Is All Tube Worth It?

[Calaverasgrande]

yeah about this IEEE test. First off 12 people is hardly a realistic statistical pool to draw conclusions from. If I got 12 people in a room and asked them their birthdates, I am pretty sure at least a few clumps would occur around various astrological signs. We all know Libras and Sagitarians are more likely to respond to CL ads for focus groups right? So if we have 3 libras and 2 Sagitarius, that leaves only 7 people to represent the other 10 signs of the zodiac. Of course there will be at least 3 left out.
So our little test to find out how zodiac sign affects tapioca preference is out the door!
When I worked in market research a study was a failure if we could not get a statistical base that numbered in the low thousands. When we collected data we screened participants to be sure our sample matched the composition of the population.
White males aged 35-50 never want to participate. Females over 60 and males/females under 25 were no problem.
When evaluating for audio you would want to be sure to cover several age groups. Age affects hearing. You would also want to screen for occupational disqualifiers. Jack hammer operators, punch press operators etc, would likely have impaired hearing.
With a sample as low as 12 I cant help but think this was the typical kind of conference hijinks that are used to lighten up the often dry proceedings. Hee hee can YOU tell tube from soild state? Besides, this kind of thing belongs in AES not IEEE.

PS I do not condone the usage of astrological signs for divination or decision making. But Aries are all jerks.

 

[Dethrats]

^ what a post! interesting to read!

 

[JimmyM]

i just can't do it. i tried to ignore him, but the fact is, after this discussion, i am now obsessed with seamonkey. i'm to the point now where i'd be willing to pay for a couple hours of couch time to see if we can't get to the root of his unnatural fear of tube amps. i just don't get why it's so important to him to stamp out tubes. to totally twist around what these people who actually do high level amp design say, and to manipulate the findings of a stupid 30 year old survey of 12 people, and to speak as if he's an authority on the subject when he's never touched a tube amp in his life...well let's just say i now have a burning desire to crawl in there and find out what makes that happen.

unlike seamonkey, i have actually taken tube amps and new ss amps and ab'd them onstage with a band, matching the tones as good as i could. could the audience tell the difference? don't think so. did i have a great sound either way? you bet. but i could tell the difference, everyone in my band could, everyone on the crew could, and the bass player for the turtles could. that's enough of a consensus for me.

 

[Count Bassie]

...unlike seamonkey, i have actually taken tube amps and new ss amps and ab'd them onstage with a band, matching the tones as good as i could. could the audience tell the difference? don't think so. did i have a great sound either way? you bet. but i could tell the difference, everyone in my band could, everyone on the crew could, and the bass player for the turtles could. that's enough of a consensus for me.

Gotta admit, this is a pretty good anecdotal bit of persuasion here. Which, since we're really talking about music, is enough to win the day.

You can't hear numbers...

 

[Count Bassie]

I do wish you'd capitalize "I", though...

 

[JimmyM]

I do wish you'd capitalize "I", though...

for some reason, typing without capitals is much easier on my hand. doing that pinky stretch to the shift key gets painful with my crappy typing technique.

 

[Count Bassie]

for some reason, typing without capitals is much easier on my hand. doing that pinky stretch to the shift key gets painful with my crappy typing technique.

No, I understand. Typing has it's own special skills, which I pretty much ;ack. I type slowly, and looking at the keybopard. And I go back and fix things a lot.

 

[oddio]

Is all tube worth it? It certainly is if it provides you with some tonal aspect that you cannot create using a solid state amp. My earlier point was that solid state tube emulations are getting much better at providing what you can get with an all tube amp. I have a collection that includes several great all-tube amps, but currently I am satisfied with solid state amps for most gig opportunities.

Now, I don't want to take this thread off track, but this earlier comment needs to be addressed.

Well you're not going to get the close up Leslie Dopler effect from mono amps. And Mic'd Leslie through FOH defeated it anyhow. I'd bet the Leslie effect is only good at smaller gigs.

I see that you either missed or avoided the point of my post. Anyhow, most pro sound engineers know the correct and well-established procedure to mic a Leslie through the FoH. With correct mic placement you can absolutely capture the close-up horn doppler effect. This has never posed a problem for Jon Lord, Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, Booker T. playing the biggest halls on the planet. Never heard (or heard of) them?

Anyhow, it needs to be made clear that you are espousing your own personal opinion in this case, as opposed to actual fact.

 

[cheezewiz]

i just can't do it. i tried to ignore him, but the fact is, after this discussion, i am now obsessed with seamonkey. i'm to the point now where i'd be willing to pay for a couple hours of couch time to see if we can't get to the root of his unnatural fear of tube amps. i just don't get why it's so important to him to stamp out tubes. to totally twist around what these people who actually do high level amp design say, and to manipulate the findings of a stupid 30 year old survey of 12 people, and to speak as if he's an authority on the subject when he's never touched a tube amp in his life...well let's just say i now have a burning desire to crawl in there and find out what makes that happen.

unlike seamonkey, i have actually taken tube amps and new ss amps and ab'd them onstage with a band, matching the tones as good as i could. could the audience tell the difference? don't think so. did i have a great sound either way? you bet. but i could tell the difference, everyone in my band could, everyone on the crew could, and the bass player for the turtles could. that's enough of a consensus for me.

My guess is he works for a company involved in modeling and he is shilling.

