Thermionic Culture

Retro Gear Shop is an authorized dealer for Thermionic Culture, made in England, UK.

"Thermionic Culture Ltd. was formed in 1998 to manufacture, promote and sell Recording Engineer Vic Keary’s all valve studio equipment designs.

Our principal aim is to prove that THERMIONIC VALVES (vacuum tubes to U.S. readers) are far superior for audio applications to solid state alternatives.

They have less inherent distortion than transistors, etc., and very low noise, so sound very natural in well‐designed circuits, especially with excellent audio transformers (Sowter!), as needed.

When valves distort of course the sound is legendary and mostly quite attractive and musical (hear The Culture Vulture), but we really want to promote their “clean” qualities as well. Some of our circuits have unbalanced “single ended” outputs which give a very “open” sound".