Solid state/class d vs tube amps

[beans-on-toast]

I didn't know that Sir Paul had used a fuzz.

As Jimmy said, Think For Yourself on Rubber Soul featured a fuzz bass. Paul played lead guitar and used a Vox fuzz to get that bright distorted sound on Good Morning, Good Morning on Sgt Pepper. I’ve seen photos of one connected to different amps in the studio. A little overdrive never hurts.

 

[somebrains]

Well it's a minority of at least two. I really love the clean SVT tone.

I'm with you guys, SVP-CL seals that clean deal nicely while I'm waiting to either learn how to service my SVT or a magic fairy decides to handle the backlog of tags at my local "amp tech".

 

[seamonkey]

Fuzz boxes on omnipresent on the classic rock. Even on the country music. Tube amps didn't start adding extra gain stages until someone started asking in the studio why isn't this built in. The "all tube" is a marketing spin used to sell these. Tube amps with the extra gain stages didn't come along until after the popularity of fuzz boxes.

All the spin on SS clipping sounding bad came from "all tube" marketers. SS distortion is a part of history and still popular today.

A good fuzz can sound good with any type of amp. The class-d would be very consistent.

 

[JimmyM]

Fuzz boxes on omnipresent on the classic rock. Even on the country music. Tube amps didn't start adding extra gain stages until someone started asking in the studio why isn't this built in. The "all tube" is a marketing spin used to sell these. Tube amps with the extra gain stages didn't come along until after the popularity of fuzz boxes.

All the spin on SS clipping sounding bad came from "all tube" marketers. SS distortion is a part of history and still popular today.

All true, but the stompboxes were way ahead of the distortion curve and not so much the amps. Once in a while you'd find one that sounded good when distorting, but they were the exceptions and not the rule.

 

[beans-on-toast]

All true, but the stompboxes were way ahead of the distortion curve and not so much the amps. Once in a while you'd find one that sounded good when distorting, but they were the exceptions and not the rule.

When people heard (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction with that Gibson Maestro fuzz-tone, everyone wanted a distortion pedal.




Classic Track: “(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction”

 

[johnpbass]

When I heard Mel Schacher from GFR, that's when I went out and bought a fuzz box. Didn't realize that it was from his amps and not external.
Funny, I can still remember that fuzz box - it was a Segova. The input was hard wired into the pedal itself with a 5 foot jack. Didn't give me any room to move around so I think I wound up replacing that with a Big Muff.

 

[beans-on-toast]

When I heard Mel Schacher from GFR, that's when I went out and bought a fuzz box. Didn't realize that it was from his amps and not external.
Funny, I can still remember that fuzz box - it was a Segova. The input was hard wired into the pedal itself with a 5 foot jack. Didn't give me any room to move around so I think I wound up replacing that with a Big Muff.

I had a Vox Tone Bender that vanished at some point. A local pawn shop had a box of broken ones that they were selling for $10 each. Do I ever wish that I had cashed in there.

Around 1970 I bought one of these used, it plugged directly into the instrument. It sounded pretty good but couldn’t be used with all instruments, it depended where the jack was located. There wasn’t a pedal, you had to move the switch to turn it on amd off. Not a big problem.

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[Quilbert]

Recently purchased a 100W tube Ashdown CTM-100. It's not back breakingly heavy (19kgs), the tubes are easily replaceable and and can be biased easily by a non technician. Seems sturdy enough, sounds creamy and loud enough for small medium gigs (what more do you need). I just really like Tube amps, love the warmth and response from them Nothing wrong with solid state amps either but you definitely get more bang for your watts with Tubes. I did own an Ampeg PF 350 amp, sounded great and really portable and it was no where near as beefy as my 100W Ashdown. My 2 * 10" 300W was more than enough with the PF350 now I think I need a 4 x 10.

