Teletext

[Mr. Dazzle]

I remember the days before television,nevermind bloody Teletext and Ceefax.

Radio was the boss.

I have an old valve wireless that has an insanely good tone.

I remember getting the RUC radio, it was a harmonic though. I bought a scanner and had all their comms in the late 80's/early 90s. No wonder they kept getting ambushed.

Have you ever had to replace the valves? It's just that Marshall recommend replacing them in power amps every two years and pre-amps every four. From memory valve radios just went on forever!

Supposedly guitar amps sound best just before the valves die. I can believe iy, 'cause the classic electric guitar noise is generated by valves running essentially beyond their specs (hence the term "overdrive"). People will go out of their way to digitally capture the behaviour of a nearly fucked amp.

[Skub]

Have you ever had to replace the valves? It's just that Marshall recommend replacing them in power amps every two years and pre-amps every four. From memory valve radios just went on forever!

My Fender Bassman LTD 59 re-issue must be over 10 years old now. I had it checked a couple of years ago by the local amp guru and all the valves were still good. This is despite it having a fairly hard time for at least half a dozen years. Folk stress too much about the percieved fragility of the glass tubes and all kinds of tone freaks tell you they can hear a difference. I have my doubts.

I used to carry a little Peavy Bandit as a backup amp,but I never ever had to use it.

[Mr. Dazzle]

s. Folk stress too much about the percieved fragility of the glass tubes and all kinds of tone freaks tell you they can hear a difference. I have my doubts.

If they're not running their amp at a non standard voltage they're not proper tone freaks

[Skub]

If they're not running their amp at a non standard voltage they're not proper tone freaks

That statement may have some bias......

[Dunxster]

Bringing this back on topic, I worked at Teletext for around five years at the turn of the century, on the editorial side.

The pages were put together using a package called Prisma and it was an utter pain. However, one or two clever people could create some great graphics with it. A special mention here for Paul Rose and his Digitiser pages (https://teletextart.co.uk/artists/paul-rose-mr-biffo).

I used to know all of the locations of the regional TV transmitters.

Honestly, it was one of the best jobs I've had and the staff parties were legendary...

[Mr. Dazzle]

Bringing this back on topic, I worked at Teletext for around five years at the turn of the century, on the editorial side.

The 20th century, right?

Genuinely would have guessed they turned Teletext off in about 1999!

[JackyJoll]

I remember the days before television,nevermind bloody Teletext and Ceefax.

Radio was the boss.

I have an old valve wireless that has an insanely good tone.

I remember getting the RUC radio, it was a harmonic though. I bought a scanner and had all their comms in the late 80's/early 90s. No wonder they kept getting ambushed.

Have you ever had to replace the valves? It's just that Marshall recommend replacing them in power amps every two years and pre-amps every four. From memory valve radios just went on forever!

From my memory, a valve would occasionally fail in a wireless. Sometimes it was the heater, so you could see which was the bad valve. Every town had shops with the common valves in stock.

I have a valve guitar amp and I’m highly unlikely to ever replace any valve that still works.

[Count Steer]

I have an old valve wireless that has an insanely good tone.

I remember getting the RUC radio, it was a harmonic though. I bought a scanner and had all their comms in the late 80's/early 90s. No wonder they kept getting ambushed.

Have you ever had to replace the valves? It's just that Marshall recommend replacing them in power amps every two years and pre-amps every four. From memory valve radios just went on forever!

From my memory, a valve would occasionally fail in a wireless. Sometimes it was the heater, so you could see which was the bad valve. Every town had shops with the common valves in stock.

I have a valve guitar amp and I’m highly unlikely to ever replace any valve that still works.

I was looking at hi-fi valve amps, as one does...because they look nice and glow , and was told all the valves available these days are Chinese military grade radio stuff as valves keep working after a nuclear pulse. I've never worked out if I was having my leg pulled as it seems reasonable, but couldn't work out why the USA etc didn't still make them if it was true.

[JackyJoll]

Yeah there’s the matter of valves resisting the electromagnetic pulse from a nearby nuclear bomb and also American embargo on semiconductors to Russia. Who knows what’s relevant?

I had no luck with Russian Sovtek valves, rebranded as Fender Groove Tubes. They just went bang.

Doing OK with JJ brand, made in Slovakia and also sold as Tesla brand.

No modern valve is as robust as the old Mullard.

[JackyJoll]

As for tone and all that, a valve amp does have “something.”

My mate has a Fender modelling amp for his Yamaha electric guitar. He was baffling himself with the thousands of settings that claim to sound like some famous bastard. I amazed him by selecting a setting called Bassman and telling him to try that. It sounded great, to him and me.

He still wasn’t happy though. He paid for all these modelled settings, so he could hardly just play through a channel that copied a simple bass amp.

[Potter]

As for tone and all that, a valve amp does have “something.”

My mate has a Fender modelling amp for his Yamaha electric guitar. He was baffling himself with the thousands of settings that claim to sound like some famous bastard. I amazed him by selecting a setting called Bassman and telling him to try that. It sounded great, to him and me.

He still wasn’t happy though. He paid for all these modelled settings, so he could hardly just play through a channel that copied a simple bass amp.

You can end up chasing yourself up a pole with modelling amps and devices.

I went through a stage of having so many configurations, pedals and trickery that I spent most of my time messing about with them and not playing the instrument.

In the end I sold everything, kept only my single coil Strats and a Vox valve amp.
Now I'm awful because I hardly ever practice, but at least I can claim to be an old school purist