New member from Sweden

[Jean Passepartout]

Hi,
Found this forum a couple of years ago, but didn't register until now. I've been tinkering with electronics since I was 8-9 years old, when my father gave me a Philips EE. I got my first electric guitar about 1980, and from there on it was mainly about converting anything available into a guitar amp of some kind. My first experiences with the somewhat higher voltages in a tube amp compared to the Josty-kits were a bit painful. You live and you learn. This was way before the internet, so when I got photo-copies of some of the more classic amps it was pure heaven. Many Dynacos and similar got a new life with a Bassman- och Marshallesqe preamp. Old tube amps were sometimes given away for free...

During daytime, I have a perfectly normal job as an architect. My mental yoga takes place late evenings in my small electronics workshop in the basement of our house. I also play guitar in a small but enthusiastic cover band in the town where I live, which means that there's also some maintenance to do with our gear.

Tube amps makes me happy. Both guitar amps as well as Hifi gear. Right now, among other projects I'm restoring a Perpetuum Ebener HSV60 and a couple of Dynacos. Suddenly two Quad II's turn up as well. They're ex-Swedish radio, and it was a link about these that made me register here eventually.

Regards,
Tomas

 

[Ricardus]

Welcome...

 

[ruffrecords]

Another tube enthusiast. Brilliant! Welcome!

Cheers

Ian

 

[Ricardus]

Another tube enthusiast. Brilliant! Welcome!

Cheers

Ian

VALVES!!!!!!

 

[Jean Passepartout]

Thanks for the warm welcome. Tubes, valves, röhren, rör, whatever... I find it quite amusing that even most french seems to refer to "tubes".
Anyway, I was on holiday in Greece many years ago with an old girlfriend. I really hate hot vacations in the sun, but I had promised her... I made it two days on the beach, then I couldn't stand neither the boredom nor the heat. This was not at the normal tourist spots, but out on the countryside. So, remember this was pre internet, so no google or other ways of cheating. In my wallet, I kept a little note with useful phrases in other languages, and this included "tubes" (or valves...) in a variety of language including greek.

I hired a car an drove to the nearest town looking for something that remotely looked like a radio or tv store. I showed my little notebook and got tremeneous help. Found a couple of repair shops and really nice people, and brought a lot of old tuvalves and other useful stuff back to our hotel. Today, I realise that I should have bought a LOT more NOS valubes...

One of the ongoing project is a guitar amp made according to the methods and parts that were available in the late 20's. That includes horn speakers and transformer coupling. It will probably not be finished in many years. So much to do, so little time.

 

[andYz00m]

Welcome!

 

[gyraf]

Welcome, Tomas!

I can very much relate to your vacation in the south: Attached holiday-snapshot shows me window-shopping in Budapest, Hungary sometime around 1995 - seconds before I realize I'm staring at a NOS swivel connector for the u47.. The old lady running the shop didn't speak a word english, french or german, which complicated things.

Luckily a friend of hers turned up for lunch, and would translate my rudimentary german... I also asked for tubes, and she had a long hand-written and clearly private list of stock left - but she told me that all audio tubes for hifi, like the ECC and the EL types were long gone.

Just for the fun of it I asked if there could be any VF14 on the list - and yes, she said: The national radio would buy those all the time in the 50'es, so there should be a handful in stock somewhere.. She could look for them in the storage, could I come back next day?

I think so

Turned out there was eight VF14's waiting for me, which translate into a pretty long life expectancy for my u47

/Jakob E.

 

[13engrsapper]

Welcome Tomas!