Re: Balls Effects / Balls Amplification
Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2026 12:42 pm
I've been fucking with subminiature tubes, lately. Got asked "can you make a tube Big Muff" and I said I dont know but let's give it a shot. The 6112 tube is a medium gain dual triode tube, kinda in the middle ground, gain wise, between a 12AT7 and a 12AX7. Only they're smaller and have flexible leads that you can solder directly to a board, so no socket needed. Perfect for pedals, so I bought a chunk of em.
A typical Big Muff is four transistor stages so one could replicate it with two of these tubes. I set the filaments up in series, with each tube drawing 6V, so it can be run off a12V DC supply. Typical operating plate voltage is 100V according to the datasheet. I set up a "Nixie power supply" to generate something near that voltage. And with a little experimenting and tweaking the answer turns out to be, yes, I can build a tube Big Muff. This is my personal prototype:
I've also started messing with something like what I *think* is probably going on in that Thermionics TE-01 and having promising results. Should be easy to do in a pedalboard friendly format that runs off of standard 9VDC.
A typical Big Muff is four transistor stages so one could replicate it with two of these tubes. I set the filaments up in series, with each tube drawing 6V, so it can be run off a12V DC supply. Typical operating plate voltage is 100V according to the datasheet. I set up a "Nixie power supply" to generate something near that voltage. And with a little experimenting and tweaking the answer turns out to be, yes, I can build a tube Big Muff. This is my personal prototype:
I've also started messing with something like what I *think* is probably going on in that Thermionics TE-01 and having promising results. Should be easy to do in a pedalboard friendly format that runs off of standard 9VDC.
