Thanks, very much, for the last newsletter and the music/styles.

I sympathise with the comments regarding the lack of response to requests for assistance in compiling the newsletter. We have a newsletter that I contribute to at work and it is often difficult to get people to add their bits to it.. everyone feels that they don't have anything special to put in it and it gets left up to just a handful of contributors. Eventually these things just fade away due to the lack of support. Or they continue by the good grace of people like yourself.

And there are people like me, who love to hear and read the work of others, more skilled than ourselves but feel that anything that we could write about or play on the keyboard would either bore to tears or damage the ears of other folks. My music, especially, would put a strain on even the most forgiving, tone deaf musician... but I get a good feeling if I can just make the occasional nice sound during my attempts to play a tune. And this is where the KN6000, and kind people like yourselves, really makes up for my shortcomings ... I can make it produce something beautiful and tuneful just by putting in a disk containing your skills, time and effort. I can listen to something that YOU are playing for me on MY keyboard... and that is, well, amazing even in this day and age.

So, once again Bill, thank you and the folks on the forum for providing US with your support.

Don

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Don Smith

To all my friends here on the Forum! I have to add my "two cents" to what Don wrote above. I, too, love reading all the personal items about you all and have enjoyed the Newsletter tremendously. I think the Forum is great and I enjoy every topic and the follow-ups, but it is in the Newsletter that we get better acquainted with each other in a more personal way, I think. I realize all the work involved and thank the guy(s) who put it together for us. Sorry it will be discontinued but I wanted to express my appreciation for the issues thus far. To everyone who contributed and shared a bit of themselves, thanks so much! Now back to the Forum topics...

Best regards,

Ted Rose

I want to express my disappointment that the newsletter is being discontinued because the majority of forum particpants are not supporting it. I was the first person to contribute a brief biography in order to get the ball rolling. I viewed the newsletter as being a worthwhile adjunct to our forum - one that would "fill in the gaps" as Bebop said. Like Don above, I am just now learning to play and feel I cannot contribute meaningful styles/music at this time. But I did contribute what I could. Every member of this forum can write a short bio, and as Ted says, we become better acquainted with each other as a result. We have lots of members, but only three of us have shared short bio's with all of you. I look at our profiles and see that we live in Canada, the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Taiwan, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and elsewhere. I have been impressed with the expertise of Alec, Gunnar, Bob Hendershot, Bill Norrie, John North, Pete Dale, Frank Bez, Bebop, Scott Yee, Fran, Jan, and so many others. I wish I could play like all of you. We have a wonderful diversity of playing talent and life experiences. Let's share this rich background with each other. It only takes a few minutes to compose a brief biography and e-mail it to Bebop. Likewise, it only takes a few minutes to write/share a playing or practice tip with beginners like me. You would be amazed how much your tips help me and others. And I wish you could sense the pleasure I feel when I play the music that many of you have shared with me. Maybe the newsletter has to die. If it does, shame on you if you did not help to sustain it. But even if it dies, you can still share your expertise (tips) with us by posting them on our forum. I, for one, need all the help I can get. And you can always post a brief bio, thus enabling us to know and appreciate you in a more meaningful way. Let your forum posts be newsletter-style inputs in addition to being a medium for answering technical questions and discussing issues facing we Technics owners. In other words, let the concept of the newsletter live on in the form of forum posts.

Chuck

I echo the sentiments expressed above. I found that the bios have a fascinating insight into the background of us KN owners and it's a shame there will be no more - would be interesting particularly to know something about those experts among us who pass on so mucj knowledge to us lesser mortals - particularly Alec who has such a complete grasp of everything allied to KNs and music etc generally. He once referred to an articule in a 1940's issue of Wireless World which makes me wonder if he is even older than me. I made my first 2 valve radio from pl;ans in a 1943 issue - and prior to that in 1941-2 a crystal set made of a piece of plywood about 10 inches square, a cardboard tube from a toilet roll with a dozen or so turns of copper wire to make the coil, 3 woodscres to hold the crystal and a catswhisker froma match stick and a short length of fuse wire. My iron bedstead acted as aerial. No power supply required and reception was literally crystal clear.. I often wish my keyboard was as simple to understand.....

Peter

PS Forgive the ramblings - it's my age I tell you and the compexities of technology...

Hi Peter,
I was not around in the valve days, and have never actually built any valve equipment. It's just that the development of amplifier design is well documented, the principles have not changed, only needed to be modified to the new technologies as they came along with their own particular new parameters.

Without a knowledge of the history, you may fall into the trap of making the same mistakes that others may have solved long ago. A few more politicians could do with studying history!

