Professional Tube Consoles Custom Designed Hand Built
All images, text and audio Copyright 2009 Ian Thompson-Bell
If you are here then I don’t have to explain why you prefer tube sound. Trouble
is, there’s not much around in the way of professional tube mixing console products.
There are plenty of professional mixing console products with a few tubes in them
but they all have semiconductors in the signal path. There are also plenty of professional
all tube products - but not one of them is a mixing console. The sad truth is no
one makes all tubes consoles - until now.
I design and build custom tube consoles. All consoles are designed to order. Each
design uses standard physical modules and is created from a series of standard building
blocks, but each console is unique.
All the designs are based on a few straightforward guiding principles:
Semiconductors are used in power supplies but there is not a single semiconductor
device of any kind in the signal path, not even a semiconductor constant current
source or a biasing LED.
Global negative feedback is not used yet excellent distortion figures are achieved.
Designs are built from standardised Class A building blocks.
Channel gain is controlled by switching in pads at appropriate points in the signal
path. This allows the user to select between minimising distortion or allowing the
introduction of tube tone.
Passive mixing is used because it avoids negative feedback
Passive equalisation is used, again because it avoids negative feedback
All active circuits are built on PCBs which are hand wired inside screened enclosures
with attached front panels. This provides maximum screening and signal integrity.