I was also active in "high-level hifi" once, but fate made me do other stuff. No regrets here, i have been able to keep it as hobby all these years.
Personally i find it more like "service and tribute to a diseased friend" then
trying to make money on my tube-business. But i rather have my friend back :-(
And to be frank; active with what you like is more rewarding then being active with what you make money on .
Keep up! Tell us what you have made since last time !
I graduated back in 1981. I supposed to work for Laboratory of Thick Film ICs in Tomsk Institute of Semiconductor Devices. My internship & diploma head was a deputy manager of the Laboratory, he wanted me so bad, so managed to get a flat in an apartment complex of the Institute for me if I am being distributed to his laboratory. It was such a system in USSR, when students were guaranteed to get a job, but the distribution was done according to how "buyers" liked them, i.e. hiring managers and HR managers of enterprises. All businesses belonged to Government, so it was all pretty straightforward... Best students were getting best positions, worst students had to relocate to some small town with the factory that built some consumer electronics (best students designed and built the stuff for military and government, because it was The Top Priority to defend The Country of Free Working Class from enemies)...
Sadly, I got injured right before the distribution, so the Manager of the Laboratory who was a Party member (you know, there was only one Party allowed in USSR), gave my position with a flat to daughter of his friend! His deputy, my to-be boss, could do nothing...
I was pissed off!
A woman from a military plant right in the town wanted me; she offered me a position with a room in a dormitory for married couples, but I was so pissed off! I was also young and stupid and did not understand how hard it is to get a roof over the head in the country where all are "free and equal", but the government can't build enough of flats for everyone because economics was socialist, i.e. "scientifically organized by democratically elected servants of the people".
So, I refused all offers.
There was one HR manager from Kazakhstan, from a closed, secret, hidden enterprise called "Head Project-Technical Enterprise", and he offered fantastic options, like 2 times huge than average salary, 1 month vacation after 2 months "in the field", and the possibility to buy a cooperative condo without an ordinary waiting list. But all available positions were occupied, so he talked to our University management, and they agreed to give me my diploma, so I can go to Kazakhstan, talk to the General Manager, and get a position above the norm... Graduated students were not getting diplomas; they could get them from HR of the enterprise of distribution after 3 years of successful working...
It was the beginning of my career changes.
You may ask, "Where is audio and tubes"?
Well, audio and tubes (and transistors, and ICs) were before, when being a student I organized under the patronage of Students' Trade Union Committee of the university a laboratory where we experimented designing all the stuff for our rock band...
To be continued, if it is still interesting. ;-)
Sadly, I got injured right before the distribution, so the Manager of the Laboratory who was a Party member (you know, there was only one Party allowed in USSR), gave my position with a flat to daughter of his friend! His deputy, my to-be boss, could do nothing...
I was pissed off!
A woman from a military plant right in the town wanted me; she offered me a position with a room in a dormitory for married couples, but I was so pissed off! I was also young and stupid and did not understand how hard it is to get a roof over the head in the country where all are "free and equal", but the government can't build enough of flats for everyone because economics was socialist, i.e. "scientifically organized by democratically elected servants of the people".
So, I refused all offers.
There was one HR manager from Kazakhstan, from a closed, secret, hidden enterprise called "Head Project-Technical Enterprise", and he offered fantastic options, like 2 times huge than average salary, 1 month vacation after 2 months "in the field", and the possibility to buy a cooperative condo without an ordinary waiting list. But all available positions were occupied, so he talked to our University management, and they agreed to give me my diploma, so I can go to Kazakhstan, talk to the General Manager, and get a position above the norm... Graduated students were not getting diplomas; they could get them from HR of the enterprise of distribution after 3 years of successful working...
It was the beginning of my career changes.
You may ask, "Where is audio and tubes"?
Well, audio and tubes (and transistors, and ICs) were before, when being a student I organized under the patronage of Students' Trade Union Committee of the university a laboratory where we experimented designing all the stuff for our rock band...
To be continued, if it is still interesting. ;-)
So, I went to Kazakhstan. Found that building that looked like an ordinary apartment building. I went to front doors and asked for the company I was invited to... The answer was, "There is no such company here"... As soon as I exited the door, a man come to me and invited to follow him... He went to a small iron door, like an utility one, at the side of the building... When I entered it I found myself in a nice reception room, with nut wood panels and leather... There was a long corridor leading from it, with many doors...
