learned how to run a tape recorder, but we'll let that be another story for another day.

The local pharmacy Dale Drugs had the pinball machine tube tester. It was there all right, looking very tall, imposing & scientific in pale green enamel and steel panel. But I don't remember ever using it. I do remember hauling the ol' DuMont to a repair shop in the next town a couple times. At age 9 I offered to carry the lunking wooden box in and out to spare Mom some labor. Inside the shop I was told to shut up and stand still. There was a fascinating item there that caught my attention: an oscilloscope. Then I remember seeing the bill - a whopper that had my Dad foaming. 90 cents for one tube, buck & a quarter for another one, plus labor. There was no sales tax - now that's the good old days! The whole thing was about $4.50 and ran another year or 2 until it finally went up in a cloud of awful stinky smoke. Hey, maybe I got dosed with selenium & never knew it. Then came the new transistor RCA b&w, and new programs to match: Soupy Sales, Get Smart, Addams Family, Gilligan, Laugh-In, Smothers Bro's, etc. There was nothing to look at anymore in the back of the set, lucky there were finally some programs worth watching.

By the time I was getting thru hi school, finally developed some interest in rock n roll. Some of my schoolmates had instruments and amps. One guy had a black Les Paul and Fender Bandmaster & 2x12, all looking and sounding fantastic. Another got himself an electric bass and when he played with the school jazz band, what a terrific sound he had. That got my ear - I asked him what he recommended for gear and he suggested a Sunn amp and JBL speakers. Well that would have been a cool rig but way beyond my means. I did manage to score a Mustang bass for $60 near the end of my HS senior year, then grabbed a darn nice and surprisingly affordable Traynor YBA-1A + 2x15 cab, first year in college. From then on I always had work playing fraternities, parties, local clubs & the student union Rathskeller. Then I had to also become the PA and gear fixit guy, there was nobody else to do it and store service was crap. I also started going to rock concerts. Hiwatt & Marshall stacks, Hammonds, Leslies, Moog synths, mountains of PA bins & horns, mysterious wedge shaped boxes at the bases of mic stands. And I started getting involved - the rest is history, that's how I got here.

NEXT!

[Reeltarded]

Cash. I used cash.

[M Fowler]

I was born in 1956 and grew up on a farm in North Dakota.

There were city junk yards and each farmer had a dump site back then. My brothers and I would get everything we needed from those dump sites, bicycles, Maytag washing machine engines with kick start for our mini bikes and electronic parts like speakers, wire, etc.

My dad had an open chassis tube radio on the work bench shelf that would shock you when you touched it. I learn very early about safety. All of us kids would build stuff so it was just natural to get involved with fixing electronic units. My first guitar amp was an old mono unit from a record player console, PP 6V6 and 12Ax7 tubes I added 1/4" jacks and used large console speaker in home made enclosure.

Got all my OD caps, wire, pots and other stuff from the dump. Those were the good old days. We also had Radio Shack, Lafayette and Olson Electronics catalogs to order from too.

Got my first EH LPB1 from the advertisements in Guitar Player magazines and still have those old issues.

Mark

[Phil_S]

...'48 DuMont TV...between channels 5 & 6 where the picture went blank but there was the FM radio band...

Yeah! I remember that! The tuner was on a flywheel, no clicks. I loved that TV. It was left in the basement after we got updated in the early '60's. It still worked, but not too well. It was the only FM radio in the house. By the late '60's I had managed to move my bedroom to the basement, where I had unlimited space. There were great AOR stations on the FM band, but you had to be rich to get an FM radio. I felt lucky to have it.

[johnnyreece]

I was born in 82, well into the transistor era, so I didn't have all the cool light bulbs to play with growing up. I have always loved to solder/tinker, though. I eventually decided I wanted something other than my SS Crate amp. So, I plunged into the tube world with what I suspect is many people's first kit: A 5E3. I got the kit from Weber, who ships their amps with a copper cap rectifier. Funny story...my first one failed spectacularly. I was afraid I'd done something wrong. Turns out, was just a faulty copper cap, and after popping in the new one, I had beautiful (while at the same time nasty) sound. Now the Crate sits in the garage, and is my "test amp" for when I'm working on guitars. My other tube amps have the place of honor in my "guitar room". And hundreds (or thousands...who's counting ) of dollars have left my wallet to make it so.

[sliberty]

Most of my early amps were tube amps simply because they were prevalent. Ampeg Reverberocket, BF Twin, BF Vibroverb, and eventually a HiWatt Custom 100 (still have it, but have no where to play this beast). I did make the mistake of buying a Sunn Concert Lead (horrible distortion tones), but that was short lived - traded it in with some cash for the HiWatt.