 

[coreyfyfe]

Again, I'm not saying there are issues; I just would need to read the methology section before making any conclusions.

It was accounted for, but as Cal hinted towards the overall sample size was dismal. Nothing near statistical significance IMO. You can get a retype of the full text Invalid Link Removed

And seamonkey - it's funny that you were touting this study when you thought it proved your point but when I pointed out that you had the wrong conclusion you're hedging.

Well there was a double blind study like 30 years ago with Tube versus Solid state for guitar amps and the guitarist couldn't tell a difference. IEEE peer reviewed paper presented at an IEEE conference. You can find it on the IEEE site.

There's no statistic evidence that shows that anybody can tell. Not enough sample size. Run a few more double blind tests and let me know.

 

[s_mcsleazy]

ok, ive tryed staying quiet BUT the janky overlord must speek to his followers

YES, ill agree that a good solid state amp CAN sound like a tube amp
YES, ill agree that sometimes its better to have a solid state (aka the days my back hurts from carrying a amp that weighs the same as me)

however, seamonkey. can we see any evidence of this reserch?

or how about this. if your so sure that solid states can sound like tubes how about some of the talkbass users like jimmy and me record a soundclip with our fave tube amps and you try to match them with your solid state?

im sure jimmy could record a bit with his b-15/svt and me with my modifyed bassman/valve jr

 

[seamonkey]

I thought you were talking about this current thread, but good point, and after looking at the circuiit closer, I think there may be enough gain so that the diodes do not conduct until after the power amp begins to clip. BUT, without doing more work than I care to do, I'm not positive either way. As I also stated, there's more to the circuit than meets the eye.

And it won't hurt to do some measurements.
Theory
Modeling
Measurements of actual circuits

Nothing wrong with doing all.

 

[agedhorse]

And it won't hurt to do some measurements.
Theory
Modeling
Measurements of actual circuits

Nothing wrong with doing all.

I don't have an SVT here to measure, perhaps you have one that you can measure?

 

[seamonkey]

And seamonkey - it's funny that you were touting this study when you thought it proved your point but when I pointed out that you had the wrong conclusion you're hedging.

My point is one person who could hear artifacts that were unatural to the sound, actually a broken amp. Nobody likes IM distortion, unless you're a robot. There I go again with "nobody"

Try hard and you'll be able to see the blind spots in your eyes. I think I can safely say "nobody" sees their blind spots, and you can annecdotally point out people who do. It's "nobody" in general.

Keep picking through with a fine tooth comb. The paper points out that guitar players couldn't tell a difference.

Now it's time to start introducing conspiracy theories about the paper.

 

[Footbutt]

for repair purposes, i love the fact that i can diagnose much easier on a tube amp. SS tends to be a "well, buy a new one" where as tube amp parts can easily be found/replaced.

again, this is from MY experience. i've built a couple amps for both guitar and bass and i've salvaged several tube amps (Hot Rod Deville & Dexluxe Reverb) but every solid state amp i've tried to fix has been met with fried circuits that i had to send back to the manufacturer to replace. (headache).

 

[seamonkey]

I don't have an SVT here to measure, perhaps you have one that you can measure?

I don't. UncleFuffy had volunteer to measure his after he gets settled in from his move. And when he has some spare time.

A good plucked dual trace overlay of real playing to pick up those peaks.

 

[Passinwind]

And it won't hurt to do some measurements.
Theory
Modeling
Measurements of actual circuits

Nothing wrong with doing all.

Please, go ahead then. You've mentioned before that you have the tools to do so, correct?

 

[Calaverasgrande]

At the end of the day you can no more do a statistical study about "which is better tube or solid state for bass guitar" tha you could do a study about "which is better mocha almond fudge or rocky road". We enjoy different flavors.
Now if the mocha almond fudge made you get fat twice as fast as the rocky road, you would have to ask yourself, was it worth it?
Every spoonful.
Besides the best bass players are hefty guys and/or tall guys.
Who's with me!

 

[seamonkey]

for repair purposes, i love the fact that i can diagnose much easier on a tube amp. SS tends to be a "well, buy a new one" where as tube amp parts can easily be found/replaced.

again, this is from MY experience. i've built a couple amps for both guitar and bass and i've salvaged several tube amps (Hot Rod Deville & Dexluxe Reverb) but every solid state amp i've tried to fix has been met with fried circuits that i had to send back to the manufacturer to replace. (headache).

That's even more true today. SS amps are squeezed into little cases, have multilayer circuit boards, and surface mounted devices using tin solder, and coated with lacquer to keep the air off. It's not easy for a tech to work on.


Now we go off into the reliability issue. MTBF, etc.

There's megamillion cell phones, TV's, computers, ... all built the same way. AFAIK - there are no more TV's that use tubes, and they all switched because of reliability problems. That's just one industry.

Is it can be repaired really an issue? Are not field replaceable circuit boards the same concepts as tubes? You don't take apart tubes to fix them?

I think as a hobby building, or fixing and flipping tube amps would be a very fun and rewarding hobby. I don't think building and fixing anything this century for SS would be. I see a lot of CL ads for people willing to buy old tube stuff.

 

[Floyd Eye]

I prefer tube amps. The only thing stopping me from going that route is that I'm not sure if a 300 watt tube head will keep up volume wise with what I'm used to, which is basically a 700 watt power amp in front of an RBI.