Patrick Turner wrote:
Today's ppl don't need books any more to build a decent amp. They just search around to find the best source of info according to their uneducated, inexperienced and incompetent background... (snip)
Well I think you are half right there, even though unnecessarily pessimistic. There are lots of amateurs starting out and the simple blogs and "picture howtos" are useful to get a beginning. But then there are also great collections like this, that takes a bit longer to get through:
http://www.tubebooks.org/technical_books_online.htm
When I first got interested in restoring and building tube audio in the late 90s, I learned so much by going through the RAT archives and various homepages (mostly gone now, though). Armed with that, and my highschool maths and physics, it was (and still is) a fun learning slope to get sound and then (wow!) GOOD sound out of various old surplus tubes and transformers. But I eventually did get the books too, including RDH4.
I work a lot in teaching today and it is sad how few young people I see actually take the time to read long books when there are shorter and simpler sources of information (and gossip) that they can find online. I think this will be a growing problem in the future. But I still think books are the more longlasting medium and well worth writing.
Martin