Time to chime re: tube synth

[Bill Layer]

Hey hey all,

I've been following the LATEST tube synth thread, and it strikes me as 
being quite a great deal like the last several. Pro arguments from the open 
minded, derision from the silicon-entrenched and NOBODY building one save 
myself and one other brave soul who actually built prototypes.

With respect to the argument that the thermal drift experiment is a hoax, 
due to the tube's superior insulating properties: This is a lot like coming 
in second in a footrace, and claiming that it was only due to the winner's 
superior body. Silicon devices could be encapsulated as easily in glass as 
a thermionic device, but they aren't because they are products of the 
plastic age, and hence CHEAP.

When the transistor was first brought to use, it wasn't because it was more 
linear, or better sounding; it emerged in the consumer market as a cheap, 
light alternative, and by that time we were competing with the Asians for 
consumer electronics. Funny that in a world of "linear, stable and robust" 
transistors, the simple 6080W vacuum voltage regulator was still being 
produced in 1987, some 40 years after the advent of silicon devices. The 
machine of capitalism has much more to do with the fact that we subsist on 
doped silicon, than the actual properties of the devices themselves.

Remember the promise of plastic? How it would enrich all of our lives with 
inexpensive consumer goods? How true was that (just look at a new appliance 
for god's sake)? What other things were said back then that also proved to 
be untrue?


Carrying the torch,
Bill




+----------------------------------------------------------+
|      "The" Bill Layer - Frogtown, Minnesota. U.S.A.      |
| Vacuum tubes, Analog, Motorcycles and Other Alternatives |
+----------------------------------------------------------+	
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| <blayer at uswest.net> |  | <b.layer at vikingelectronics.com> |
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