Soon I was invited to meet "The Boss", who I found very knowledgeable man, well informed about the newest trends in electronics. After the interview, he told the HR manager to proceed. We went to his room, he gave me an envelope and an address in Moscow of a Ministry of Radio Production, and instructed who to approach, and who to give the letter to. He said, that they will officially "distribute" me to their enterprise, as an engineer...
My ex-wife's parents lived in the town nearby, so I went there...
Father in law poured me some vodka and started talking that we have a small kid, there will be one more soon, why should we go to some closed secret town, if we can stay with them for a while, until kids get bigger?
He introduced me to his company he worked for; it was a company that supported not only railway control systems, but also railway radio, wire communications, and electronics... They offeded me pretty good salary! Not like that "no name company" twice as big as an overage, but at least 1.5 times bigger than an overage!
So, I started working for them, as a support engineer. There were vacuum tube transceivers, of older models with 6P3S tubes, newer models with GU-32 outputs, and the latest ones, with semiconductors. They did not have problems with tube gear, but transistor based gear was hard for them to troubleshoot and service; it gave me an advantage...
Then they moved me to another department that supported multi-channel cable and wired communications. It also used tubes and semiconductors...
There was an amateur rock group there, so I joined it and immediately started building new audio stuff, with support of the whole company. Even the Boss allowed us to take big 12" speakers from stations and put there custom built line arrays with small speakers...
Then they moved me to the department that supported the system that controlled temperatures of axle bearing boxes of passing by trains... And so on, until I learned the whole radio and electronics division... Then offered a position of an Engeneer - Director of Radio and Electronics Division... There I got access to all available in the warehouse stuff, including myriads of tubes, semiconductors, passives...
However, being taught as a designer, I neglected my "Director" part of the title, concentrating mostly on "Engineer" one. ;-)
...to be continued.
Soon I was invited to meet "The Boss", who I found very knowledgeable man, well informed about the newest trends in electronics. After the interview, he told the HR manager to proceed. We went to his room, he gave me an envelope and an address in Moscow of a Ministry of Radio Production, and instructed who to approach, and who to give the letter to. He said, that they will officially "distribute" me to their enterprise, as an engineer...
My ex-wife's parents lived in the town nearby, so I went there...
Father in law poured me some vodka and started talking that we have a small kid, there will be one more soon, why should we go to some closed secret town, if we can stay with them for a while, until kids get bigger?
He introduced me to his company he worked for; it was a company that supported not only railway control systems, but also railway radio, wire communications, and electronics... They offeded me pretty good salary! Not like that "no name company" twice as big as an overage, but at least 1.5 times bigger than an overage!
So, I started working for them, as a support engineer. There were vacuum tube transceivers, of older models with 6P3S tubes, newer models with GU-32 outputs, and the latest ones, with semiconductors. They did not have problems with tube gear, but transistor based gear was hard for them to troubleshoot and service; it gave me an advantage...
Then they moved me to another department that supported multi-channel cable and wired communications. It also used tubes and semiconductors...
There was an amateur rock group there, so I joined it and immediately started building new audio stuff, with support of the whole company. Even the Boss allowed us to take big 12" speakers from stations and put there custom built line arrays with small speakers...
Then they moved me to the department that supported the system that controlled temperatures of axle bearing boxes of passing by trains... And so on, until I learned the whole radio and electronics division... Then offered a position of an Engeneer - Director of Radio and Electronics Division... There I got access to all available in the warehouse stuff, including myriads of tubes, semiconductors, passives...
However, being taught as a designer, I neglected my "Director" part of the title, concentrating mostly on "Engineer" one. ;-)
...to be continued.
Wavebourn: Keep going. This stuff is interesting, especially hearing about how it was behind the iron curtain in the old days. Train bearing temperature is still a hot topic! A few years back I was looking at vibration harvesting systems that could power the sensor so you could log a whole train bearing set centrally.
One improvement I made was especially remarkable. 😀
There were booths on 5km distance from stations that measured infrared radiation from axle bearing boxes... The local engineer had to visit them periodically checking all voltages, pulsations, adjusting sensitivity of bolometers, etc... And if pulsations of some voltage were above the threshold he had to replace the particular power supply and send it to the laboratory where another engineer had to service it.
I've found that all power sources had adequate filtering and regulation; the main source of pulsations was wrong wiring!
