a tube keyboard

[enquiryband]

anyone know of any way to put tubes in a keyboard? just wondering because this would be pretty fricken awesome. i just got a new old keyboard form a rummage sale. 

[teemuk]

This way: 


..But seriously, what were you planning to do with them? Amplify, distort, some sort of tone generator? What keyboard?

[giantsteps]

Early Wurluitzer electric pianos were tube amplified.

Almost all vintage hammond organs are all tube.

[frequencycentral]

Maestrovox: http://www.debbiecurtis.co.uk/id114.html

Ken Stone/Eric Barbour tube synth stuff: http://www.cgs.synth.net/tube/index.html

[Taylor]

Tubes can be put to use in nearly any role you can think of: filters, oscillators, distortion, modulation effects, amplification, goofy noises like Metasonix. There are even visualization tubes that show cool visuals like eyeballs.

First you should determine what you'd like to add to the keyboard, then figure out how to do it with tubes. Or, if you just want to shove some tubes in for fk's sake, don't even plug them in, and light them up with LEDs like Behringer.

[petemoore]

 Yupp...them 'ol organs...not much can be done for them, otherwise everything must be done for them...and that'd be a rediculous adventure.
  Back when [tube organs were built] it made good sense, as it was on par with it's ads and disadvantages compared to say a reed type organ, considering that the reed type organs still needed amplification, which meant tubes anyway.
  Nowadays even transistor [discreet designs] are mostly replaced with digital technology.
  I played an analog synth, and hafta say, analog still has it's super-strong merits.

[Taylor]

  I played an analog synth, and hafta say, analog still has it's super-strong merits.

Eh... did you play a tube synth? Analog ≠ tube.

Not many tube synths in existence.

[SonicVI]

Here's an awesome site about the restoration of a 1940 Hammond Novachord 'synthesizer' with about 150 tubes in it. This is what I call dedication!
http://discretesynthesizers.com/nova/intro.htm

[frequencycentral]

Here's an awesome site about the restoration of a 1940 Hammond Novachord 'synthesizer' with about 150 tubes in it. This is what I call dedication!
http://discretesynthesizers.com/nova/intro.htm

Amazing - really pushing the envelope!

[Taylor]

Here's an awesome site about the restoration of a 1940 Hammond Novachord 'synthesizer' with about 150 tubes in it. This is what I call dedication!
http://discretesynthesizers.com/nova/intro.htm

I've read that a couple of times and each time I'm in awe. I've actually got a couple of gigantic projects like this planned for my old age - in some ways I feel like my next 20 or 30 years will just be preparation for being an old guy, locking myself away from humanity, and geeking out on insane projects that consume my life.

Exciting!

[sean k]

Yeah I've got about 4 old organs and its definitely about doing a decade or two on normal stuff and getting prepared to work through ones old age on these relics of the past. The oldest one I have isn't even electronic and is a pump organ and the tones one gets from those is amazing. The next oldest is a Gulbransen from the early sixties or late fifties and the amp is all tube but the tone generation is all germanium transistors and big coils and caps. After that its early seventies IC stuff but they still do nice noises.

My God, I even have to eventually build a room to contain all these monsters but I'm thinking this world really needs these old anachronisms to still be available and doing their thing.

As for the original question... just put it through a valve preamp to fatten it up.

[enquiryband]

As for the original question... just put it through a valve preamp to fatten it up.

a valve preamp? what good will that do? its not THAT old... its about 90's. the thing is made with poor electronics though and doesnt sound the greatest even running through my amp. will this solve some tone issues? everything just sounds so... grainy?

[Taylor]

I think you've fallen for the ad copy that says "put whatever junk you have through a tube, and out comes beautiful sounds".

Sadly that's not inherently true. Tubes have nice characteristics for some things, not good for others. You don't even seem to know what sort of processor you want, you just want it to have tubes. This is backwards.

Secondly, even if you have a really nice tube unit, it's not going to make some Casio Dorktone keyboard sound like a Hammond. And that's fine; a lot of people are really into that Casio cheese sound these days.

If you're really stubborn, though, how about replacing all the keyboard's opamps with these?

http://www.headwize.com/images2/opamp3.gif

[SonicVI]

What is the keyboard mentioned in the original post?