Old School vs. New School Amplification

[bebass]

Thats news to me. Just because you or your old school tech do not have the skill set or proper tools to do the job it does not mean that a board assembled with surface mount devices cant be repaired properly or cost effectively.

We do it everyday at work. Including packages that would blow your mind with how complex they are. BGA's, Qfn's DFN's and CSP's are an order of magnitude more difficult to work with than chip caps, resistors and SOIC packages. That is the easy stuff and what most of the components are on a typical amplifier.

It is all about tools and skill set when it comes to repairing SMD devices and most shops dont have either.

A Surface Mount Manufacturing Engineer.

I am sure you are correct, but practically speaking, may not be the case. I will give an example:
A Yamaha THD10 quit working. It retails for 299. I got a quote to fix it from Yamaha: cheaper to buy a new one.

 

[FFTT]

When my Blues Deluxe failed, the resistors burned a hole in the board.
I Spent $175.00 trying to patch it up, but it failed again.
A new board would have been $225.00, labor about the same.
The amp was only worth $300.00-$400.00 working.

Add to that a long stream of washers, dryers, dishwashers, stove, that all failed because of
issues with the PCB control panels, and it might be easier to understand why I try to
avoid PCB if at all possible. I've had it and I'm tired of stuff breaking on me.

In 10 years, the Bad Cat has needed power tubes, nothing more.

 

[iunno]

IME, neos sound a little different but very good, and class D doesn't sound that good. There are plenty of good sounding class D amps, but they are very much lacking in the same way that SS doesn't measure up to tubes. Mutilating the signal into a square wave and smearing it over with a LPF doesn't work too well imo. To me, acoustic instruments sound the most "real", followed by tubes, then lead sled SSs, then class D.

Most people just want a head that's light and sounds good enough, no one really wants the best possible tone anymore.

If class D amps really sounded as good as others, you would see guitarists using them as well. There's a reason tubes are still the benchmark.

Aside from tone, Class D is next impossible to repair/not worth repairing. Your head malfunctions, and it's garbage. Not so with other amps.

 

[CL400Peavey]

If class D amps really sounded as good as others, you would see guitarists using them as well. There's a reason tubes are still the benchmark.

Eh, I dont think that is a good qualifier.

Guitard gear is wrapped up in tradition, aesthetics, voodoo, and superstition.

 

[FFTT]

In my case, I was determined to break that endless chain of mediocrity and to stop throwing my money away on play and toss electronics when it came to professional recording quality gear purchases.

I did my time, earned my stripes, 31 years of getting by with cheap stop gap budget items.

 

[Handyman]

Eh, I dont think that is a good qualifier.

Guitard gear is wrapped up in tradition, aesthetics, voodoo, and superstition.

I've seen this occasionally. Guitarists who have gone for digital modeling gear will sometimes buy powered monitors that have SMPS/Class D amp inside.

The same crowd will often run their modelers straight into mixing boards, which makes sound guys giddy with glee.

 

[middy]

I've seen this occasionally. Guitarists who have gone for digital modeling gear will sometimes buy powered monitors that have SMPS/Class D amp inside.

The some crowd will often run their modelers straight into mixing boards, which makes sound guys giddy with glee.

I've seen the same guys then get tired of all that and go back to plugging straight into one channel of a Fender Deluxe.

 

[Handyman]

I've seen the same guys then get tired of all that and go back to plugging straight into one channel of a Fender Deluxe.

Oh, sure. Gear whores aren't confined to being Talkbass members.

 

[FFTT]

This discussion here is a picnic in the park compared to the discussions over the Kemper vs real amps.
Wild claims that it sounds exactly like the real thing, but there's no touch sensitivity. Every note, even the cleanest sounds processed. There's no air in the speaker sounds.
That average digtial guitar amp user doesn't care because most of their sounds are heavily processed with added sustains, compression overdrives, de-tuners, pitch alterations, chorusing, all FX I left behind in the 80's .
All fun toys for the younger metal crowd that didn't live through the previous, heavily synthesized 80's.

 

[iunno]

Eh, I dont think that is a good qualifier.

