This forum is a great place for beginners and experts alike. It has great pluses and a few relatively minor minuses (of course).

To join, go here:

http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/funwithtubes/

1. First and foremost, this forum is run by Max, and he don't allow no crap. This matters. Max stops insults and flame-wars FAST and kicks the offender off. I'm not sure if Max actually deletes the offending email...he may not be able to....but it's an email forum anyway, and hardly anyone ever looks back at old threads, it's all about the new emails in your in-box and the images in the Yahoo folders, so that's a heckuvalot better than forums where every insult is enshrined forever in permanently displayed threads.

2. An amazing, eclectic group of helpful contributors. It might take a while, but even the most arcane question will eventually get you an answer - probably twenty answers, all of them good. I recently decided to make my own PCB's for my auto-grid-bias circuit, because the cost from commercial houses was just too much per board in small quantities, and when I asked for ideas, I got twenty really good answers, with solid advice. Some of them told me which PCB houses to go to for the best price, some of them told me where to go for info on how to make my own, and most important of all, one of them tipped me off to FREE PCB software that works just fine and doesn't take a month to learn how to use. Another member asked about a tube so arcane it's not even in the TDSL...and, after a few head-scratching responses, by gum he finally got an answer pointing him to probably the only place on earth where he might be able to find it.

3. If you're into restoring old radios, this is the place. Period. If you want to make a receiver from scratch, this is also the place. These members know radio, both AM and FM, doesn't matter how old, how busted, or how weird the symptom.

4. A bit weak on tube amps, but that's just because it's still growing and started from a base of radio guys. Max's website (see link above) has great tube amp info and projects on it, and good tube amp projects will be appearing on Fun With Tubes sooner or later, it's just a matter of time. In the meantime, there are plenty of guys there who can point you to a great tube amp project anywhere on the web, so that's almost as good. If you want to ask for help in choosing a project, it helps to specify what type of amp you wish to build. Do you want to make a 1 watt SET? A 20 watt SET? A 25 or 50 watt Push-Pull? A 200 watt monster? A chip-amp? Try to get an idea of what you'd like to make, and I'm sure you'll get some really good answers. Another really, really good approach - if you already have the speakers you know you want to keep a long time - is tell them what speakers you have, and ask for advice on what amp to build to drive those speakers. This is very likely to get you solid-platinum advice.

later, when I have more time to work on this, I'm going to search the Fun With Tubes folders and find some good projects and link them here. I'm sure they are there, but they just have to be looked at.

Best, Charlie