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 🙂