On Wednesday, October 10, 2018 at 1:59:46 PM UTC-7, et...@whidbey.com wrote:   
   > I see lots of tube amps with the tubes mounted such that they point   
   > down. This means all the heat rises up into the chassis. This seems   
   > counter-intuitive to me. All those components baking all the time. Is   
   > it just for convenience?   
   > Eric   
      
   You don’t appreciate the effort being made to improve the euphonious   
   presence in these vacuum tube electronics.  This orientation is applicable in   
   the Northern Hemisphere.  It is to optimize the curvature in the paths of the   
   electrons due to the    
   Lorentz forces induced by the earth’s magnetic field, and to match that   
   curvature with the helicity of the windings of the grid wires.  This was   
   commonly done in other vacuum tubes:  color monitors with cathode ray tubes   
   had opposite magnetic field    
   compensations for the two hemispheres for improved convergence and image   
   quality.   
      
   The next technological improvement will be to replace the copper wiring with   
   silver, just as they did on the Manhattan Project.   Of course, the silver   
   will be carefully annealed to be oxygen-free and single-crystal.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)