How do tube amps effect distortion?

do you mean "affect"? get a sansamp vt ...if you're trying to get your solid state amp to sound tubish.

 

tube amps distort in a different way to solid state because of the nature of the valves, you get a much fatter sound because they generate alot of 2nd order harmonics when overdriven whereas solid state tend to generate lots of 3rd order (fart noises) when overdriven

 

What excatly are you shooting for here? I'm not following your question.
ANY pre and ANY power amp can be overdriven, with or without tubes.

You're trying to make your SS amp sound like a tube amp? Good luck. Once you find the secret, you'll be sitting on piles of cash . You can make it tube-like and get a somewhat close representation to it, but IMO, nothing can replace those firebottles, especially when talking about authenticate tube tone.

A bit more info on what excat amp you have would help us tell you what you can do to get there; be it a stomp box, a new pre or other.

 

SS is more odd order and tubes are more even order. Thats almost it in a nutshell.

What you can do is look for tube od pedals. Im still looking for a HotChili Tubester

I have a warwick amp that took my idea and really ran with it, use a preamp and power amp tube for grit then go to a ss power section. Works great.

 

yeah you'd get a tube sounding distortion, but obviously it wouldn't be near the real thing as most Valve distortion you hear is from playing loud and allowing the power amp to saturate

 

I agree. Tube emulation using transistors sounds like tube emulation using transistors, not actual tubes. Chimey clean or "Live at Leeds", the only way to get that rich, thick, creamy tube tone is with those glass bottles.

 

I've moved to SS, but I still do like to get a decent OD tone on occasion.

I actually don't use a tube, but I can recommend some of Line 6's amp modelers. They do a reasonable job.

On stage I run a Boss GT6B (awesome!) *into* a sansamp BDDI. By virtue of the blend knob on the sansamp, I can mix the OD from my Boss w/ a grittier tone from my BDDI, and voila, acceptable SS overdrive.

Class dismissed.

 

BJFE Blueberry Bass Overdrive.

 

A tube preamp being overdriven is not going to sound like a tube power section being saturated. Even with the hottest 12AX7s in there.

 

My guess is that a sub-$100 tube pre is not going to sound all that great. I had a Guyatone Flip Series Bass Driver that was awesome, but they are rare & pricey.

 

I'm just gonna say this. All tube preamps do not behave the same. Some pres have tubes in them, and really they do nothing more than make a little orange light on your rig. Some tube preamps give you piles of tubey warmth, and a nice sounding overdrive.

I prefer (by FAR) the pre overdrive I get from the sansamp BDDI and VT to that of most preamps with a tube in it.

That said, there are some tube preamps that do really well, but all tubes are not equal!

 

This is where you buy a book and build your own . Sticking to the pre- side of things isn't too terribly dangerous. No 600V running around, anyway.
Also, pre's aren't hard to build. There's a ton of books that will spell everything out without needing the EE knowledge - though having that will help.

 

Go to duncanamps.com and look at the spice simulations and models.

There's all kinds of models for electronic component available at many places on the web. Tube and solid state. Duncan even has a complete amp model. There's a yahoo group that has other complete models.

ltspice will even let you send a wave file through for processing so you can hear what your circuit sounds like.

And be sure to look at a simple diode. Two put across a signal will do soft clipping.

 

Spend $300 or so on a Traynor Bassmaster, and turn it up to 11, it's tube overdrive Heaven.