So together with an engineer of that laboratory we rewired one power supply, tested, and sent it to the field.
The local engineer was happy! But another problem appeared; a 1600 Hz generator of a modem was suddenly stopping working, so he had to go, remove it from the socket, and put it back to start... There were no power supply pulsations to restart it! 🙂
I've found that the reason was, it was made on a standard DTR logoc with threshold, so a multivibrator won't start by itself!
Another problem was, he had to adjust 1600 Hz frequently by a frequency meter... It was a procedure.
I designed a better generator using an opamp with frequency stabilized by a thermal-compensated Zener.
The guy was happy!
...until I was waken up in the middle of the night... There was a test laboratory passing, with a heater on a bearing box, and that station did not report the overheating!
The investigation revealed that since the system worked stable the local engineer did not go there, and did not perform calibration of temperature sensors... 😀
Well, it is not about tubes yet, but it is about hum, rectifiers, filters, voltage regulators, and wrong wiring of them. 🙂
There were booths on 5km distance from stations that measured infrared radiation from axle bearing boxes... The local engineer had to visit them periodically checking all voltages, pulsations, adjusting sensitivity of bolometers, etc... And if pulsations of some voltage were above the threshold he had to replace the particular power supply and send it to the laboratory where another engineer had to service it.
I've found that all power sources had adequate filtering and regulation; the main source of pulsations was wrong wiring!
So together with an engineer of that laboratory we rewired one power supply, tested, and sent it to the field.
The local engineer was happy! But another problem appeared; a 1600 Hz generator of a modem was suddenly stopping working, so he had to go, remove it from the socket, and put it back to start... There were no power supply pulsations to restart it! 🙂
I've found that the reason was, it was made on a standard DTR logoc with threshold, so a multivibrator won't start by itself!
Another problem was, he had to adjust 1600 Hz frequently by a frequency meter... It was a procedure.
I designed a better generator using an opamp with frequency stabilized by a thermal-compensated Zener.
The guy was happy!
...until I was waken up in the middle of the night... There was a test laboratory passing, with a heater on a bearing box, and that station did not report the overheating!
The investigation revealed that since the system worked stable the local engineer did not go there, and did not perform calibration of temperature sensors... 😀
Well, it is not about tubes yet, but it is about hum, rectifiers, filters, voltage regulators, and wrong wiring of them. 🙂
So, my improvement that suppose to be shared with all over USSR, was banned. 😀
There were other things that I improved; like found a cable insert going over one station that caused reflections and a dip on the frequency assigned in the sequence to call some other station, and so on...
I was bored by my "Director" part of the job! I hated it!
Once we had one of repeating problems with my ex, when she suddenly changed her unconditional love to unconditional hate, so you can imagine how I was feeling... But there was a wedding, and our band was invited to play the music there... And I was introduced to the brother of our keyboardist, who was also a keyboardist, but a professional one, working for a philharmonic rock group, while our keyboardist, his brother, was one of drivers in a company garage...
He was impressed by our custom sound system, and invited me to visit his boss. They recently lost a solo-guitarist, a singer, and an audio engineer... They were fired because drunk too much!
I decided to give it a try... ;-)
I was bored by a job, by a strict discipline that can lead easily to a prison if something happens with a train, and our service found mis-behaving... My wife refused to talk to me, and I did not know how long will it take this time to change hate to love back... So I went to the other town, met the group, and the New Boss. 🙂
There were other things that I improved; like found a cable insert going over one station that caused reflections and a dip on the frequency assigned in the sequence to call some other station, and so on...
I was bored by my "Director" part of the job! I hated it!
Once we had one of repeating problems with my ex, when she suddenly changed her unconditional love to unconditional hate, so you can imagine how I was feeling... But there was a wedding, and our band was invited to play the music there... And I was introduced to the brother of our keyboardist, who was also a keyboardist, but a professional one, working for a philharmonic rock group, while our keyboardist, his brother, was one of drivers in a company garage...
He was impressed by our custom sound system, and invited me to visit his boss. They recently lost a solo-guitarist, a singer, and an audio engineer... They were fired because drunk too much!
I decided to give it a try... ;-)
I was bored by a job, by a strict discipline that can lead easily to a prison if something happens with a train, and our service found mis-behaving... My wife refused to talk to me, and I did not know how long will it take this time to change hate to love back... So I went to the other town, met the group, and the New Boss. 🙂
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Do you want my usual advice?
