Anyone NOT like the SVT?

[will33]

As long as this thread is, I may have posted here before, don't know, don't care. I will say this, when I'm fumbling through craigslist or perusing garage sales/pawn shops or talking to old guy's with tons of amps and parts in their possesion.....when I see an old SS amp that's beat to hell, doesn't work right, etc. I think "boat anchor or door stop". Basically move on, there's millions more. When I see an old tube amp that's beat to hell, doesn't work right, etc. I think "maybe if I" or "I could do this and then take it to so and so and he could do that", etc. That should tell you something.

 

[will33]

1) It's not the most convenient amp on the planet. No tube amp is. Price, maintenance, reliability, and extreme weight hardly add up to an easy amp to get and own.

Well, you're at most half right. Price and weight...maybe. Maintenance and reliability.....no way. That's a myth. I've owned a lot of amps and the most "low maintenance" and most "reliable" and longest lasting have always been tube amps, be they fender, ampeg, peavey or whatever. I don't know if this is some marketing schmuck's way of selling their stuff as being better or what but it holds no truth whatsoever. The only SS amps I could pin down as being as reliable and long-lasting might be a couple selections from Peavey and GK's 800rb, the rest haven't been around long enough to tell. That alone should tell you something. I'm about sick of hearing about tubes and "maintencance" or "reliability" issues. You're not going to find anything more reliable if done right. Obviously there have been quite a few "done right". When's the last time you heard somebody raving about how badass their 30+ year old aguilar or markbass sounds?

 

[JimmyM]

you're right, will, but this group of tube wussies on here is awfully resillient and really clings to that belief in the face of so much real world evidence to the contrary. oh well, not my problem.

 

[nocontrols]

Ha ha... people who disagree with me are "wussies"

There is anecdotal evidence to support any opinion. Even my own. Even yours. I'm not losing sleep over it.

Sometimes popular beliefs exist for a reason and conventional wisdom, with all its cliches that you hate, has a nugget of truth in it. Don't worry about it.

 

[sunbeast]

Well, you're at most half right. Price and weight...maybe. Maintenance and reliability.....no way. That's a myth. I've owned a lot of amps and the most "low maintenance" and most "reliable" and longest lasting have always been tube amps, be they fender, ampeg, peavey or whatever. I don't know if this is some marketing schmuck's way of selling their stuff as being better or what but it holds no truth whatsoever. The only SS amps I could pin down as being as reliable and long-lasting might be a couple selections from Peavey and GK's 800rb, the rest haven't been around long enough to tell. That alone should tell you something. I'm about sick of hearing about tubes and "maintencance" or "reliability" issues. You're not going to find anything more reliable if done right. Obviously there have been quite a few "done right". When's the last time you heard somebody raving about how badass their 30+ year old aguilar or markbass sounds?

If you're talking an actual SVT, then the fact that one hasn't been made in 30 years means that there are components that are likely to fail at any moment if they haven't already (which is equally true of solid-state amps that old). Fortunately, most of those components are also relatively cheap to replace and hopefully won't kill anything more expensive when they go. It seems to me that many newer amps, including newer tube amps like the SVT CL, are not destined to be as reliable- both because of the way they are manufactured (smaller components assembled in modules to be replaced rather than repopulated/repaired) and because of the use of cheaper/less-reliable parts in some cases (it seems like the range of quality available in electrical components used in even expensive gear has expanded greatly since the SVT's heyday- the good stuff is much better, and the bad stuff much worse).

 

[JimmyM]

here's the problem i have...you are free to make your own choices and play whatever you want. but nobody has ever been able to prove that tube amps are any more hard or costly to keep reliable than ss amps, yet folks who don't like tube amps always go to this "reliability/maintenance" thing like it's true, often without much qualification to be able to judge. the only point i'll concede is that new tube quality isn't what it once was and sometimes you get a dud and have to replace it. other than that, there is no hard evidence that tube amps are any less or more reliable than any other format.

