THE ULTRA MUSICALITY OF MODERN VACUUM TUBE AMPLIFIERS
Vacuum Tubes, Valves, have a long, honorable, and complex history with observations of thermionic fundamental free electron emission by Guthrie in 1873, a decade before Edison’s 1883 observation of the same effect, although Edison is usually credited as the grandfather, or great-grandfather of theoretical vacuum tube beginnings. Innovation followed quickly with the Fleming diode, around 1904, followed by the Lee De Forest AUDION, in 1907 also a diode, which however morphed on over rather quickly into the first tube capable of linear amplification, the TRIODE, under US Patent 879,532, in 1908.
The TRIODE became fully modern in the work of the Finnish inventor, Eric Tigerstedt, who improved the triode by making the electrodes concentric cylinders, for his work putting sound on film in Berlin in 1914, on the eve of the Great War. The famed German inventor Schottky, co-inventor of the ribbon speaker added a second grid or screen grid, to moderate Miller effect emissions in his TETRODE tube of 1919, which was quickly followed on in 1926 by the PENTODE tube which added a suppressor grid. And now we are only 9 years away from the first BEAM POWERED PENTODE, the famed 6L6, appearing around 1935, and in many variants still in full production right now TODAY.
If we follow discussions of VACUUM TUBE SOUND on the internet, or elsewhere, we find the technology described as musically warm and highly detailed with the dynamic, inner voice MELOS, or spirit of the music fully preserved; a description of fundamental even order harmonic musical integrity. But talking or writing about music is a bit like describing any intrinsically emotional or spiritual human experience using words and phrases. Music is a unique, perhaps THE original language, fully expressive within itself, with evocative power to which words can only aspire.
Thus, and further, we can consider that musicians overwhelmingly use vacuum tube equipment, in electric guitar amplifiers and the like, even though a paired consequence is a very solid workout from the equipment weight in set-up and performance.
If we were able to view the ultimate audio system, one perhaps belonging to St. Cecelia, the Patron Saint of music, surely we would see and hear the visibly glowing electron stimulated passionate voice of the music itself from within her
