Zen and the Art of Tube Amp Maintenance. part 1.

I remember reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance a long time ago, when I was a teenager because a teacher gave it to me; most likely because I seemed stressed. I read it pretty quickly and got precisely nothing from it. And now, in my mid-40s, I finally understand why.

After ZATAOMM was a big success, it was followed by a bunch of other Zen and the art of… books. I never read any of them, so I have no idea if they’re good. But I think the thing I’ve finally learned from reading that book many years ago is that zen isn’t something you find by trying really hard. I think it’s something you stumble upon when you’re ready for it.

I found zen sometime during the first year of the pandemic when my wife and I were living with her mother, and we had a new baby. Relaxing times, right? I had worked with guitars and specifically amps for many years, but during that terrifying period of time, I found this weird sense of peace in tube amp design.

But I didn’t go looking for it. Mostly, I was annoyed about the fact that a Fender ‘57 Custom Deluxe cost $2400. So I thought, “I basically know how amps work. Let’s build one!” I will note that I had worked on amps in the past and had a good understanding of safety procedures. We’ll talk about safety procedures in another blog.

I went down the rabbit hole of tube amp design, and another world started to open up. It was a world I was aware of, but in the past, I had only scratched the surface. Because of the strange schedule of being a new parent in lockdown, I didn’t have any semblance of a normal life anyway. And so when I wasn’t changing diapers or wondering if we’d ever be able to go to the movies ever again, I kept going deeper into tubes. And at some point, I realized that it was keeping me from freaking out. That was important.

So why tube amps and not, say, literally anything else? I’m sure it had something to do with the fact that I’ve always been fascinated by tube amps, but there was an element of circumstance involved as well. There was something random about it, and following that randomness made a lot of sense at the time. And it still does.

And I think that might be the key to zen: having something that makes perfect sense, despite the fact that your surroundings may not make sense at all.

Tube amps are wonderful because there is always a right answer, but there isn’t always a single right answer. Circuit designers have been using different methods to accomplish the same result since the dawn of electronics. And there are endless debates about which method is “best,” but we can at least agree that all of these methods work.

Before tube amps, I had spent many years as a writer and musician, and this is a world where there is no such thing as the right answer. The method that works is random and based on the whims of people’s taste. I could write a great TV script that had all of the elements necessary for a TV show, but that didn’t matter. With tube amps, if you’ve made a mistake, it doesn’t work until you correct the mistake. It’s very objective.

It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy writing, it was that I found no peace in it because there was no clear path from doing it correctly to a functioning piece of work. There was always this nebulous gatekeeper standing in the way of anything happening beyond a draft. It didn’t matter if it was good because that’s not how it was being judged. And this just became too frustrating.

Now, when I build an amp and something isn’t working correctly, I know that there is a solution. I may not know what it is yet, but I know that the solution exists. Even if it means replacing every single component in the amp, there will, ultimately, be a solution. And that is very comforting because the majority of our lives don’t function this way.

That’s when I started to understand that zen isn’t something that takes over your whole life. It’s an element of your life— perhaps even a small element— that allows you to keep the rest of it in balance.

At some point, we can go into more detail on this topic, but one of the things I learned from AA is that you have to practice letting go of the aspects of your life that you can’t control. It’s not an easy thing to do, which is why you have to practice. But once you start to see the value in doing this, an enormous weight is lifted from your shoulders. The world doesn’t suddenly start to make sense. It’s just as chaotic as before. What has changed is your ability to live in it because you start to realize how little of it affects you. You also realize that even your best efforts wouldn’t do anything to change the chaos. So, you can either fight against it and use up a tremendous amount of energy, or you can put that energy into something else.

This is going to be an ongoing blog topic that will go deeper into how working on and building tube amps gave me a different perspective on my life and my place in the world. Whenever I look around, I see people trying to figure out “how to be.” They want to know what to believe and what to like and what to look like and how to feel about different things. People are reaching out for something, but they’re not sure what it is yet. My goal is to explain that the thing everyone is reaching for is their place in the world. Their purpose, if you will.

But in order to find that, we need to stop all trying to be the same. Being just like other people won’t actually make people feel better. Once you find a way to filter out all of this noise and start being open to finding your fit, those anxieties start to go away, and the world starts to feel more manageable. That’s what tube amps gave to me, but I’m not encouraging you to go out an start working on tube amps. It’s not about the tube amps. It’s about finding the thing that helps you find your place in the world. If that sounds good, keep following these posts.