<story><title>Korg and Noritake Introduce Futuristic Nutube Vacuum Tubes</title><url>http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2015/01/29/korg-noritake-introduce-futuristic-nutube-vacuum-tubes/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>hamiltonkibbe</author><text>Cool concept, but I doubt the operating range of these tubes is large enough to get any sort of usable gain out. Unless there&amp;#x27;s a datasheet that says otherwise I&amp;#x27;d imagine these are going to end up early in the gain chain as a &amp;quot;coloring&amp;quot; component.&lt;p&gt;With the low operating range and low bias point you don&amp;#x27;t get the same effect as you do with a tube biased to it&amp;#x27;s sweet spot. It seems like a marketing gimmick like the starved-plate 12ax7 stage they put in everything nowadays (with ~12V B+ as opposed to the 250-400V B+ you find in nearly all classic amp designs), along with a few LEDs and a window in front so you can see where your extra $100 is going.&lt;p&gt;If you plot (really any) load line on the plate curves for a 12AX7 with a &amp;lt; 50V B+ you&amp;#x27;re in a really poor, highly non-linear region. Looking at plate curves for some old VFD tubes the operating range for those is way down in the same region in the lower left corner if you plot them over the 12AX7 plate curves.&lt;p&gt;Given the size and the fact that it uses 2% of the power of conventional tubes, I doubt that these tubes could be used as an output stage. I would have to guess that they&amp;#x27;re running them cold as well. Preamp tube power draw is often dominated by the heaters&lt;p&gt;Of course this is all speculation until they publish a datasheet...</text></comment>
<story><title>Korg and Noritake Introduce Futuristic Nutube Vacuum Tubes</title><url>http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2015/01/29/korg-noritake-introduce-futuristic-nutube-vacuum-tubes/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>pjc50</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a two-segment vacuum fluorescent display! If you want to do your own &amp;quot;tube&amp;quot; experiments, you can find these in salvaged electrical gear, especially VCRs.</text></comment>