Does anyone have any familiarity with this item, I just bought one, the tube
appears to be back lit by LED's and glows a bright red but hardly any heat
comes off of it? The unit looks and works fine, so it appears to be a fake
tube preamp to me. Anyone?

Thanks,
Steven Keys

"Steven Keys" wrote in message
...
Does anyone have any familiarity with this item, I just bought one, the
tube
appears to be back lit by LED's and glows a bright red but hardly any heat
comes off of it? The unit looks and works fine, so it appears to be a fake
tube preamp to me. Anyone?

I think that might be one of the units that has a "fake" light that glows
(supposedly to show the user how much "warmth" his sounds are getting???)
but is not actually connected to anything in the audio path. I believe there
is a real tube in the audio path somewhere but whether it imparts anything
worthwhile to the sound is another matter. I had one of those units to try
one day but just fooled around with it for a minute so I can't offer much in
the way of opinion. But I know there is at least one unit that has a glowing
"tube" that is nothing but show.

Steven Keys wrote:
Does anyone have any familiarity with this item, I just bought one, the tube
appears to be back lit by LED's and glows a bright red but hardly any heat
comes off of it? The unit looks and works fine, so it appears to be a fake
tube preamp to me. Anyone?

I don't know.

But look for an audio transformer connected to the tube grid pin and to
the mike input jack. It'll be pretty big, probably as big as the tube
or bigger. If it's not there, that's a bad sign.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

I've looked inside the box; as far as I can tell, the tube stage actually is
in the circuit, but it's after the mike pre stage, which is an IC
instrumentation amp. The tube is there to generate distortion, the usual
starved-plate garbage.

Peace,
Paul