Those in the vacuum tube/valve amplifier game, particularly in Australia, will probably have heard of Patrick Turner. His site turneraudio.com.au was full of information and an often-cited reference for many, written in a style and with a humour that was uniquely Patrick’s.
Many projects were presented, with background information, theory and construction information all tightly jammed in together. The man was a goldmine of information and his knowledge was guru-level.
I had some conversations with Patrick in 2018/19. During that time, he implored me to take a copy of his site, as he was not sure how long he had left, being elderly and in poor health. This was a subject he wrote about on his site as lucidly as though it was a broken radio that needed diagnosing and fixing!
Patrick died in May 2021; his site is offline now.
In tribute to Patrick and his rich legacy of work, I’ve put up the scrape I did of his site with no changes whatsoever
turneraudio.com.au tribute mirror site
Note, As time passes, links on Patrick’s site may go stale.
Hello from Switzerland
I had a few emails exchange with Patrick Turner in 2018. As it happens I had a trip to Australia in November 2018, and asked Patrick if he accepted to sell me a few OPTs he had constructed but not used – the idea being, instead of a boomerang, bring back something valuable to me. I went through a good number of hoops to show him what I had constructed, as he wanted to check if I deserve his OPTs, and he ended up with a clear “I cannot supply any OPTs for you”, which I accepted fully, being an ignorant dude from the other side of the world
That was quite fun and I accepted the decision without any anger, he certainly owed me nothing. He told me as well to take a download copy of his web site, which I did, but didn’t publish, I didn’t want to have him angry or ensue whatever legal action. Now that your copy is out of the box, I might publish it as well, I have so much respect for his work and competencies, from where he is now he most certainly look at us in his particular way, affectionate and smiling at my incompetence
Yep – similar experience to me. He took a look at what I was doing and dismissed me as an idiot, basically! And that was when I wrote to thank him for the 2-triode phono stage he published after I built it and got good results. The curse of getting really good at something is that everyone else doing it looks like a fool