TAT is a hardware module that can be installed or built into vacuum tube electric guitar amplifiers that allows for wireless control of the bias point of an amplifier's vacuum tubes. The free smartphone app will allow users to input the power rating of his or her tubes and select an operating percentage between 50 and 100% of that particular power rating. After the desired percentage is selected, the system measures the power dissipation and automatically corrects that dissipation to the selected level! This is done without any digital interference in the signal path, meaning the user is provided with complete control of the tubes while the purely analog signal that everyone loves is preserved! A demo video of TAT is soon to come!

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TAT is set to be released in 2019!

Problem Statement

Although it is widely held belief that vacuum tube guitar amplifiers have superior sound quality to their solid-state counterparts, they can be quite a hassle. The vacuum tubes have to be biased in order to prevent them from drawing too much current and burning out. Manually biasing a tube-amp is a dangerous task due to high voltages within the amp, and it has to be done each time new tubes are inserted. Most guitar players take their amplifiers to a technician in order to make these necessary adjustments; however, this is often costly. Also, once a tube-amp is biased with a particular set of tubes, there’s no flexibility in regards to how “hot” the amp can be run without re-biasing. This means that users are stuck with the power output of their amp and are, in turn, stuck with the sound of their amp. An overview of these problem is provided below in bullet-point format.

• Setting the “bias point” of vacuum tube amps is required each time new tubes are installed in the amp in order to prevent damage or “burn out” the tubes.

• Adjusting the bias point is a dangerous and tedious task due to high voltages within the amp and the need to use a “guess and check” method to achieve the desired bias point.

• Having the bias point of a tube amp adjusted by a technician can be very expensive.

• “Fine tuning” the sound of the amplifier via adjustment of the bias point cannot be done easily or “on the fly.”

• Prolongs the life of vacuum tubes by automatically adjusting the power dissipation to rated or desired levels

• Allows for quick and easy swapping of vacuum tubes without the need for a technician

• Provides the user with customizable “on the fly” control of the bias point to “fine tune” the amp and achieve the desired sound

• Prevents interaction with dangerous voltage levels

TAT Version 1.0

This is a picture of the original hardware prototype for TAT 1.0. The enclosure was about 4 x 4 x 2 inches. The finalized version is on track to be much smaller. The cable has eight wires that can be soldered into the amp at specific locations in order to be used as an aftermarket product. Instructions on how to properly install TAT will be released with the product.