Bill Cohron
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| It's no secret that I love music. Here's some of the equipment that helps me enjoy it. |
| Music is life. |
| From a very early age... As far back as I can remember... I've enjoyed music. I remember being about 6 years old and was absolutely fascinated by the cover of the first Boston album. I'd spend hours studing the designs of different album covers, captivated by the artwork even before I really learned to appreciate the music. Growing up in the mid-'70s, groups like Boston, The Eagles, Creeedence Clearwater Revival, Pink Floyd, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, The Rolling Stones, and so many other bands were party of daily life. They weren't "classic" rock, they were just rock. Even the psychadelic music of the '60s and the easy listening of the '70s were still very relevant and readily available. It was a great time to be alive. As the '80s came into the forefront, hard rock became more and more prevalent and the airwaves became filled with groups like AC/DC, Foghat, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Guns 'N Roses, and Metallica. As the music became louder, the demands placed on audio equipment also increased. Amplifiers boasting several hundred watts, graphic equalizers, and 15" speakers were the norm (if not the bare minimum) for any home audio system, and names like Kenwood, JVC, Marantz, Sony, TEAC, and several others were part of the landscape of home audio. Now here we are some 40+ years later and we've watched the world progress from Vacuum Tube audio to Transistors and then back to Vacuum Tube... from Vinyl and 8-Track to cassettes and CDs and then back to Vinyl. Even the old music is now being re-released and younger generations are being introduced bands from well before their time. It seems like everything that was old is now new again, and I am absolutely OK with that. I've always appreciated vacuum tube equipment and vinyl. At one point, I had a pretty respectable collection of vinyl albums, but an unfortunate house fire destroyed that collection along with everything else we owned. It was a bit sad because some of the albums I had were irreplaceable, but then so were a lot of other things like family records, photos, and many others. It took a while to recover from the ordeal, but once we were settled into our new home, I started working on rebuilding a new music library one album at a time. A couple year ago, I received a tube amplifier for Father's day. It was a DarkVoice 336SE amplifier. I was intrigued by this little technical marvel and immediately began researching everything that I could about it. Schematics, modifications, and tube suggestions were available everywhere I looked. Now to be honest, I didn't know much about the mechanics of tubes or tube amplifiers, so I dind't realize that you could modify the output by changing to a different brand, or even sometimes a different model, of vacuum tube. But I read, I researched, and I learned. Very soon, I had modified this little amplifier, rolled in another set of tubes, and suddenly I was hooked. From here on out, tube amps were go to be the only feasible way for me to listen to music. Even digital music was improved by the tonal quality of tube amplification. |
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| As I started to explore the world of Vacuum Tube audio equiment, I discovered a site that sold complete "build-it-yourself" kits at a pretty resonable price. Now, I love building things and putting together an amplifier really appealed to my sense of creativity. I ordered my first kit, an Elekit TU-8200 amplifier, and immediately set out to assemble it the moment it arrived. |