Guitard gear is wrapped up in tradition, aesthetics, voodoo, and superstition.

Either way, it's a tonally inferior topology. People like to say that you just need an very talented person with class D and it'll "sound the same as any class A/B", but that is complete nonsense. A person with as much talent building Class A(or even A/B) with tubes will make a MUCH better sounding amp.

I have yet to hear any amp that gets even halfway to the clarity and power of the Class A Tube amp I've heard. It's so clear it sounds like it's coming from inside your head. Class D cannot do this. It's physically impossible to recover all the lost information from a nasty square wave signal, so it will never, regardless of how well it's designed, be able to accurately reproduce the signal going in with the signal going out.

That isn't to say that there aren't class D amps that sound very good, the Tone Hammer series sounds great, but the only advantages class D has, or can ever have, is size, weight, and power efficiency.

 

[CL400Peavey]

Either way, it's a tonally inferior topology. People like to say that you just need an very talented person with class D and it'll "sound the same as any class A/B", but that is complete nonsense. A person with as much talent building Class A(or even A/B) with tubes will make a MUCH better sounding amp.

I have yet to hear any amp that gets even halfway to the clarity and power of the Class A Tube amp I've heard. It's so clear it sounds like it's coming from inside your head. Class D cannot do this. It's physically impossible to recover all the lost information from a nasty square wave signal, so it will never, regardless of how well it's designed, be able to accurately reproduce the signal going in with the signal going out.

That isn't to say that there aren't class D amps that sound very good, the Tone Hammer series sounds great, but the only advantages class D has, or can ever have, is size, weight, and power efficiency.

And back to the dogma!

Please identify exactly which tonal quality is lost.

 

[Handyman]

And back to the dogma!

Please identify exactly which tonal quality is lost.

You know, the stuff that can't be measured.

 

[Gab124]

I've seen this occasionally. Guitarists who have gone for digital modeling gear will sometimes buy powered monitors that have SMPS/Class D amp inside.

The some crowd will often run their modelers straight into mixing boards, which makes sound guys giddy with glee.

I have been seeing this a lot lately and sounds great.

 

[CL400Peavey]

You know, the stuff that can't be measured.

That is my point.

So what makes one amp a "much better" sounding amp than the other?

 

[Gab124]

This discussion here is a picnic in the park compared to the discussions over the Kemper vs real amps.
Wild claims that it sounds exactly like the real thing, but there's no touch sensitivity. Every note, even the cleanest sounds processed. There's no air in the speaker sounds.
That average digtial guitar amp user doesn't care because most of their sounds are heavily processed with added sustains, compression overdrives, de-tuners, pitch alterations, chorusing, all FX I left behind in the 80's .
All fun toys for the younger metal crowd that didn't live through the previous, heavily synthesized 80's.

Oh god! I sure hated the 80's

 

[iunno]

And back to the dogma!

Please identify exactly which tonal quality is lost.

Class A: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electronic_Amplifier_Class_A.png Pure sine wave in, pure sine wave out. No modification or switching.

Class D: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pwm_amp.svg Pure sine wave in, gets mangled into an ugly square wave to operate a switch that makes another nasty square wave, which is then put through a low pass filter to get rid of terrible sounding HF, and there's your output signal.

Is it really that hard to figure out which one will produce the higher fidelity signal?

 

[Handyman]

That is my point.

So what makes one amp a "much better" sounding amp than the other?

I must have forgotten to add the "snark" tag to my previous post.

I completely agree with you - if you can't measure it, it isn't there.

 

[Handyman]

Is it really that hard to figure out which one will produce the higher fidelity signal?

The one with the lower distortion spec, which won't necessarily be the class A amplifier.

 

[bassdrop]

That cab looks loud in more ways than one.

Maybe 80 pounds all told, bass included.

Loud enough to hang with any band, tone for days.

Link Removed

 

[bassdrop]

Eh, I dont think that is a good qualifier.

Guitard gear is wrapped up in tradition, aesthetics, voodoo, and superstition.

Agreed. Plus different use case. Most guitarists are using some kind of dirty sound and that is where an all tube amp shines. Opposite use case compared to bassists.