 

[Chucky Stiletti]

Recently purchased a 100W tube Ashdown CTM-100. It's not back breakingly heavy (19kgs), the tubes are easily replaceable and and can be biased easily by a non technician. Seems sturdy enough, sounds creamy and loud enough for small medium gigs (what more do you need). I just really like Tube amps, love the warmth and response from them Nothing wrong with solid state amps either but you definitely get more bang for your watts with Tubes. I did own an Ampeg PF 350 amp, sounded great and really portable and it was no where near as beefy as my 100W Ashdown. My 2 * 10" 300W was more than enough with the PF350 now I think I need a 4 x 10.

Bounce for your Watts? What do you mean? Watts are Watts..

 

[Chucky Stiletti]

Bounce for your Watts? What do you mean? Watts are Watts..

Bang I meant..

 

[DavesnothereCA]

....Watts are Watts..

~
They USED to be.

Recently, I began a TalkBass thread which has become longer than this one (the title mentions RMS Watts), where that very thought is still being debated and discussed.

And there were other similar threads here before mine, I have been told by longer term members.

Unfortunately, not all amp manufacturers define output watts according to the same criteria these days, and also the amp's volume control taper and various tone circuits can influence a person's perception of an amp's performance, if you keep the same instrument and speaker while comparing amp heads.
~

 

[Chucky Stiletti]

~
They USED to be.

Recently, I began a TalkBass thread which has become longer than this one (the title mentions RMS Watts), where that very thought is still being debated and discussed.

And there were other similar threads here before mine, I have been told by longer term members.

Unfortunately, not all amp manufacturers define output watts according to the same criteria these days, and also the amp's volume control taper and various tone circuits can influence a person's perception of an amp's performance, if you keep the same instrument and speaker while comparing amp heads.
~

Completely agree. Having said this I remember dialogue like "x amounts of Watts of tube power" as if the same amount of power from a SS amplifier would somewhat amount to less. Imho, perception is the key word here, as audio can be so subjective. What I was trying to ascertain was; For the same amount of true RMS output power and ignoring coloration from tone filters, etc., does the tube amplifier seem to be "louder" than a SS amp due to the way their output stages saturate? Does the saturation of an EI core in an output transformer and/or the saturation of an output tube's plate (as a function of maximum allowed charge vs power dissipation) fool the ear into thinking there may be more headroom, hence available power/volume? I know this is a harshly debated (over 60 year old) topic and I like to hear different people's perspectives on the subject.

 

[agedhorse]

Most folks would run from the sound of an output transformer saturating. There's a healthy dose of Internet mythology in this.

 

[Chucky Stiletti]

Most folks would run from the sound of an output transformer saturating. There's a healthy dose of Internet mythology in this.

Run away? Maybe for bass (the reason why I prefer SS) but a main attraction for single ended class A guitar amps since there is always primary current flowing through the primary of the output transformer due to the conduction angle regardless of the input signal. It still does not answer my question about the fallacy of tube Watts vs. SS Watts. Something I believe may be a perceptional phenomenon exploited by amplifier manufacturer's marketing departments.

 

[DavesnothereCA]

Most folks would run from the sound of an output transformer saturating.

There's a healthy dose of Internet mythology in this.

~
Even when solid state instrument amps were first introduced (pre-Internet), the impression which I kept hearing was that at least for LEAD guitar, that the sound of an output transformer saturating was what gave them the sound and sustain which those players preferred, and to which they had become accustomed.

IIRC, this characteristic was mainly due to even-numbered harmonics being re-enforced when such saturation occurred.

IIRC, GK's first solid state offering for lead players did have an output transformer, and 2 12" speakers somewhat like a Fender Twin, in an effort to emulate and continue that legacy, and that other amps which claimed to achieve pleasing distortion thru various preamp topologies did not gain much traction at the time from lead players.

Bassists were quicker to give solid state a prolonged chance, it seems, and case in point, I during the 70s switched away from an SVT with the proverbial 8x10 cab, over to an Acoustic 371 rig with the single CV 18 speaker, reverse facing in a W-folded horn cab, and it DID save some weight.

