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I've been thinking about this for some time and wanted your opinions on it: Do you care whether tube gear is point to point or made on a printed circuit board?
My 87yr old amp tech who is responsible for the transistor radio and the first stereo setup told me printed circuit boards will accumulate dust and everntually leak.
I can speak only for myself:A good tube amp must obligatory have not only point to point wiring, but hard wiring too, stranded wiring definitely not good.A point to point service allow the builder to select a good wire, a important option to voicing and to sound quality.A tube amp or preap with PCB are a bastard to me, a second class job, suited to low price gear or hurry serial assembly line. Some tube makers love it as JOLIDA, BAT, LAMM, even the ML3 at 140,000 dollars use PCB, a shame, JOLIDA and BAT inside tube amps images do not exist on the web.On tube amps tests in magazines this subject are hidden and not mentioned, when the equip use PCB. I especially hate PCB, some reasons:> PCB traces are no OFC copper or silver, only cheap lead solder.> PCB traces may loose and corrode with the hi heat from tubes and fast coolling after turn off.> Change a tube socket in a PCB are awful, some tube socktes lasts around 5-10K hours only, before starting false contact and need replace.> PCB are convenient, practical to made a tube amp, to simplify the work and may give hi profit to a manufacturer.Regards
I can't help but agree with the content of all the posts. Confusing? Well- not really. Wiring/hookup technologies are usually abused. Reasons for abuse:1] To make things look tidy2] To save production costs regardless of repercussionsSome observations from both camps:1] PC's should not have sockets soldered to them that are large2] Wire twisting, looming, etc.. creates extra work and uses more wire than necessary much of the time AND makes repairs more difficult. It is necessary with some circuits, generally not audio. 3] My favorite PC's use surface mount components for at least 95% of the components. A PC board made with SM components that is not plated through for leaded components is not bad to work with and will work very well even with tube audio. 4] P-P runs should be direct. That means wires should go directly from point A to B or at least as close as they can. This method is not as pretty looking as twisting or looming but works the best every time. Scott, Fisher, Conn, Hammond and many others used this approach and so do I. What would think of a "hybrid" wiring approach? Marshall's 9005 1990's EL34 amp did it well. The PC's were well made modules and all sockets were mounted on the chassis. Good ideas are often twisted and made into bad ones. I was thinking that the proper(let's make that ideal) use of both techniques may please the PC and P-P camps.