[Peter Wieck]

On Jan 1, 1:31*am, "Ian Iveson"
wrote:
How would you explain to a novice how to design a valve
amplifier?

Mistake here to combine "novice" and "design". Even with an EE
background, tubes are no longer in common parlance within Academia -
students are well beyond the "Edison Effect" as it were. And without
an EE background, even the theory of tubes is difficult to explain in
the level of detail that would allow a novice to "design" anything.

So, they are left with a cobbler's options vs. a shoemaker's options
for learning the trade. They need to learn how these things work
starting with very simple things and gradually working their way up to
where they might be able to predict an outcome. Even with all this,
most everything in tubes that can be done has been done, and done-to-
death in most cases. So they could do a great deal worse than to pick
some established options and designs from whatever decade they like
and attempt to emulate it.

New valve enthusiasts, and especially young people, are
needed or there'll be nothing left when we all die.

Not hardly. As long as there are wannabe musicians using electrical
amplification, tubes will survive in active use and at least some
level of experimentation will occur. Just Tuesday, I finished
rebuilding two Fender amps (Princeton Reverb and Champ) that were
brought to me on the edge of smoke-loss. By someone 20 years old. He
wanted them to be reliable and stable - he knew all about 'special
caps' and things like the "harmonica modification" and several other
options. We went over them in turn and their goods and bads. He
decided to stick with the OEM design, but using new caps rated at
higher voltages and so forth.

20 years old. And the Champ was something his buddy (17) found in his
dad's closet. Needed caps and a set of tubes. A few years ago, I
worked (from Saudi) with a 16 YO in San Francisco via his mom and dad
to rebuild a Marshall. The mom could put my instructions into a state
they could follow, the dad was an automotive electrician, so between
them the amp was rebuilt.

As to the audio stuff - I am pretty sanguine about that as well. The
Chinese are doing the hobby a favor in a small way by showing us how
*not* to do it, yet forcing those who go that way to have to learn
more so as to be able to undo their kludges.

The major issue that exists with the hobby is the cost. Even cheap
tubes and hardware far exceed that of solid-state stuff. after which,
kids these days may have a certain amount of money but they neither
have the otherwise-unmanaged time we had growing up nor, typically,
the space to dedicate to such a hobby. Those are things not so easily
solved.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA