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Questions about tubes and gear that glows. FAQ

Many many moons ago

hi, bjh. Selection for certain performance has been going on since Lee DeForest made the first triode. Early on it was impossible to make two tubes exactly alike. They were graded post manufacture. This was the primary bugbear for industrial laboratories - Atlantic Telephone and
Telegraph. What you are talking about really began when the phrase 'tube
rolling' became ubiquitous in the popular audio press. Reviewers were steered to better than stock factory offerings. Clearly one could obtain better performance by so doing. All this was mainly in the post 80's tube renaissance. The other notion that fueled rolling was the gradually mainstreamed idea that 1. NOS or OS tubes could beat the pants off modern pretenders 2. the supply of NOS or OS tubes may be (is) finite. This is what fuels it today. Regretfully tube selection is not the only variable on the path to deep audio satisfaction - away from the hurly
burly of commercial audio per se. If the sound is what entrances you, beguiles you, leads you on then please consider entering the world
of audio crafting as a first step in learning more about the care and
feeding of the vacuum tube. You will learn that, yes, tube selection is paramount but there are so many other variables and techniques to apply for that electron tube to serve the music to best advantage that to fixate on rolling alone is kind of sad.


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  • Many many moons ago - elektron 05/18/1205:01:33 05/18/12 (0)

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