UR12 wrote:
I have seen this kind of thing work both ways. My brother Richie designed the 36watt as a hobbiest to share with other hobbiests and as soon as the layout and schematic hit the web there were so called manufacturers out there that downloaded the info and started manufacturing 36 Watters without so much as a slam bam thank you mam.
Careful on that point. I sold what you might think is a 36watter from my posts in that forum, but I don't think that's the case. I used Graydon's chassis and tranny set because I was in too big a hurry to do my own faceplates (I got a "We're going on tour on this date, can you have it ready then?" order) and it sure looked stock. And I damned well asked a few questions on 18watt, because I had built an 18watter and modified it to death and that amp was what my client fell in love with. He asked "Can you make it EXACTLY like that, but 100 watts?" heh
In the finished amp, the only thing stock was the preamp from channel 1 of the 18watter. The poweramp was designed by experimenting with my 18watter (some of the trimpots on the PI are still there, in fact) and then tuned by ear to the customer's tastes. Oddly, it came out almost a dead-nuts match to the Liverpool PI, but I hadn't seen that schematic yet so I just attribute it to good taste on my customer's part.
The other preamp channel, as well as the entire layout, were done completely from scratch. I remember it vividly, since I was working for a client that week and spent evenings and the weekend drawing schematics and layouts. For that amp, I pulled it out of my ass while sitting in a coffee shop in Chicago on a Sunday afternoon, listening to a couple of episcopalian priests talking crap (the one hadn't gotten a good haircut since he quit going to that polish barber and the other two were hassling him about it) and I didn't even have an internet connection at the time.
I even redesigned one component that had been published but was woefully underrated. I quietly informed the designer of his error so that corrections could be made and dignity preserved.
And I certainly pinged Ritchie for ideas when I was debugging and thanked him for his help. The whole experience was the first time I'd designed most portions of a circuit completely from my own knowledge and come up with something that I thought was pretty good. A very satisfying process, in retrospect, but at the time I didn't even think of it as something I'd designed. I mean, other people have probably used every one of those values and a similar mix of components, and even the layout was pretty close to a standard marshall layout.
My point is this: If you publish information, someone's going to read it. And there's REALLY very little new in the tube world. Where the differences come in is in the voicing, gain structure, and the subtle points like layout and component choice. You have to respect that and deal with it, and if you don't want other designers to learn from your work, you really can't share it.
If it is TRULY innovative and you want to share it but let nobody else use it, you need to patent it. Then enforce the patent with lawyers. There's no other way around that.
At least when it's shared, no "manufacturer" can make a really unique product that a competitor can't copy in an instant. I don't know if that's a valid point, but I'm throwing it out there, anyway. And even if it was ripped off by a dozen manufacturers, someone can always get the satisfaction out of having helped me out a little. That's worth something, right?
Since I apparently started this with my words I will try to end it. Certain people might not like it, some will.