 

[JimmyM]

If you're talking an actual SVT, then the fact that one hasn't been made in 30 years

i stopped reading after that point. that's absolute nonsense. and i own one of the very first svt's ever made.

 

[Melik]

I likey the SVT's but they're too old-school sounding IMO

 

[RobJ]

To the OP's question. I've owned a couple of SVT's and played through many more over the years but they just aren't my cup of tea. Not a knock on tube amps at all, in fact I love tube amps in general and really dig Ampeg B-15s and my SB-12.

Play what you love - love what you play.

 

[sunbeast]

i stopped reading after that point. that's absolute nonsense. and i own one of the very first svt's ever made.

I did leave out the VRs- so I apologize, as those apparently were an attempt to make a modern equivalent to the SVT (haven't tried one personally, but it sounds like it was actually designed with that purpose in mind), but the SVT-CL is just plain not the same amp as your old SVT. Having NEVER seen a VR being used on a stage, I generally assume people are talking either vintage SVT vs SVT-CL, and as far as the context of my post- I would assume that even the SVT-VRs would be subject to the same weaknesses in components and probably also the modular build design of newer amplifiers.

 

[JimmyM]

i like the vr and vintage svt's more, but i certainly wouldn't turn down a cl. it's a little different, but not so different to me that i'd be dissatisfied with it. i can't speak on the longterm reliability of the ones made in the last 10-20 years, but i see an awful lot of them still in service, and i use a lot of them regularly on the road.

 

[sunbeast]

i like the vr and vintage svt's more, but i certainly wouldn't turn down a cl. it's a little different, but not so different to me that i'd be dissatisfied with it. i can't speak on the longterm reliability of the ones made in the last 10-20 years, but i see an awful lot of them still in service, and i use a lot of them regularly on the road.

Having owned both a CL and a 70s SVT at different points, they just didn't seem like similar amps to me- the 70s one had much more clean headroom and depth to the tone to me. They do have a similar voicing in the preamp audible at lower volumes, but unfortunately it seemed lost on the CL at the volumes I needed.

Unfortunately my CL had some sort of failure in the power section (as did my SVT-4 when I had that- fortunately both still covered by warranty). The unfortunate part as I mentioned is that both of those amps use modular internal sections that weren't designed for repair- so their solution for the failure of what may have been a 20 cent component will always be replacing the whole power amplifier circuit board (and for me- a repair shop wait of several months)! I won't take my bad experiences to mean that they are necessarily unreliable, but that they are certainly no more reliable than their recent solid-state brethren.

 

[JimmyM]

I won't take my bad experiences to mean that they are necessarily unreliable, but that they are certainly no more reliable than their recent solid-state brethren.

that i could buy into.

 

[derridiandrift]

Having owned both a CL and a 70s SVT at different points, they just didn't seem like similar amps to me- the 70s one had much more clean headroom and depth to the tone to me.

I would say the CL and 70s SVT are similar but not the same. The 70s SVT and the SVT-VR sound identical to my ears.

The unfortunate part as I mentioned is that both of those amps use modular internal sections that weren't designed for repair- so their solution for the failure of what may have been a 20 cent component will always be replacing the whole power amplifier circuit board (and for me- a repair shop wait of several months)!

That seems strange to me, but maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying because I'm no amp tech. I've seen my CL and my VR apart on the bench once or twice (such as when the brown-out mod was done on my VR, for instance). Aside from the SVT4, which is a different beast altogether, both the CL and the VR amps use PC board construction with discrete components, and my tech guy has replaced individual components on these amps if they burn out. My CL never required any component replacements, but I've seen the occasional CL on his bench and he's told me about replacing bits and pieces on the boards. I'm surprised to hear you say that you've had to have entire boards replaced.

Is it possible that your experience is related to authorized service centers who've been instructed by LOUD to avoid the cost of troubleshooting component failures and simply swap out entire boards to save time? Because if that's the case, it's not a matter of how the amp was designed as much as it is a business decision on how to best handle warranty issues.

 

[derridiandrift]

Maintenance and reliability.....no way. That's a myth. I've owned a lot of amps and the most "low maintenance" and most "reliable" and longest lasting have always been tube amps, be they fender, ampeg, peavey or whatever.

