I just want to write this out, for my own sake more than anything else but maybe it'll inspire someone, somewhere.
I've been on somewhat of a self-guided tube electronics 'learning program,' if you need a term for it. I've been studying all kinds of shit. Most of it I don't really understand, but I've been able to fill in gaps in my knowledge (mostly math) using even MORE books. And when I say 'books,' I mean physical books. I have a growing collection of textbooks from the early 1940's up to the early 1970's relating to vacuum tube technology, principles, circuitry, design, and standards of practice. I take what I can from them and compare them to designs I am inspired by (Hello, Eric Barbour) and look for differences and similarities. Then I would construct a circuit and fuck with it by changing component values, etc to see what happens... That's the best way for me to learn, personally (for reference, I have never been to college. I have a high school diploma. I was an aircraft electrician in the US Air Force and I have been working as an industrial mechanic for the last 11 years).
Along with the books, I would be remiss if I did not mention three specific individuals -
Uncle Doug,
Terry at D-Lab Electronics, and probably the most influential -
Tom at tomtektest. Tom has not posted a new video in several years and I worry that he may no longer be with us as he was clearly getting on in age but I am forever grateful that he immortalized his knowledge and wisdom in video form. His videos, followed by Uncle Dougs videos, contributed more to my understanding of tubes and gave me a bedrock of knowledge to build on with the books. It is truly a wonderful time to be into valve electronics and this sort of thing, the amount of knowledge that is freely shared on the subject is staggering and almost overwhelming. The books I have are ones that I originally got (free) PDF copies of from World Radio History or Tubebooks - I liked the books enough to buy physical copies because I fucking hate reading from a screen. I need an actual book to thumb through.
My whole journey into the wild and wonderful world of
Metasonix began, like many others, with my long-standing love affair with the Doom series of video games, the soundtrack to the 2016 reboot by Mick Gordon, and
his now well-known use of Metasonix gear. It's a tale as old as time at this point.
I wanted some Metasonix shit. BAD. Problem was, Metasonix is expensive (and rightfully so, I do not believe Eric charges an unfair price whatsoever). At the time, I had also just started getting into building synth modules, and had built several modules for my
Kosmo-format synth. I found all of the Metasonix and Eric Barbour errata on the Internet relating to synth DIY with tubes, and
all of his diagrams he had posted on Modwiggler - but I had no fucking clue what the hell I was looking at. People had tried (and failed miserably) to take his drawings and make workable diagrams from them. I wanted to be able to read Eric's drawings and fill in the blanks myself, without having to pester the man with questions. I wanted to be able to take the information available to me - the diagrams, the operator manuals that Eric wrote that went into some high-level detail about how each box worked, the wealth of decades of recorded knowledge regarding electronics and design - and be able to put together a complete diagram of each effect that Eric had shared.
With that end-goal in mind, I started trying to fill in those gaps in my knowledge. I also still wanted some gnarly tube effects... I had seen demos of the RK2 and saw that it used one tube, and my very limited (more limited than now) knowledge at the time told me that might be the simplest thing to try to replicate. I couldn't find any 15LE8s, but I got a sleeve of 10LE8s and tried to see what I could do at 12V because I didn't have any higher voltage power supplies at the time.
I cobbled together a VCA distortion thing. To my absolute surprise, at 12V, my hacked-together redneck shit-show of a circuit worked great and sounded evil as fuck, which was EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED. It did all kinds of weird shit. Not only did it distort the ever-living fuck out of whatever I put through it, it burst into a series of pulses that sounded almost like an arpeggio and it did that at completely random times depending on what signal was going where. I couldn't fucking believe it. Holy shit.
I wanted to make a standalone version of this thing because I felt like there was a lot more I could do with it, but I didn't know where to start. So I decided to go the easy route and build a Metasonix TS-21 Hellfire Modulator. You know, just a simple little project. Real easy and straightforward. Sarcasm aside, the process of trying to decipher the late 90's MS Paint
wiring diagram for the TS-21 that was online (no hate - the man is showing the world how he made these one-of-a-kind monstrosities, I will not complain), cross-referencing other information, etc. was a great learning experience for me - although, I still have no idea if it works the way it's supposed to. There are hardly any demos of it online. Like all other Metasonix equipment, it does things to sound that were never meant to be done, using tools that were never meant to be used for the purpose (which is entirely the fucking point).
After I built the TS-21, I felt brave enough to try finishing my stand-alone 10LE8 box. This turned into a multi-year ordeal. I have a plethora of excuses - I have a very physically and mentally demanding day job, I was battling with reoccurring life-long depression because the medication I had been taking for 10 years was losing effectiveness, my grandpa died, all kinds of shit. Also, I have several other hobbies because - to paraphrase Bill Burr - if my mind and hands aren't constantly occupied then they go to dark fucking places. In summary - life happened. But I managed to keep reading and keep studying anything and everything related to tubes that I could get my hands on, and I would tinker with this design here and there. Eventually, I cobbled it together and the first god-awful electronic screaming to come from it happened in 2023.
Earlier this summer, for some reason, I felt that I had learned enough that I was ready. I was finally ready to take on the task that I had set for myself as a goal way back when. I was ready to start making Metasonix TM and TX modules. I started with the
TX-1 Vacuum-Tube Agonizer, and that went well - it worked great and I even got the closest thing to straight honest praise I have ever seen or heard from Eric himself, which... you know, senpai noticed me. So that was nice.
After that I did the TX-3, the TX-2, the TM-1, and I just recently finished up the TM-3 Thyratron VCO. I started the TX-1 at the beginning of May of this year, so over the course of almost 3 months I have gone through the process of making a diagram based on one of Eric's drawings, filling in blanks using the manuals (for example, the TX-2 drawing doesn't show the LFO circuit or the stereo output that is mentioned in the manual), then building the actual thing on my bench using my diagram, making sure it actually works and then fixing the diagram as needed.
This whole process has been INCREDIBLY fruitful for me - there is no better way to learn a thing, than to do the thing. Over and over. I have learned how to use Kicad. My point-to-point construction technique has gotten significantly better. My ability to read and interpret schematics in general has improved. My understanding of all sorts of things - not just tube related, but also relating to solid state building blocks using op-amps and transistors - has improved dramatically. I have learned more over the last three months since starting this Metasonix wiring diagram project than I think I learned in a year with just books and occasionally building circuits.
As a result of this I have gone back to my standalone 10LE8 design and applied what I have learned to it. There are choices I made with it originally that, knowing what I know now, I am laughing at. Weird little issues that I wrote off as 'I guess that's a tube thing' I was able to fix because it was blindingly obvious what I fucked up (big example: the CV input to the 6LE8 on the original design was normally grounded. That's stupid, for obvious reasons. I fixed that). I will go more into the specifics in another post.
