TUBE-TECH has now been around for 25 years.

More than 15.000 Blue Units have been shipped from Lydkraft, Denmark.

 

John Petersen in the studio with the very first TUBE-TECH, the PE1A, still in use and sounding good.

 

The Company behind the blue TUBE-TECH gear is called Lydkraft. ( Danish for Sound power.)

 

Lydkraft was founded in Denmark in1977 by John G.Petersen and two partners.

The company originally served the PA market but turned away from this area of business in 1980 when

John Petersen took over the company and focused his efforts towards the design, development and manufacturing of direct boxes, mixing desks and speaker systems.

 

 

 

 

John G.Petersen was in 1969 educated as an electronics engineer at Danish Post and Telegraph and worked from 1972 for the Danish Broadcasting Company as maintenance engineer on a host of different applications. He was factory trained at Solid State Logic, EMT, Studer, Sony, Neumann, NTP and Lyrec and designed the tape recorder playback/recording amps for Lyrec tape recorders.
When not toiling over a hot soldering iron, he collects technical equipment like cutting lathes, tape recorders, classic studio equipment,old radios, wireless equipment, gramophones, phonographs and related literature and plays bass guitar in his spare time.

 

 

 

 

Besides his many other activities, John also got involved in a heavy console-refurbishing project.

The old console from Workhouse Studios, London had been bought by MOX Studio, Copenhagen in 1979 and needed serious refurbishing work.The console was delivered non functional, without any documentation.

John went through every single wire and circuit and added several new features to the Workhouse console, and after a fair amount of time it came alive again. The basic build quality of the console was very good, and thanks to John, it has been producing music and sound for more than 27 years and it''s still performing extremely well.

 

 

Workhouse console under refurbishment

Scully upgraded to 16 tracks

Console today at MOX/TUBE-TECH Studio

 

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During the early eighties, John came across several classic tube processors such as the Pultec equalizers, and the Teletronics compressor LA2A.

John liked the high quality and the simplicity of these units and started working his own tube designs.

Due to decreasing sound quality from modern studio consoles, the demand for vintage high quality tube gear was increasing and John decided to start development of his own units in 1984.

John G.Petersen''s facination of classic high-quality analog sound made him start designing the TUBE-TECH line of all-tube signal processing equipment.

The first tube-based unit bearing the Tube-Tech name, Program Equalizer PE 1A shipped in 1985.

Production of the first TUBE-TECH unit took place in Johns private garage.
The PE1A Program EQand Midrange EQ ME1A was almost a direct copy of the Pultec units, since John wanted this high quality design to be available to a bigger group of studio customers.

After these two units followed the whole line line of "classic" TUBE-TECH units,

all designed from the ground up by John G. Petersen.

Here''s the full list of Tube-Tech products from 1985 to 2010:

 

1985: PE1A        Program equalizer. Hard wired.
1986: PE 1B      Program Equalizer, extended high frequency boost
1987: ME 1A      Pultec based midrange passive Tube Equalizer
1987: CL 1A      Opto "LA2A type" Compressor. Hard wired.
1987: MP 1A     Two Channel very smooth Mic Pre and DI
1991: PA 6        Stereo Headphone amplifier
1991: CL 1B       Equal to CL1A but featuring Circuit Boards
1991: PE 1C       Equal to PE1B but featuring Circuit Boards
1991: ME 1B       Equal to ME1A but featuring Circuit Boards
1993: LCA 2B    Stereo Compressor (With a tube as VCA). 
1995: EQ 1A      High Performance Active super musical Parametric Tube Equalizer   
1997: MEC 1A   Three in One High End Recording Channel.
1998: CL 2A      Two Channel Opto Tube Compressor
 
The action continues at full speed today with John still designing the products and running the company  

The result has been a wide variety of innovative interpretations of tube outboard, such as multiband compressors and summing amps and latest high end modular tube processors.

 

2000: SMC 2B    The World's first Tube Multiband Compressor. A new Classic
2004: MMC 1A   Recording channel featuring Multiband Compression
2004: SSA 2A    High end Tube summing Amp
2005: SSA 2B     Equal to SSA2A but featuring switchable mono inputs.
2008: RM 8       Table top Frame for Tube RM Modules
2008: PM 1A     Mic Pre and DI module
2008: CM 1A     Opto Compressor module
2008: EM 1A      Program Equalizer Module
2009: RM 2        TUBE-BOX Two Slot Frame for Tube RM modules

 

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The TUBE-TECH units have over the years gained a fantastic reputation in the audio business. The CL1B compressor has become a world standard and the SMC2B has gained reputation as the leader in analogue multiband compressors
Today, it's hard to find a major studio anywhere in the world, that doesn't own a TUBE-TECH.

Thanks to John Petersen''s dedication to high-quality analog sound you''ll see Tube-Tech gear in the racks of pro audio legends such as:

 

Multi Grammy Award winner Al Schmitt:

(Frank Sinatra, Steely Dan, Toto, Quincy Jones, Natalie Cole, Diana Krall)

 

Grammy winner Joe Chiccarelli:

(Elton John, Beck, U2, Tori Amos, Counting Crows, Offspring)

 

Engineer Russ Long:

(Sixpence None The Richer, Wilco, Dolly Parton, Allison Moorer)

Producer-engineer Tony Shepperd:

(Elton John, Madonna, Kenny Loggins, Barbra Streisand, Lionel Richie, and Whitney Houston),

 

The list can be continued by many, many more prominent names.

It seems that TUBE-TECH gear always creates strong relationships with users. Numerous superstars have grown big fans of the TUBE-TECH sound.

 

A few examples:

Stevie Wonder visited the AES Show in 1987 and realized, John Petersen was at the booth. As a real fan he wanted to shake hands with the designer.

In 1999 Michael Jackson wanted a CL1B so bad for his live appearance in Paris
that this became crucial for for his performance at  the concert.

John had to ship the unit express from the factory to the concert venue,

and everything finally turned out very well

 

Other prominent users of TUBE-TECH gear:

 

The Rolling Stones,  Aerosmith,   ZZ Top,  Steve Miller,  Bjørk., T Pain, John Hiatt.

The list of top stars and studios, who love and support TUBE-TECH is endless.

 

TUBE-TECH is one of the very few audio manufacturing companies in the world that has continued a tradition of delivering the same super high quality for now a quarter of a century. Newer units like the SSA2B Summing Amp bring TUBE-TECH quality to the many more private and personal studios of today.

Lowering quality to match a cheap price is NOT an option for TUBE-TECH

 

Young engineers and artists, some not even born when John Petersen designed his first units, is today realizing that TUBE-TECH processors deliveres top results in recording and mixing, a quality thats not obtaiable from discounted equipment and plug-ins.

This is the reason that the TUBE-TECH sound quality and the units lasts forever.

 

The TUBE-TECH history continues!