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Old 4th April 2007   #1
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primer on tubes

I've been looking around for info on replacing tubes in an ART Pro Vla and find that my basic understanding of tubes and the nomenclature used in their description is very poor.

i'm looking for pointers (on the web)... a primer that would help me make sense of the jargon.

thanks,
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Old 4th April 2007   #2
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Have you checked out http://www.eurotubes.com/ ?

They have lots of info on there, as does www.watfordvalves.com
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Old 4th April 2007   #3
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You can get a lot of your valve/tube questions answered here, if you have any particular questions yet.
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Old 4th April 2007   #4
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Good place for such questions, the lab

http://www.prodigy-pro.com/forum/

enjoy!
matt
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Old 4th April 2007   #5
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But if it's just the one type of pre you're worried about, there's very little you need to know. What sort of a tube is the stock tube, a 12AX7 or something? There are a million nice ones out there just waiting for you to mess around with them, and changing tubes is very often a walk in the park, even though the very idea of it seems to strike the fear of God into a lot of people, even on Gearslutz!!
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Old 4th April 2007   #6
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BEFORE you take out the original tube, draw on paper how it's positioned, what it looks like in there. when you take it out, you may well find that the socket it plugs into has lots of holes and the tube can be plugged in many different ways. only one way (the original way) is correct, any other way could go boom.... and as you pull it out and see what the pin layout is and where the label is on the glass of the tube itself relative to the pin layout, draw that also, so your replacement tube (which prob looks surprisingly different but should have the same type of pin layout) will be put in the same way, not turned so it dies or goes boom.

Yes, I'm trying to scare you, and in that device the plate voltage is relatively low, but it's still vital to not breaking things, and when you get into bigger power amp tubes like in a guitar amp, you'll find that putting it in wrong can actually be very very serious....

other than that, look up somehwere about how ax, at, au etc relate in their output levels etc.

Cheers,
Don
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Old 5th April 2007   #7
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This is good advice in general, but you shouldn't have too many options with anything like a 12AX7 unless the socket is designed in a pointlessly unhelpful way. There's a big gap between two of the pins and the socket design will show you where those two pins go. Problem solved. JUST GET THE RIGHT TYPE OF VALVE!!
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