Thanks to the members and administrators and Doug Hoffman for making this resource exist- I'm very excited to get started on this deep dive.
I consider myself to be reasonably competent/experienced/intelligent hobbyist and DIYer, and particular over the years I've become almost militant about DIYing any and every challenge that comes my way. I'm really risk averse in this way- I want control. My philosophy has become something like: 'If I don't know you really well and trust you, then the only way to know if you're doing it right is if I, myself am an expert. And if I'm an expert (or even basically competent), then I might as well do it myself.' I've fixed a lot of our household appliances over the years with this perspective.
And now that I'm getting back into guitar music, I'm hoping to have a lot of fun with this philosophy.
In reading through a bunch of these web pages, one thing that caught my eye was the basic caution that you really need to understand these designs when you build them, which definitely reflects my experiences, when I was young, of building kits without understanding how they work- it's a dead end.
For reference, years ago I had a year of calculus based physics classes, which included the basic electric circuits curriculum, but it's been a long time, and I don't feel I developed a _great_ intuitive feel for the subject matter. Put another way, I can generally follow a guided tour of a circuit analysis, but I wouldn't have much faith in analyzing a circuit on my own.
Also, as much as I'm a music-head and guitar-head and tech-head, I'm not a gear-head, so the reference designs don't really mean much to me.
So, I offer a great big thanks-in-advance for any guidance on some good resources. Unfortunately, as I'm sure everyone understands I have to emphasize the word _good_- every search is drowning me in hits in one of three categories:
1- 1500 page reference manuals- awesome but not really useful for my needs.
2- non-technical, 'primer' treatments that intuitively, and often really weakly and misleadingly, describe electron behavior, and two paragraphs later wrap up with a weak tribute to the 'tube sound'.
3- technical treatments that are convoluted and _wrong_. I've had the pleasure/privilege following discussions involving true experts (to the best of my ability to discern), and so I think I have nose for BS, and there seem to be a lot of 'experts' out there that don't understand the fundamentals. If you're wrong on the basics that I _know_, I simply can't put much faith in your opinions of things that I don't personally know. See above, and call it 'the expert conundrum'. Proof by assertion is not proof :-)
I'm hoping to find resources on:
1) Tube amp circuit design/analysis, with emphasis on tube function and design considerations of course.
2) Tube amp selection- what are all the differences of these designs- both discrete features/controls and subjective/qualitative sound performance. Like I said- I'm not a genealogist when it comes to these revered designs.
Again, thanks very much for existing, and for any thoughts on my post.
Take care,
Gerry
Topic: Hello from an Old N00b (Read 3710 times)