Nico Adie wrote: Fri Apr 01, 2022 3:10 pm I have one of those little Vox MV50 guys, the “Boutique” one because that’s the sort of prick I am (and it was on sale for £90). It sounds great to me, and has a Nutube in it, although I don’t know what function it performs in the circuit. It really does sound great though. That’s all I’ve got…

edit - Oh and there’s this too:

https://diyaudiostore.com/products/korg-nutube

bishopdante wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2022 1:49 am Robots can make tubes, as well as third world style factory labourers.

bishopdante wrote: Wed Apr 06, 2022 10:59 am I couldn't agree more, but my point is that small-scale high-automation vacuum devices are current production, particularly in a laboratory setting.

Rapid manufacturing means that the concerns about mass production and cartel effects on technology use can be a thing of the past - tube was unsuitable as a consumer technology. Big, expensive, and with terrible thermal efficiency. A vacuum tube telephone system was a hassle to run.

Despite the mass produced modules of the past dwindling in supply, there are lots of engineering companies which can produce really interesting vacuum devices, particularly in the field of precision imaging. A modern vacuum package will have all manner of onboard electronics - a tube can easily have a small computer inside it, or any number of semiconductor components inside the glass these days.

The development potential for high quality audio vacuum technology for audio has been almost completely neglected, in my opinion. We haven't seen much innovation since the 1950s, so a vacuum device built using today's processes could and should be on a different level of engineering and precision. Particularly in terms of metal working, the ability to vapour deposit a printed assembly onto glass is what powers the NuTube - the grid element is printed.

However, when you start looking at the cost, weight, size and general nightmare of vacuum electronics, you can see why its use is mainly in the high energy and experimental physics domain.

This is why korg have been very clever to partner with a japanese mass-manufacturer of vacuum packages which are a 2D "biscuit production line" method, where high volume manufacturing is built into the design.

I am looking at the other angle, which is very small production, and basically the entire device being inside a very rugged series of vacuum enclosures, similar to how the military aircraft industry used to design their electronics modules in the 1950s. The whole assembly can be designed using multiphysics, and all of the electromagnetic, mechanical and acoustic qualities properly factored into the design.

You can totally hand- make your own tubes with glass blowing gear and a vacuum pump, and there are a few people who do. The glass package is of very little influence, and could feasibly be a chunk of aluminium tube with some caps screwed onto the ends like a pipe bomb. Anything that'll hold a vacuum would do, really. Reclaimed jam jars would be viable.

The people who make ships in a bottle would definitely be capable of making tubes.

bishopdante wrote: Tue May 03, 2022 4:51 am The fact is that you can now put pcbs and IC packages inside the glass assembly, so electronics is a lot further along in terms of possibilities. You could probably put nutibes inside a vacuum chamber on some wire spring suspension to soundproof them and stop them being microphonic.