Wife Suddenly Loves My Tube Gear

juno

Super Member
So my wife is more of a streamer than me. Im more LP and CD oriented. Anyway, I always buy her electronic gadgets like her ipod and ipad. I bought her a mini jack to rca cable many moons ago but she never really used it. So today i finally found it and unplugged my turntable and connected her ipad to my system. I have never seen her so thrilled with my tube gear! So my stereo has been taken over for the weekend. This will be a good time to unveil my tube preamp that has 6 inputs so she can always use it and have a dedicated input. Plus the television. Thank you universe! In the meantime, I will just connect the turntable when i use it. I dont mean this post to sound condescending or anything. It is really thrilling for me that she is suddenly interested in my tube gear and how it works. Now she wants to roll some tubes to see which ones she prefers! Although she insists on calling them bulbs.
 
Last edited:
I found out what a Pandora play list is. Pretty cool. Our musical tastes have a lot of overlap. She is a singles girl and I prefer albums. She gets bored with an entire album. However, her playlists are great! Its like a luddite and a technology girl find some common ground through music that we both love. It sounds 100 thousand times better than the sirius radio in her car, which i think is horrible in terms of sound quality. I am considering myself thoroughly schooled.
 
Last edited:
Well..."bulbs" is certainly more intuitive than "valves." :idea:
Well, not electronically. Valves pretty much do the same thing a garden hose valve does -- B+ is on one end and wants to get thru to the other end.

But... yeah. They're bulbs lol
 
This is a great story; thanks for sharing. It is wonderful when common ground can be found. I hope there is lots of happy listening in the future.
 
My wife did not care for my 1250/1280 setup in the living room. I finally asked her why. She said there was not enough bass. :confused: That was when I showed her the loudness button. She is perfectly satisfied now. :p
 
Some time back an AK'r sent me a tube amp from a console to work on and play with. I was listening to it on my bench after a refurb. I noticed my wife was standing behind me she then told me it really sounded good. It became her amp then and their. Its used with a cheap blue tooth receiver streaming music from her phone. Now my main system is all tube. I had to buy a couple more console amps to replace the one stolen from me. One of those is now being used by my son. I do still have one left, tucked under my bench. I'm kind of afraid to work on that one. :biggrin:
 
While I like the story and it might be nice if this happened at my house. I think my wife would freak if she knew how much the light fixtures cost:eek:
 
While I like the story and it might be nice if this happened at my house. I think my wife would freak if she knew how much the light fixtures cost:eek:

That's very true! I don't mention that part of it. I just say Hey! Look at these old tubes I found! For now, and I am sure this won't last, they are akin to some old light bulbs. However, she is learning the names of them so I am just one Google search away from doom....
 
Last edited:
I would have been much wiser to let them remain "sound bulbs." She helped me listen with some tube rolling not so long ago and being very organized wrote down the names of the tubes and took some notes. So the EL34 was the winner and I know she remembers. Why? Her girlfriend and husband were over the other day and the stereo was on when I got home. Anyway, the guy was amazed at the sound from my small tube amp. And my wife says: "Oh! Its the EL34s. The big 8s sucked!" Those were KT88 tubes and they had nice bass in my amp but there was a lot of midrange suck out. Live and learn! Oh well. At least she appreciates my speakers now that she can blast her music whenever she wants. And she is heavier handed on the volume than me, half the time. Her latest thing is The Dead Daisies, which is indeed a band to crank! I'm getting a little tired of Midnight Moses, but the shoe is on the (well deserved) other foot for awhile
 
Last edited:
Sirius broadcasts are horribly compressed. Makes everything sound like a bad MP3.

I know....really bad. Once I thought they're playing some remix of a clash song I never heard before because half the music was literally missing.
 
Sirius broadcasts are horribly compressed. Makes everything sound like a bad MP3.

I believe this is true, but also device dependent.

Streaming from my iPhone 7 and the Sirius app directly into a preamp is convenient l, but IMO the quality is fair at best...My starmate2 sat receiver sounds like AM stereo..Streaming wifi through musicCast in my vintage hifi system varies from the same to good depending on the music channel/genre..The best one for me is streaming through a windows 10 pc/daw with a focusrite fw audio system into a Marantz 1060 small monitors and sub in my project studio sounds very good.

It's fussy no doubt.
 
Back
Top Bottom