wrote in message
oups.com

Guitars, which have six, seven, or twelve strings and therefore are
polyphonic, or Hammond organs ("a lot" of tonewheels) , are obviously
affected by intermod. For 'good' or 'ill', but we are not talking
about guitar amps, fx boxes, or Leslies ARE WE? Nooo.

Yup, but a guitar is just one instrument. An orchestra is more like 100.
Which one is more profoundly affected by IM?

A significant number-I'd venture 'more than not'-of studios have tube
mics and mic pre's.

Venture what you will, you've obviously got no facts to back yourself up.

Furthermore, few if any studios have only tube mics. Tube mics are like the
pepper sauce of audio. If you want THAT flavor, that's what you do.

Many also have the Teletronix and Fairchild
compressors and Pultec limiters and their Manley and deParavicini
clones which are used on recordings where ofttimes "tube distortion"
is NOT called for. Put simply the tubes are not there for effects, at
least not always.

Horsefeathers. The basic function of those boxes is EFX, aside from the fact
that a tiny fraction of them might be tubed. The tube sound is just EFX on
top of EFX.


However, you're playing ignorant of the fact that production and
reproduction are two different things. Home audio is about reproduction, and
musicians instruments and studios are about production. There's a big
difference.

As far as tube life, tens of thousands of hours in properly built tube
boxes is the norm-key here, properly built.

10.000 hours is optimistic if you are critical of performance. My Dyna ST70
had to be retubed a minimum of once a year if I wanted to keep it anywhere
near spec and sounding good and clean. In fact, its maximum power output was
down by an audible increment after a few months. Then there was the *joy* of
balancing the output tubes.

Marshall heads are, from
the standpoint of audio reproduction, improperly built on purpose.

OK. Few tubies would use a Marshall for a hi fi amp.

The
old McIntosh amps would run a set of output tubes ten or twenty years
in every-day listening-with a power cycle every day.

LOL!. Mac's cost an arm and a leg compared to mainstream tubed hifi amps,
but did provide some value in terms of longetivity. However, anybody who
went to Mac clinics saw plenty of tubes being swapped, and these weren't 20
year old Macs. I figure if Mac employees swapped Mac tubes at Mac expense,
then there was a good reason.

If tube amps had always been the standard we'd have tubes today that
would last much longer than the table scraps tubes made now do or even
those 'NOS golden era' tubes hoarders and tube rollers fetish over
today.

Let's face it, tubes are a dead-end technology except for a few niches. True
30 years ago, even more true today.

But you're right, the antics of many tubies takes a lot away from any
credibility they might have.

To the extent that Arny and others deter people from tube amps,
the market size is reduced and the incentive to make new tubes to high
standards reduced-in that sense he's the problem.

It's not me that deters people from buying tubed amps, its the simple hard
facts. Tubed equipment isn't reliable enough for the general public, and its
price/performance sucks mightily.

I don't now and have never advocated telling people things that aren't
true about tube amps-the non-solderers out there are probably better
off at Best Buy!-but discouraging potential hobbyists from an
enjoyable pastime they might like (the pro users will continue to
ignore you anyway, Arny) is mean-spirited and showing your
hindquarters.

Hey, if you want to inhale hot solder flux, be my guest. I've been to do a
bit of that myself. However, my time is valuable to the extent that I'd
prefer to spend my time with things that work well, last and have a
reasonable price, and that excludes tubes from hi fi.