John G. Petersen

Denmark's John G. Petersen has been designing and building audio equipment since the seventies, but is certainly best known for 25 years of producing the fine Tube-Tech line of equipment, seen in studios all over the world.

So Tube-Tech has been around for 25 years?

It's 25 years, this year. We started in June of 1985.

You named the company Tube-Tech. Tubes and transformers have been a big part of your design philosophy.

The company's name isn't Tube-Tech, it's Lydkraft [Danish for "sound power"].

Right. But the gear is known as Tube-Tech.

I've tried many times to change the name to Tube-Tech! But I keep it open, in case I want to do something else.

In 1985 people were getting rid of tube-based equipment. To introduce a line of equipment using tubes and looking more to the past for design inspiration seems a bit of an aberration.

It was kind of a coincidence and it was just for fun. I talked to a Danish dealer — one of my friends was in the States had and bought some Pultec [equalizers] for $200. They were getting rid of them.

Well, they're no good! Right?

Right! He was making a studio. I checked and they were quite good, and the specifications were quite good too. No noise, no distortion. We saw the price increasing. This dealer in Denmark told me, "If you can make a similar product, I'd buy 20." So I said, "What the heck?" What I did was take it apart. I found out how they were made, what the specifications were and how they worked.

Did you need to specifically have someone make parts for you, like transformers?

Yeah. As far as transformers, I found a company that could make them. I had to specify the core size, the windings and so forth. After three or four tries, it was exactly the same. So, we bought 20. I was working for the Danish Broadcast Corporation at the same time.

Were you a technician in that field too?

Yeah, and maintenance — audio equipment, desks. I had a four-year education in this. So we shipped some of these Tube-Techs to the States and then it took off.

Was anyone else building tube-based professional equipment at that point?

There was actually, on a limited basis. Esoteric Audio Research started the same year.

It definitely precedes what is happening now. Do you feel people are more aware of the values of transformers, tubes and such, and has that helped the education of what your kind of product is?

Well, actually we've seen the opposite. Five or six years later we saw competitors popping up, especially Americans. It was quite a few.

Do you have stronger foothold in Europe and the UK?

We certainly do. You see more Tube-Tech in Europe than Manley Labs. In America, it began to get a little tough and we did have problems with distribution.

You were with TC Electronic for a while.

Yeah. We started out with a company called Audio Techniques and they did a pretty good job in the beginning. In the mid-nineties they were bought by Manny's Music and then they didn't get back to us. Then we had TC. But it's difficult to have a distributor who manufactures its own products.

Yeah, even though the products didn't overlap. They're working on promoting their own products.

Of course. Yeah, it's tough. Then we changed to another company, then we went broke and so forth. The last four years have been a little up and down. But then we started with TransAudio Group and Brad Lunde. He's an honest guy and he knows what he's doing. We're pretty happy about being with him indefinitely. We also had some problems with service before Brad took over. Now we have Thermal Relief Design, Inc., a company out of Las Vegas, and they're doing a pretty good job.

The United States is a large market. Is the majority of your equipment being sold in the States at this point?

No, I see the American and European markets as equal in size. We have about 40% of our sales in Europe and about 40% of our sales in America. And then there's everywhere else.

You've branched into VCA compression, optical compression and parametric equalization. Did you take apart an LA-2A at some point and look at it?

I looked at an LA-2A to see how it worked. But the CL 1B is not a clone of that. It is my own design. Although it was designed in '87, it's still one of my bestselling products.

And you've moved on now to the RM 2 and RM 8 rack format — your proprietary rack system. We're not talking about 500 series API-style racks.

No, because the problem with API is there's not enough power to run a [tube] module, unless you use two spaces.

You don't have other manufacturers building for your format.

No, not yet. It would be possible to do. The module system started out because we got a request from a guy who wanted to build a console. I decided to make that module. At a certain point, I found out he'd be doing something else, but I'd developed the module so I had to figure out what to do with it. Why not make a rack?

Have you taken your classic circuits and just sort of changed them around a little, size-wise?

Yes. We took the CL 1B, the MP 1A. They could be squeezed down in model size. It's exactly the same circuit with different components, but in a modular form.

Does that cut down the cost a little bit, once someone has purchased a rack?

It does cut cost on the modules, but then they'll need the rack. Unfortunately the big racks turn out to be quite expensive, although if you buy an eight-channel rack and two compressors, it's cheaper than buying two CL 1Bs.

How have they been received?

They've been received quite well, but people still think it's expensive. That's why we've brought out the RM 2 [two-spaced rack], because two modules could be made inexpensive.

Most of your products are not inexpensive. Have you thought of building a loss leader, a way to get your product name known? Or do you feel the rack system is a way to do that?

It is a way to do it. We've been thinking about doing affordable, cheaper units. But it's a bit of a problem to

maintain the high quality with cheap parts. We're still taking things apart to figure out how to do it. To keep that high quality and maintain a product level that will last for years takes money. People don't throw them away — they use them for years. We still see some of the oldest models coming in for service. They're still in use.

You don't want people to think Tube- Tech stuff is garbage, just because one piece isn't as good as the others.

And that can easily happen.

What about the plug-in version of the compressor? How did that come about?

We talked about it a long time. When the workstations came out I didn't feel that the quality of plug-ins was very good. We've thought about it for five years, until we found somebody who seems to be able to make it. The first one was actually made through TC Electronic, but it's a Swedish company who made it.

They did all of the analysis?

They did. TC had the digital version of it. At that time it was the only TDM version and the PowerCore version, so it was a bit limited.

The PowerCore is TC's own proprietary system for plug-ins.

It is. But it seems that software did a good job and made it sound quite good. They made the plug-in of a CL 1B, the compressor and it was close. It's not exactly the same, but it's close. So, last year we decided to make a plug-in for the rest of the workstations.

The SSA 2B summing amp is newer.

Yeah. I was working on a mic preamp at that moment and it was balanced. I talked to a guy and he said, "Why don't you make a summing amp?" I asked what he meant, and he told me, "People are mixing in the box and it doesn't sound good. They go and do the summing outside the computer." So, I converted this mic pre into a summing amp instead. It sounds pretty good. It has 10 stereo channels, or four mono channels and eight stereo channels.

There are quite a few different summing amps on the market. What do you see that's different with yours?

It has the Tube-Tech sound. It's one of the few with tubes. It's a little different because it has a so-called zero-field transformer inputs, which means that the transformer is part of the feedback. When you have this active input, it also means that you don't have little shifts depending on how many inputs are terminated.

Can you gang up more than one together?

You could do that, yeah. You could actually take one and put it into the other. It doesn't degrade [or cause] distortion or noise, so you could have several put together.

Have you thought of doing any other products that don't fit under the Tube-Tech brand, like doing things that are transistor- based?

Not transistor-based. But I have through the years thought of playing with power amps. We've talked to customers and so forth. There doesn't seem to be a model for that. There might be in the hi-fi market, but it's a different market. I won't go into that one! I made a 200-watt monoblock years ago.

Did you just take it home and use it for your own stereo?

It sounds good! Another thing I did think about was making a guitar amp, which is a big difference.

Yeah, you're looking for distortion and harmonic coloration.

Exactly. When you look at the market, there are so many guitar amps. It could be fun to make it, but it's a different question. It's still in my head. It might come out one day.

Have you done recording yourself as an engineer?

Well, I've done a little. Not much.

When you're working on designing equipment, do you pass it along to engineers and have them try things out?

Yeah, we do. We have a very good relationship with studios in Denmark. They'll let me know what is good and what is not so good. Then I have to correct it. We have to have equipment that people like to use.