I’d like to appropriate the term “MOSFET” for use by technology marketers, and to confer upon it the following signification in our jargon: A MOSFET is a new technology intended to recreate the effects of an old one.
Some years ago, when I was an audiophile and used to spend a lot of time reading high-end audio magazines like Stereophile and The Absolute Sound, I remember reading what a MOSFET was, and being very intrigued. The acronym stands for “Metal-Oxide Semiconductor Field-Effects Transistor”, but what was noteworthy about the MOSFET was that it was supposed to make your amplifier sound like it had tubes in it.
Even you non-audiophiles (above a certain age) may remember that, once upon a time, audio amplifiers had tubes inside them, not just for show, but as part of the actual workings of the device. Lots of things had tubes in them, in fact. But tubes were hot and inefficient and fragile, so when transistors rendered them obsolete in the middle of the 20th century, it was generally regarded as a good thing, by engineers and consumers alike.
And that was pretty much the end of vacuum tubes as a pervasive technology in consumer electronics.
But what you may not know, unless you are or were an audiophile, is that some people resisted the evolutionary replacement of tubes with transistors, because (in their own words) “tubes sounded better.” As a result, a whole generation of vacuum tube-based audio equipment, was rescued from the scrap heap, and became instead very collectible and highly-desired for many more years.
At around the same time, a number of start-up high-end gear companies (like Conrad-Johnson) began to manufacture new tube-based amplifiers, which were very expensive, but not, apparently, without a market. It may be that the scarcity of vintage tube amplifiers rarefied the ranks of those who could afford to own tube amplifiers, thus pre-qualifying a market of affluent men. That much would explain why there were sales. But we must also presume some amount of un-met demand for tube amplifiers, among those who could not afford them. Hmmm.
It is important to understand that the main (economic) reason tube amplifiers were so expensive is because the vacuum tubes themselves were no longer being manufactured. Cheaper, smaller, more capable transistors instantly replaced tubes in just about everything. There remained little reason to make them, and a mere trickle of demand from the puny high-end audio market could hardly be enough to sustain the large factories where vacuum tubes were previously made.
Thus it fell upon the would-be manufacturers of tube amplifiers to also have to manufacture their own tubes. But since the intended use of these tubes was high-end audio amplifiers, there was no need to try to make them cheaply. They decided, instead to manufacture them optimally. And thus a once in-expensive, fungible commodity, the vacuum tube had become expensive and branded. As a marketer, I enjoy noticing that renaissance tube amplifiers sport their tubes very visibly outside the case, whereas vintage ones understood the wisdom of sheltering a fragile glass object in a proper case. But when your differentiation is based on the presence of an electronic component, I guess it makes sense to show it off. Never mind that the basis of preference is supposed to be the way the thing sounds!
Which brings me to the MOSFET. The MOSFET was a most unusual animal in technology marketing because it represented, as I said before, the use of a latter technology to re-create the effects of an earlier one. Its great business intelligence was in recognizing that there had to be some number of people out there who wanted “tube sound” but could not afford it, and that among those there would be some number who would believe that a transistor could emulate a tube. That is the great brilliance of the MOSFET, which I have thought deserving of some special highlight here. But what I most appreciate about the MOSFET is its enormous irony.
I should like to see more MOSFETS!