When I was a kid, I followed Craig Anderton's articles in Guitar Player, and build many of the pedals. Fast forward 25 years, and I discovered that people were building amps, and that there were support forums online. Wow that was a kick in the head. I never imagined a person could do that - only a company

So I asked a lot of questions about safety (moving from 9V DC to 450 DC was sort of scary to me), and then bought a Deluxe 5e3 head/cabinet kit, followed by a Princeton 5f2 kit (10" combo). They were built essentially as a paint-by-numbers project. I knew nothing about electronics. But I bought some books, and asked a million questions, and now I know 1% of what the rest of you guys know

I've built about 25 amps, and currently still have 8 of them for myself. Two are not yet working properly, and the rest are very satisfying to play (it strokes my ego that I built "that"). I love them all, but...who needs 8 amps? So, I do plan to thin out the herd a bit fairly soon (guitars too). I don't need so much gear (I don't even gig more than twice a year - its really just an obsession) and I want to get down to a more reasonable level.

I actually bought an amp recently (Gasp!). Well, I had the wife buy it for me Its a Vox AC4C1-12. Very cool amp. A little bright and lacking in the bottom end as you might expect (out of the box). But I have replaced the OT with one I had on hand, and that made a really nice difference. I also front it with a cheap EQ pedal to enhance the bass a bit, and in the end, it sounds great. It definitely pulls off the Vox thing nicely in a small and not very expensive package. Its my night time play amp these days, but can also be used for rocking out during the day at moderately loud levels, or small low volume jams. I don't record, but it would be killer for recording.

[Phil_S]

At age 50 I bought my first electric guitar. I'd always wanted one, but time and money failed to converge before that. Then I realized I needed a tube amp. I bought a mid-60's Gibson GA20-RVT. It hummed like a [favorite expletive here]. I couldn't find anyone to fix it -- local techs were either too busy or not interested. With the help of another (now disfunctional) forum I got the help I needed to fix it. It took months. I knew nothing. "Lead dress?" What's that? It was an onion of a problem...multiple issues...peeled back one layer at a time. I literally shook in my shoes the first time I worked on a live circuit. I clipped the meter leads in place, power on, power off, move the leads, power on, power off.... There was no way I was going to be able to hold a meter lead freehand. Someone told me later that it wasn't the kind of amp to cut your teeth on. Oh really? By then I understood. It was also too late. I had a monkey on my back...this place is a sort of methadone for me, keeps the habit in check via vicarious experience.

[Structo]

Heeheehee,
Thanks for responding everyone.
I know a lot of you guys were born in the 50's like me.

And God bless those that weren't.

Electronic Theory was simpler then.

We didn't have to worry about what semi-conductors did (too much yet) so that left the tube world, which was probably better science at the time.
At least we knew it was kind of safe, dis-regarding the hot light bulbs on the chassis.

I'm sure everyone here remembers a tube failure at one time or another.
If the device was properly protected, then it was as simple as troubleshooting for the problematic tube or simply testing every tube in your brown paper bag.

So yet, here we are discussing devices that faded into obscurity, for most of the population, 50 years ago.

I'll tell you what.
Vacuum tubes are a great ice breaker at parties.

There were periods of time I didn't think anything about tubes.
Solid State was the thing.
But probably for most pro-musicians, their sound, guitar and amp was still powered
by tubes. Or at least in the studios at the time.

Love the stories.
T

[Leo_Gnardo]

I'll tell you what.
Vacuum tubes are a great ice breaker at parties.

Howzat work? I figure they would shatter before the ice would. I'll stick with a hammer, or buy ice pre-crushed if it's going to be used en masse right away.

Ohhhh, that kind of ice breaker. Right, when I talk tubes at a party it breaks the ice all right, I fall right thru and then immediately ignored and forgotten, but I hear the whispers: "that guy's a NUT!" Might as well go home & fire up the soldering iron & check out what's going on at TAG. And I've done that.

[cbass]

i got ny first tube amp when a drunk blind guy ran into my brothers truck while sitting at intersection . he had a strat and peavey tube amp so we took that since he didnt have insurance or a liscence and was drunk and legally blind i think that was '88 0r so

I feel lik a young pup compared to you guys elvis died imediatly after my birth and skynyrd crashed a couple months later

[drew]

I remember tube stuff when I was a kid, and putting the number stickers on the tubes and the chassis and taking taking the tubes down to the store that had the tester. Also remember that we had a lousy black&white TV that was sent to some guy my dad knew for repairs a few times, and finally came back with a Dymo Tape label stuck to the back that said "NEXT TIME JUNK IT."

I never had any idea what the inside of a guitar amp looked like, or that there was a hobby/cottage industry of building tube amps from scratch or from repurposed old gear, until one day I came across on some website a picture of a JTM45 chassis that somebody had built. That led to 18watt.com, ax84, then later the Brown Note forum, Hoffman's, and TAG.