While keeping the same instrument, the simultaneous change of cabinet made it hard for me to properly analyze the difference between the two heads, and in those days the s/s amps were mainly Class A/B - at least from Acoustic they were, all the way to the output coupling cap just before the speaker, on a power supply which must have been single rail, I would think.

I did like the Acoustic 370 top enough that I later bought other heads of theirs, such as a 470 (dual footswitchable channel version of the 450, both models of which were really lead guitar heads), and even still own and have used an old Acoustic 150 Bass head as recently as during this past year, for a couple of dozen gigs with a part-time band.

BTW, my first experience of having a graphic EQ inside of a bass head was with those Acoustic tops, and such design, while forward-looking and innovative, was poorly executed. - I discovered that insufficient attention had been paid to the bandwidth (Q) of each band in the then 5-band EQs of these amps, and consequently the bands either were too wide and severely overlapped adjacent bands in some cases, or were too narrow and left huge gaps between bands in other instances, along with a very 'peaky' sounding response when fully boosted. - This oversight I proved by using a signal generator and oscilloscope. - My solution was to tweak the EQ bands by putting padding resistors in parallel with the inductor coils, or changing the values of any which were already there, to change the Q of the filter in question.

I may also have changed the values of some of the capacitors to true up (or deliberately change ?) the centre frequencies of a band or two, but not certain of this, as it was so long ago, and my notes about all of this are hopelessly buried in a folder in a banker box or tote somewhere.
~

 

[agedhorse]

Saturation of a transformer tends to be rather rough and nasty sounding rather than the sweet description so often used. If those golden ears could actually identify the individual distortion component contributors they might more accurately attribute cause and effect to the appropriate elements.

 

[agedhorse]

I don't see how you could possibly increase the Q of an inductor based eq because the Q is primarily a function of the series resistance of the choke. Reducing the Rs is pretty much impossible as it's due to R of the wire that the choke is wound from. I'm calling BS on this.

 

[DavesnothereCA]

Saturation of a transformer tends to be rather rough and nasty sounding rather than the sweet description so often used. If those golden ears could actually identify the individual distortion component contributors they might more accurately attribute cause and effect to the appropriate elements.

~
OK, it could have been some other factor which the lead players like about the way in which tube amps broke up when pushed, but that was what anecdotally reached me at the time.

And as I am sure that you recall, companies came out with dummy load boxes (such as from Altair and Tom Scholz), to let a player variably dial down the final volume to the speaker while pushing a power stage just the right amount, whatver THAT was.
~

 

[DavesnothereCA]

I don't see how you could possibly increase the Q of an inductor based eq because the Q is primarily a function of the series resistance of the choke. Reducing the Rs is pretty much impossible as it's due to R of the wire that the choke is wound from. I'm calling BS on this.

~
And I would call BS too, if someone had made such a claim.

Either you misread something in my other post, or I expressed it poorly (I will re-proof that post).

No, I loaded/padded the chokes with parallel resistors in order to REDUCE the Q, so as to broaden the bandwidth of some of the filters.

Both the scope and my ears confirmed the result, though in doing this, I also ended up with less boost and cut on a so-modified band, which is a completely logical secondary consequence.

The better solution would have been to choose different choke values for some of the bands, so as to naturally have the desired Q, or at least closer to it.

Klark Technic's DN-27 (I think that was the model) of standalone EQ (current at that time) also had true LC filters, and did a better job of parts value selection.
~

 

[Chucky Stiletti]

I believe he meant to say "lower" the Q with resistive loss as Q = WL/R. The power amp would the deal with the loss. Again very subjective since I never knew an Acoustic owner who did not approve of the EQ shelving.
A core, initially saturates as a function of the hysteresis properties of the core material hence it's "soft" I believe agedhorse may be referring to the nonlinear saturation that happens beyond.
Again, it does not say anything concrete about Tube Watts vs. SS Watts.