Kelvin Fleming: guitar player & vacuum tube (Valve) enthusiast

About guitar playing, writing and recording instrumental tunes, working on guitars, audio gear and with sound etc.

Come in for a visit...

I am a guitarist and tunesmith, and more recently an electronics technician. I service and repair guitars and amps and associated equipment.

I also have a licence for 'Testing & Tagging of Portable Electric Appliances" which means I can test guitar amps, mixing desks, PAs. electric tools etc for electrical safety and tag them.

Building and experimenting with loudspeakers has been a long time hobby, although has taken a back seat to musical instrument gear these days. I modify amps and repair both modern Hi Tech and retro vacuum tube electronics. Lately, I have to confess, I am disinterested in fixing run of the mill domestic electronics products at home due to their increasingly ephemeral nature. With stuff being so cheap (in all respects...), why bother fixing it? I'd rather work on a timeless classic than some dumb thing. However, sound is my life, I'm what you might call a 'Sound Man' Jack ... In the frame at the top right is a picture of the first stereo amplifier I owned - a Star SA-30 12 watt per channel valve unit made by the Star Electronics Company of Japan (I think), using 4 x 6GW8s.

Apart from having some of the most amazingly attractive and timeless good looks, the sound still stacks up with the best. It still shines! These days I use it mostly as a headphone amp in recording sessions.

Having this stereo amplifier in my bedroom set the course for my future listening preferences. Other people had early solid state offerings which to me sounded awful - and they did. Sporting superior specifications, the protagonists insisted that valves were Inferior. The cart before the horse thing. Of course that's all changed now. It's not whether a piece of audio gear has transistors or valves or FETs, it's more to do with the skills and the ears of the designers that matter. Having said that, valves are still and always will be king amongst  those who care enough to hear the difference. They have superior sound staging, and a continuity of tone that eludes the solid state offerings. Nowhere is this more obvious than when used to amplify electric guitars. Transistor amplifiers just don't cut it as a serious gig proposition.