Garth wrote: Tue May 30, 2023 3:20 pm
At this point the nutube does seem like a solution in search of a problem. I think the obvious first place it might have been great is being able to get tube sound out of a smaller profile amp weight and footprint. To a lesser extent, power savings in that tubes do generate a lot of excess heat...but I think there are so many great solid-state amps out there already, why do we need this?
Since the whole "tube mojo" thing is pretty widely scoffed at around these parts, my experience that it seems to be the power tube section is where the "magic" happens in tube amps. In the world of vintage amps, a MusicMan for example doesn't in anyway sound like a transistor preamp to me and still sounds great at louder volumes which is less likely to be said of a lot of solid state amps from that era.
Again, that being said, there's so many really nice solid state options now, it's hard to see what we actually could get w/ a nutube. I mean looking at the track record of what a lot of new tech has done in the "smaller, cheaper" realm for amps, it's not really promising. And most of the companies that tried capitalizing on that whole thing by putting a 12AX7 in every goddam possible EVERYTHING did not do this world any service since there were so so so many more misses than hits in that world.
Anyway, I'm really just pointlessly pontificating on what Tyler already said clearly. It's really hard to know even now what this thing is actually capable of and if it's any good or not even now EIGHT YEARS after its release. I personally haven't heard anything I found desirable yet that couldn't be gotten just as well elsewhere from a transistor.
They're available for sale though on the DIYAudio store. Let's crowdfund Dr. Balls into making something w/ them and
then decide if they're any good or not.
I don't really think about them as a solution to a problem as much as just another architecture to design around. Like choosing different transistors, IC, or tubes, now there is another thing to play with. I might buy some just to play with. I was going to make a MK2 of the Bassman style fuzz I built with J201's about 10 years ago, maybe Ill try one with these stupid things for fun.
EDIT: HA! Nevermind that shit, those things are $50 a pop. Ill just try to do it with the pile of 6111 mini tubes I have lying around. I think I got 8 of those of runder $50 a few years back and haven't figured out what to do with them.
I have one of their dev kits and haven't dug into it yet - I'm hoping its along the lines of 'you can still make a 12ax7 sound like shit', but when there's really, really nice transistors out there in the world it's hard to want to bother with something as hard to physically manage