nuvista

[Bill Layer]

 Hi Tony,

 It uses
>Nuvistas, some sort of mini-valve, with all the inherent advantages of
>valves/tubes and the compactness of trannies. Small metal canisters about
>the size of a BFY33, I think. Pictures can be deceptive. Does anyone know
>more about these wee beasties?

The Nuvista, or Nuvistor as RCA called it, was a latter day vacuum-valve
entrant into the race for compactness. When they were introduced in the
mid-late 1960's, Nuvistors outperformed the crude solid state devices
(mostly germanium) in many areas, especially in terms of noise. Physically,
they were not much larger, either.

In our times, the devices are now out of production, and fairly scarce
(unless you care not about expense...) A construction article was written
last year in Glass Audio describing an original Hi-Fi preamp design
employing four Nuvistors. I'm sure EB recalls the article, I don't have a
subscription  

If you are genuinely interested in implementing a tube circuit, there are
MANY more simple designs, which employ common devices, and offer plenty of
performance. Consider the fact that both (discrete) solid state and vacuum
devices are both fully mature technologies (at least in our realm), and are
not likely to change in the forseeable future. This means that future
generations will likely be hearing the same difference between tubes and
solid state that we are hearing today. (This bit of wisdom courtesy Ralph
Karsten)

Ok. Enough propaganda.


Bill Layer
St.Paul, Minnesota USA
"Quantity has a quality all of it's own"