That won't do the poor valve any good. I think I know the head phone amps you're talking about, they use Russian triode-ski, post up a piccy.
Valve amps shouldn't humm, that's Marmitee design. When people say "listen thru the humm", I have to leave the room.
There seem to be good ‘uns and bad ‘uns. Svetlana in Russia used to be good and I believe OEM valves for others. You not going to be building your own valve factory overnight, even if you knew how to make them. Really only the guitar amp business that’s keeping valves going (thankfully).
Would that account for needing to warm up for 3-4 seconds before the volume fades in over the next 2 seconds? Honest Q - I no idea.
That bit I do agree with, but there's still plenty of old stock about, if you look.hard enough. Some of Russian triode-ski, very good comrade, 30 watts single ended possible with GM70, pulse transmitter triode, copper anodes better than carbon, I have one to fix, 1200volts on anode, very hair raising, if you get it wrong. Big valve, but not as big as bear
Mostly mains hum through the pickups, I’d think. Guitar amps shouldn’t hum (or hiss) if they’re properly designed.
Single coil pickups mains hum, humbuckers don't... apparently. Here's a pic of the little beauty. The white push button switch in the foreground is the one I'm trying to resolder.
The Russians fell in their feet, as they were so far behind they still had factorys when valves came back into fashion . Still banging out ECC83s, EF86s, EL34s and the like.
True, but you wouldn’t want to listen to a guitarist playing through a valve hi-fi amp. It would be indescribably boring.
Seriously, yes, but some of their own stuff is amazing, they took it much further, coz, as you say, they couldn't manufacture with silicon, there's some real gems, stuff the West never did. 6N30, 6C45pi etc. The 6C45pi had a 9 watt anode in the same envelope as an ECC83, amazing bloody thing, better than vodka, like a pocket rocket, better than the fabled WE437, there you see, I do need to get a life...
Noooo! Please no. I do agree with you. Horses for courses. Valves are still around, which is a Good Thing.
I don't have a trad hifi, just the pc and a box with A/D converter, mic pre amps, outs for powered monitors, headphone amp etc Digital all the way here but emulating old valve gear with software is a huge fad in recording these days - people want that old tape/valve warmth...or they can be suckered into thinking they can buy gadgets that will magically make up for their lack of skill and experience - the GUIs convince them they're buying a real thing, but none of them can possibly do what the original gear did, it's a huge trick. For decades people have been buying a thing called a BBE sonic maximiser that's supposed to create harmonics and sub bass, but actually...all it is is an EQ. lol This kind of thing...a channel strip. You might have this repeated 50 times, one on every channel of your mixer - far too many knobs and buttons for my liking. Too easy to spend 5 minutes recording something bad then 3 weeks trying to make it sound good, like bolting shiny things on rubbish engines. It's all about the performance as they say. These things can be £200 a pop and more and people have ... a lot of them. I only use free ones but still I have over 300 compressors, amp emulations, reverbs, effects etc etc. This business is HUGE and very profitable in a world where for £1500 inc the pc you can have better recording equipment than a £2M studio had 30 years ago - everyone is at it with 60,000 new tunes uploaded to spotify every single day. It's the new fishing.
@zedders, if that headphone amp, I assume it's a headphone amp, is the one I am thinking of, it might not be, but if it is, the valve is a line driver/output buffer. So, it would indeed be in the audio circuit as it's working as a "cathode follower".