If you want to make a small fortune in tube audio, start with a large one.
You wouldn't be the first, nor would you be the last. This said, I do know several total homebrew grass-roots 'botique' audio businesses that make solid living bucks for the proprietors.
That aside, I can't disagree much with anything that's been shared in this resurrected thread - and Wavebourn's narrative has been fairly engaging as well.
If you want to make a small fortune in tube audio, start with a large one. You wouldn't be the first, nor would you be the last. This said, I do know several total homebrew grass-roots 'botique' audio businesses that make solid living bucks for the proprietors.
That aside, I can't disagree much with anything that's been shared in this resurrected thread - and Wavebourn's narrative has been fairly engaging as well.
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kevinkr thanks for sharing your history over the years here. Sounds like you are in a good place now. I got lucky and was able to retire at an early age... for me retirement was just the beginning of a new life. But like anything else, it is what one makes of it. Some folks retire, then wonder what to do with themselves and wind up back at work again for some faceless/soul-less corporation. I'd guess that most creative people probably don't care much for the corporate world and the mega games of the corporate environment. Those that find a niche to make a living out of the corporate world are lucky and likely will make it to the other side okay, hopefully understanding themselves better and their relationship to others better, and where they want to be. Sounds heavy huh? Anyway thanks again for explaining the bias adjustment on the Audioromy FU29 to me, Prime Amp was zero help.
I'm glad I was able to help out, and admit it was self serving since one of my main goals has always been to enthusiastically promote the DIY hobby to as many people as possible, and what better place to do it than here with a group of people already inclined to be interested. 😀
Do you want my usual advice?
I think there must be a corollary to this based on my experience of taking a small fortune and making it no fortune.. 😛
agree wholeheartedly.....i am in this for the fun of it,
when people come to me asking me this and that,
and sometimes even telling me what tubes to use,
that takes the fun away.....
to me making tubes is like writing poetry,
i choose the words and phrases to use or put in...
they can either love it or leave it....
@wavebourn, having worked in Russia for six years,
i can vouch for the work ethics of my russian co workers
when making quality reports or what they call the "Acts"....
and the reason they gave me was that if they get the reports
wrong, they can end up in jail....
i can vouch for the work ethics of my russian co workers
when making quality reports or what they call the "Acts"....
and the reason they gave me was that if they get the reports
wrong, they can end up in jail....
the joys of building tube amps is something end users
seem to not comprehend....
to most end users, it is just money changing hands....
it is.....but there is more....
seem to not comprehend....
to most end users, it is just money changing hands....
it is.....but there is more....
I have full intent to retire at 55 (47 now) and do service work and building various components as my retirement career. I've been fortunate to have an executive career for the past 13 years so that I won't have to totally survive off the audio based business. I sum it up as I slaved for corporate america for 30 years so that I can then go do what I enjoy for the remaining years, however many that is.
Sure.
But I almost ended in jail by another reason...
Once an auditor come to our company. His nickname was "Vacuum cleaner", because he was not knowledgeable, instead he liked to take his handkerchief checking a dust on top of equipment racks... And if there was a dust you can imagine his report...
...but there was one more feature of that guy that I did not know about. When he come our telegraph manager said that she has a birthday, so the Boss said to organize a party in the company club.
During the party the guy stuck to one phone commutator operator, she was nice, and I saw that he is whispering something in her ear that she did not like.
Then, when he pulled her outside, I went after them and asked the guy, what are his intentions, since the pretty young woman was married and had a kid.
He suggested me rudely to f*off... Other engineers from my department, bigger guys, were smoking nearby; they approached and stayed near us until that auditor with the red face left...
A week later we got a report. In the report he wrote that I self-released myself from my responsibilities, and particularly "In the line-equipment hall on the station [name] there is no Socialist Competition Chart". 🙂
Can you imagine such a technical report? 😀
But what was worse, the conclusion was, "Behaviour of director Lisovskiy threatens the safety of train traffic"!
It was the way to a jail...
Thanks God, his boss, a boss of my boss, knew his features and pardoned me. 😀
And it was one more reason why I resigned and went to work with Philharmonic travelling band.
Well;
the group had only one tube device, a BEAG reverberator.
Amplifiers were from Wermona, DDR, 100W solid state cyrclotron Regent 1000S and Regent 1000H.
We were giving 2-3 concerts per day, constant relocations and cold hotels were hard to bear, but it was a fun!
