Hey kids, thought you might get a kick out of this. I re-tubed my preamp over the weekend and made an interesting discovery.

I've peeked through the air vents at the 12AU7 tubes inside glowing orange... I assumed because tubes in my mind were supposed to get red hot.

See FIG1


So I removed the old tubes to replace with the new ones... (yes I unplugged it first) and what did I discover? But an orange LED light down in the tube mount. yeah, the tubes get warm... but not red hot, and my preamp was faking it for the look~! What a disappointment!

FIG2

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Last edited by CReddick on Feb-11-2008 at 05:52

thats interesting. how does it sound?

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haha you got vtec'd

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quote:

Originally posted by camsr thats interesting. how does it sound?

Well, long story short, way better than before. I got some JJ/Tesla replacements and they rock. the gain ratio is tad hotter than the old ones, but I'll survive.

i think i mentioned in another thread that anytime you buy any gear with tube pre's, they usually load em with crap-o chinese production tubes. Not totally the case here, but pretty typical. worth the $40-50 upgrade.

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quote:

Originally posted by Leon haha you got vtec'd

totally. this is a DBX 386 dual channel pre. I called a friend with a diff DBX unit and his had the same thing. Based on some research today, I have to assume any gear with tube pre-amps is using the fake-o technique above.

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quote:

Originally posted by Leon haha you got vtec'd

vtec pwns joo!

Okay enough of that.



Reddick, Man I HATE things like that. At the NAMM show I saw a keyboard with some tubes in it. The sad part was that they had 3 TINY LEDs on wired POINTING at the sides of the tubes randomly. I'm going to try to meet with THD this week and throw out the idea of a HOT tube preamp setup. They do well with their hot-plate setup to crank tubes up and then attenuate the output.

quote:

Originally posted by 3F05Q I'm going to try to meet with THD this week and throw out the idea of a HOT tube preamp setup. They do well with their hot-plate setup to crank tubes up and then attenuate the output.

Do it. I'd be into that shit.

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quote:

Originally posted by CReddick Do it. I'd be into that shit.

Really? I'd like to get a rollcall on such a thing.. maybe? I'd be lying if I said I wasn't trying to get a job!

Haha, theres a Behringer tube thing that does the same, looks like it glows and its because its got an LED behind it.

Here, I found a pic:

quote:

Originally posted by Sanguis Mortuum Haha, theres a Behringer tube thing that does the same, looks like it glows and its because its got an LED behind it.

Wow... I feel like we've uncovered some sort of conspiracy or something.

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consumers get a kick out of it, so the manufacturers fulfill their desires. Doesn't make any difference to the sound, so I don't care.

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