Hi Alec and Peter,

Your comments, Alec, prompt me to add a comment or two. My first exposure to valves (tubes as we Americans called them) was in 1951 when I entered the Electronic Fundamentals school in the U.S. Air Force. I have watched electronic technology evolve from huge valves, transformers, coils, resistors, capacitors and miles of shielded and unshielded wire to the micro-miniature components on circuit cards, busses for transferring signals, and millions of transistors in a microprocessor. You are right, Alec, in saying the principles haven't changed - that the field of electronics has merely adapted to new technologies as they developed. As a former technician, I found that it was simpler to troubleshoot a solid state device and be able to replace a circuit card than to hunt a faulty coil somewhere in a maze of circuitry full of discreet components. Also, discreet components like transformers and coils generated magnetic fields which had to be neutralized using various shielding techniques. Troubleshooting such circuitry could be a nightmare.

There has been a lot of talk over the years comparing valve amplifiers with solid state amps. Valve amps are said to produce richer, fuller, warmer sounds. Perhaps that has to do with harmonics generated by valves and their associated circuitry. I do believe it is possible for digital technology to replicate that "valve" sound and one day soon we may see solid state amps that do just that. I much prefer our present state-of-the-art technology and all it offers to us in the form of our Technics keyboards.

Like you, Peter, I have fond memories of "old" equipment, for example my mobile ham radio and sending messages in Morse code with my telegraph key etc. But I wouldn't trade "the good ol' days" for my KN6000.

Finally, I am pleased we can use this forum for "talk" like this in addition to the exchange of technical information and music/styles etc. For me, it provides an opportunity to just chat once in a while with people I enjoy talking to and who share my interests, and I need that in my life.

Take Care, Chuck

Like Chuck, I cut my electronic teeth on Valves way back in the late 40's when electronics was my hobby, before taking it up as my lifelong love and profession. Your comment about solid state amplifiers simulating the 'Valve Sound' was actually incorporated in a Guitar Amplifier, manufactured in the late 60's by 'H & H'. This was a fully transistorised amp which was designed to try to convert Electric Guitarists to solid state amps, after considerable resistance to the 'clinically clean' sound of this type of amp. Guitarists preferred the sound of the Valve amps particularly when the output stages were driven into overload, rather than the 'Dirty' broken up sound of a solid state output going into distortion.
The H & H amp had a switch on the front panel labelled 'Valve Sound' which deliberately introduced mainly Third Harmonic distortion, irrespective of input level.
Result - the amp sold very well !
The old VOX valve amplifier, much used in the 60's by The Beatles, Shadows and many other groups of that era, was resurrected a few years ago and I believe the manufacturer initially had trouble keeping up with the demand! They were only low power devices - about 30Watts, so for big venues, they were 'Miked-Up' via the usual 'Giga-Watt' PA systems.

Ah! Memories, Memories . . . . .


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Willum

I was around in the days of tubes as we Americans call them. One of my lab projects, in one of the schools I attended in the late 1940's, was to design and build a television set from scratch. It had 21 tubes and actually worked. Later, in the 1960's I bought an old vacuum tube Wurlitzer organ and replaced the guts with discrete solid state components. It is still working in one of my son's homes. Voicing in those days was done with operational and differential amps and active filters with everything analog. I haven't the faintest idea how some of the new digital stuff works. . .

[This message has been edited by Bob Hendershot (edited 04-16-2002).]

Like conversation around a dinner table, the topic has shifted quite a bit from the original subject. I never did anything with valves, but I had amateur attempts at building circuits with transistors that were enormous by today's standards. More often than not, by the time I had finished soldering the transistor it had got too hot and the circuit wouldn't work. So I write computer programs instead, which is better for me. If (yes, IF) I make a mistake in a program I don't have to through away the program, I can just fix it.

Back to Bebop's newsletter - I, too enjoy reading it, but haven't got around to contributing. Last night I played the lounge file attached to the recent newsletter, and was very impressed, Bill. Lovely jazz feel to your playing and you used the style well. Also tried the custom styles from Bert Aarp and Ad Rouw, and found several which I will use. In summary - a great newsletter.

Regards,
Mike

it was actually quite difficult to simulate a valve sound with a transistor amplifier in the days of analogue electronics. Could be done, but not cheaply, and needed a lot of circuitry.

It was not just the balance of adding lots of 2nd and 3rd harmonic distortion, which had to vary with signal level, but of simulating the clipping behaviour which was quite different from transistor amplifiers, and the high frequency losses and low frequency softness due to output transformers, which would all be signal dependant.

If anything, it was the smooth overdrive performance which was the main factor in the valve sound, since so many amplifiers were relatively underpowered and continually driven into clipping in use.

Nowadays, if you know what you are doing, it is easy, since formulating a dsp to simulate valve sound is no different to sampling an acoustic instrument or hall reverb, you just sample the valve sound!