I did not work there long; my wife said that she loves me, and I returned back. But could not contioue to live and work in that small town... So I decided to find something bigger...
There was a town built on Vloga & Kama rivers where new gigantic automotive plant was built and working. My elder brother went there when it was only a project; he worked as a construction manager. So, the next time my wife started hating me, I went there. I worked for a computer department of an Engine plant, and there I saw first IBM PC, and learned Assembler, Pascal, C languages. It changed my carreer path, so from hardware support engineer I went to a software engineering, then gradually become a Deputy Manager of an Informatic-Analitical Centre. I was among those who pioneered Internet...
Audio become again my hobby, but solid state.
Later I went to South Africa working for ISP, then was invited to California on H1-B visa (modern slavery) on a position of a senior Unix admin, and stuck on it... There was no single line in my resume about any electronics.
back in 2002 I visited a high-end store and first time heard the sound of Magnepans driven by amps with 211 tubes. I dropped my jaw; I never expected to hear so real sound!
Since then I re-discovered tubes, and started pursuing my dream, to get so live sound... I got it, finally. And even better... I registered my Wavebourn company trying to find the way on the market, but it is tough! It is very tough for a guy that is not a seller, rather an anti-seller! I feel bad if I don't explain my ideas to other people... 😀
the group had only one tube device, a BEAG reverberator.
Amplifiers were from Wermona, DDR, 100W solid state cyrclotron Regent 1000S and Regent 1000H.
We were giving 2-3 concerts per day, constant relocations and cold hotels were hard to bear, but it was a fun!
I did not work there long; my wife said that she loves me, and I returned back. But could not contioue to live and work in that small town... So I decided to find something bigger...
There was a town built on Vloga & Kama rivers where new gigantic automotive plant was built and working. My elder brother went there when it was only a project; he worked as a construction manager. So, the next time my wife started hating me, I went there. I worked for a computer department of an Engine plant, and there I saw first IBM PC, and learned Assembler, Pascal, C languages. It changed my carreer path, so from hardware support engineer I went to a software engineering, then gradually become a Deputy Manager of an Informatic-Analitical Centre. I was among those who pioneered Internet...
Audio become again my hobby, but solid state.
Later I went to South Africa working for ISP, then was invited to California on H1-B visa (modern slavery) on a position of a senior Unix admin, and stuck on it... There was no single line in my resume about any electronics.
back in 2002 I visited a high-end store and first time heard the sound of Magnepans driven by amps with 211 tubes. I dropped my jaw; I never expected to hear so real sound!
Since then I re-discovered tubes, and started pursuing my dream, to get so live sound... I got it, finally. And even better... I registered my Wavebourn company trying to find the way on the market, but it is tough! It is very tough for a guy that is not a seller, rather an anti-seller! I feel bad if I don't explain my ideas to other people... 😀
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Hey, Wavebourn, I worked... almost said "in that very same gigantic plant", but yours seems be Kamaz. Mine, um-m, was that the only one bigger than yours )) I programmed the diagnostics for the welding lines, you know, those with robots... the programming language was "Microtie", developed by some f-ed-brain pervert, pardon my French.
(The welding lines ran by Allen-Bradley controllers)
I googled that name just two months ago - they seem ended their presence on the market just after sold their "product" to that plant. I guess there were no more takers...
Ok, show us some glorious photos of the band you gigged with. Well-equipped with Regents at that time was not just anybody, Im interested.
(The welding lines ran by Allen-Bradley controllers)
I googled that name just two months ago - they seem ended their presence on the market just after sold their "product" to that plant. I guess there were no more takers...
Ok, show us some glorious photos of the band you gigged with. Well-equipped with Regents at that time was not just anybody, Im interested.
No photos, sorry! The band did not need any publicity. We were just going from town to town in USSR. The band was assigned to Taldy Kurgan town, in Kazakhstan, so when we worked outside we were Edelweiss from Kazakhstan; when we were in Kazakhstan we pretended to be Granite from Novosibirsk. I don't know why, but people preferred some non-local bands. 🙂
Vermona was what the Government was buying for bands who worked inside of the Iron Curtains. Who were going abroad, had Dynacord. 🙂
Yes, Kamaz had lot of Allen-Bradley, Marpass, Renault, etc... equipment... Even Robotron was organized in DDR to supply Kamaz by rugged monitors with modems! 🙂
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