yeah, what I plan to test to decide if I’ll invest 130€ in a Radar. I’ve always prefered hardware things …
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Yeah I’m no one to talk there, here I am with a tube amp sim I love and yet still looking at a bunch of 12AX7 pedals 
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I have so much 12AX7 here that I’m not interrested so much in tube preamps any more 
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… by the way @howard if you want my opinion, I’m not convinced that the 12AX7 is the best tube to make a bass preamp. at least that would probably not be my first choice.
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People seem to be swapping them out for others a lot, yeah. But usually in the same line (12AT7, AU7, etc).
All of them seem to use that line, though.
I’m totally new to tubes so recommendations are welcome
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12AX7, 12AT7, 12AU7, 12AY7 (you forgot this one) just share the same physical format (dual triode with a noval pinout) but those tubes are NOT compatible and interchangeable ! (because of the plate tension and, even more important, because of the current drain)
(the smiley is just for fun, I’m not upset for real obviously)
and well what I’d like to do if I had to design a tube bass preamp (which could occur one day) is work with octal preamp tubes like the 6SN7 or 6SL7.
dual triodes again but very different, not at all the same approach.
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Interesting - people are posting about swapping out the tubes with others like that. I wonder if they are actually doing harm 
Like this guy:
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actually it often work because of the components tolerance … but it’s like a reprog on a car, you can do it and it will mostly work, but it’s not clean.
well.
if we’re into dual triode noval tubes, because why not, I’d probably go for a 5751. very unknown and underrated tube.
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It’s interesting that they are all dual triodes. I understand why tubes would be designed that way - but is that also why there’s so many two-channel tube preamps? Most I have seen are two channel. I guess that would make sense.
What character would these have that would be desirable?
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no, it’s not the case at all.
the dual triode format is just because it fits well with the physical size and pinout possibility, but there are a ton of other tube configuration. it’s just a practical thing. (very practical actually, that’s why you see those tubes everywhere)
“dual triode”, the logic is that it acts as two transistors, or two gain stages. which is not many, actually, not enough when you want to design a two channels preamp. you never have one single dual-triode tube for a two channel preamp (or if it happens, there are a lot of solid state things around !)
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that’s an excellent question @DaveT. a physically bigger tube will tend to have less voltage gain but way more current gain. it will sound less “agressive”, less “violent”, but fuller, warmer.
also this all depends on the circuitry around the tube but, still, each tube has its ows personnality and those big octal triode just sound freaking fat.
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Super interesting. That kind of makes me wonder then. Looking at the Le Bass as an example, it’s only got one tube with two channels.
Some of the other ones I have seen have more tubes; two, three, etc seem common.
if you want me to be honest, @howard, the Le Bass preamp does not sound good because it has a tube, it sounds good (if you like how it sounds) because it’s well designed.
at some point there’s no magic. there are a ton of crappy tube preamps, a ton of crappy solid state preamps, some excellent tube preamps, some excellent solid state preamps. what makes the quality is not really the tube(s) 
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For sure!
What I am wondering about is what it’s actually using the tube for. Like, listening to the thing, I would not be surprised if it was only using the tube in the dirty channel
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I think that’s the one that I downloaded (@T_dub had posted the link). I don’t know much about IR files, but when I unzipped it, I got a bunch of .wav files. I tried to download them to the Radar, but the Radar was not interested.
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This is completely fascinating to me. It’s incredibly cool that you have the experience working with circuits to have a sense of what sounds musical.
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Agree completely, really glad to have someone so knowledgeable around. Man this looks like a serious fun rabbit hole.
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It should have three folders: mono, stereo merged and stereo split. I don’t know why you would need split stereo, you can delete that folder if you want. So open up either the stereo or mono folders (either one will work) and find the folder marked 44.1k 24b. These are the wav files you want. You can delete all the other folders.
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Yeah I’ve tried that, but the Radar apparently doesn’t use .wav files. When I open that folder it just shows this:
Maybe I have a different version of the Radar than you have, IDK…
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