Sorry for posting twice in a row, but I have to say that this has been my experience too. I bought into that myth back in the early 80s when I started playing, but over the 30 years I've been playing, my thinking has come around in favour of tube amps. All of the SS I've owned broke down more often than my tube amps, but I owned lots of junk ss amps, so maybe my experience has been skewed. I've only ever owned Ampeg and Traynor tube amps, and they've been tough and easy to fix if they break, despite what I expected when I switched from ss.

 

[Reckless]

Not an STV fan.

 

[LuckyBassPlayer]

My only reason for not liking SVT's is their price. They are just too expensive for my pathetically low budget...

 

[sunbeast]

I would say the CL and 70s SVT are similar but not the same. The 70s SVT and the SVT-VR sound identical to my ears.



That seems strange to me, but maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying because I'm no amp tech. I've seen my CL and my VR apart on the bench once or twice (such as when the brown-out mod was done on my VR, for instance). Aside from the SVT4, which is a different beast altogether, both the CL and the VR amps use PC board construction with discrete components, and my tech guy has replaced individual components on these amps if they burn out. My CL never required any component replacements, but I've seen the occasional CL on his bench and he's told me about replacing bits and pieces on the boards. I'm surprised to hear you say that you've had to have entire boards replaced.

Is it possible that your experience is related to authorized service centers who've been instructed by LOUD to avoid the cost of troubleshooting component failures and simply swap out entire boards to save time? Because if that's the case, it's not a matter of how the amp was designed as much as it is a business decision on how to best handle warranty issues.

You are lucky to have your tech! Both of my repairs were done by authorized warranty centers (this was years before the whole LOUD takeover), and I was told that both of these amps were designed specifically to remove a "bad" module (meaning- whichever circuit board had a bad component) and replace the whole thing- they were not designed for replacement of pieces as done by your tech, and the good tube amp techs that I knew in Denver and currently know in Portland won't even touch them because of it (I can't speak to the VR though). This was one of the lesser points behind me ditching my CL when I did get it back (the tone being the major one). I never had any trouble getting people to work on my 70s SVT or either of my Mesa tube amps when I had them...I won't discount that there may have been some degree of bias involved in people not working on the CLs, but whatever the reason, if I can't find someone reputable to work on it then it is useless to me!
And this isn't specific to Ampegs/SVTs by any means- many (maybe most?) amps are built in this method these days (read- all the newer pocket-sized amps, for example), and finding good amp techs to deal with that design outside of warranty is getting harder and harder.

 

[sunbeast]

Sorry for posting twice in a row, but I have to say that this has been my experience too. I bought into that myth back in the early 80s when I started playing, but over the 30 years I've been playing, my thinking has come around in favour of tube amps. All of the SS I've owned broke down more often than my tube amps, but I owned lots of junk ss amps, so maybe my experience has been skewed. I've only ever owned Ampeg and Traynor tube amps, and they've been tough and easy to fix if they break, despite what I expected when I switched from ss.

And this is what I was trying to get at with the SVT-CL. Whereas the older tube designs were made with repair in mind, the CL specifically was made using the same design principals used in more recent solid-state heads (though even the 800RB was designed with the whole "modular" component thing in mind). There is no integral magic in a tube amp making it more reliable than a solid-state head, just the willingness to do what it takes to fix it rather than scrap it when it stops functioning correctly!

 

[aborgman]

Sorry for posting twice in a row, but I have to say that this has been my experience too. I bought into that myth back in the early 80s when I started playing, but over the 30 years I've been playing, my thinking has come around in favour of tube amps. All of the SS I've owned broke down more often than my tube amps, but I owned lots of junk ss amps, so maybe my experience has been skewed. I've only ever owned Ampeg and Traynor tube amps, and they've been tough and easy to fix if they break, despite what I expected when I switched from ss.

In my experience my tube amps have required more general maintenance, and needed to be repaired slightly more- but are significantly easier to repair.