Ray Tubes Expands Range with Select 12AU7 and Core 12AU7 Vacuum Tubes

Ray Tubes announced new-production 12AU7 tubes in both its Core and Select Collections. With this addition, Ray Tubes is now supplying the most common vacuum tubes, including the 12AU7, 12AX7, EL34, 6SN7, KT88, and 300B, all available through its network of retail and brand partners. All products from Ray Tubes are designed and tested specifically for audio applications and come with a one-year warranty, which is a great assurance compared to the risks of buying New-Old-Stock items.

Audient has teamed up with leading cab simulation pioneers, twonotes audio engineering to present Sono, an audio interface with a tube guitar preamp stage for guitarists and musicians, featuring powerful modeling capabilities. The combination provides countless tonal options for guitarists, whether they're recording, practicing or playing live. The integrated DSP runs the modeling without latency, with external software only used to configure the multiple simulations.

Peter Delos details how to add tone controls to a three-channel tube-based guitar preamplifier. The circuit is a versatile building block anyone can use for his or her own preamplifier applications. The project is implemented with three 12AX7 gain stages. The tone control at the final output is a standard bass, mid, treble control circuit found in many guitar amplifiers. This article was originally published in audioxpress, October 2014

In this amazing project by Gregory L. Charvat, two pre-amplifiers are used with a battery powered high voltage supply. The high voltage supply works by creating a square wave with a 555 timer. The square wave is fed into a small audio power op-amp. The output of this op-amp is back-fed into the secondary of an audio output transformer, generating high voltage AC 170V at 40 kHz. This signal is rectified, filtered, and regulated in a conventional sense. The entire system runs on 8 AA batteries and should operate for approximately 4 hours continuously. This article was originally published in audioXpress, March 2010.

The MA252 Integrated Amplifier is the first ever hybrid integrated amplifier design from McIntosh. Unveiled early November 2017, the MA252 is now shipping. The amp brings the benefits of vacuum tube (valve) to its preamp stage, with solid-state technology on the output stage, all with a visually stunning, integrated package, taking retro design cues from the legendary McIntosh MC275 Vacuum Tube Amplifier.

Hafler (a division of Radial Engineering) announced the launch of the HA75-DAC, an audiophile-quality tube based headphone amplifier and USB digital to analog converter. Basically, Radial took its existing Hafler HA75 "vintage inspired" headphone amplifier, a 100% discrete class-A circuit with a 12AX7 tube drive, and added a USB Digital-to-Analog converter input with 24-bit/192kHz support in the same 14 gauge steel casing, making it a much more practical and complete unit in multiple applications.

We have a policy not to publish news items just for the fact that products have been nominated for the NAMM TEC Awards or other awards. Not that they have merit or deserve the recognition, but because it doesn’t add anything to the information already published. We make an exception for Hafler’s HA75 Tube Head, because it’s good to know it’s getting some attention.

Radial Engineering confirms its new Space Heater 500 tube overdrive unit is now shipping. The Space Heater 500 is a single-wide tube overdrive module for the Radial Workhorse and other 500 series racks that delivers natural crunch to drums, adds character to voice, and natural compression to bass and acoustic guitar.

Radial Engineering confirmed the updated version of its long awaited Space Heater is now shipping. The Space Heater is an eight channel tube summing mixer with high voltage tube overdrive, featuring individual input and output control for all eight channels, which took a year to perfect since first announced in 2014.

After over a decade of being dormant, Radial Engineering Ltd. purchased the Hafler brand in 2014 and announced it is re-launching a new series of high-fidelity audio products, already previewed at the 137th AES Convention in Los Angeles. One of the most interesting is the HA75 ‘Tube Head’ - a 12AX7 driven tube headphone amplifier with sufficient gain to power any type of headphone.