The "warmth of a tube amp" comes more from a tube power section than a tube pre-amp. That being said...putting the words "cheap" and "tube" together, typically does not yield good results. Frequently, a solid state boost or overdrive pedal will sound better than a cheap tube unit. Most commonly, those cheap units use tubes as more of a marketing gimmick than anything else. I was looking for a similar unit a while ago. The only things that sounded worth a damn, were prohibitively expensive. If you want to heat up your signal on a limited budget... I'll encourage you to close your eyes, forget about tubes, and start trying out everything you can find that's in your price range. If you find one you like... GRAB IT! If you don't... start saving your money. You're gonna need a tube amp.
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Thunderbird Club
- Thread starter TBird1958
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- club thunderbird
Do we really want to open this can of worms?...
No drilling, simply twist w t handle till its nig enough
TwyreZ opened it. I just pitched in the first 2 cents...
Gaolee
Official leathers tester and crash dummy
There's a whole lot more to it than valves vs. silicon. There's a reason an ACC stack sounds like it does, solid state or not. Output transformer capacity and other circuits matter a lot. Some tube amps sound great. Some sound awful. I have heard Ampeg amps that sounded sickly medium to light brown. That's not what a bass should sound like, even if you don't follow the colors. It had tubes, but it may as well have been a Lucas amp. It sucked. I have heard other valve amps, 7ender often enough, and a massive Plush (!) that sounded great. I'm personally not big on dirt with the bass, and I'll leave that to an overdrive pedal or fuzz pedal so I can make it go away.
For the purposes of a touch of overdrive, I currently have an EXH Bass Soul Food on the board. That's the one non-utility pedal that's there for now. It's not the kind of soft clipping that you get when a tube amp starts to distort, but it's always there if you want it, meaning I don't have to kill the back of the room to get it.
We can get into wave forms and all that if we want, but there's a whole lot more to it than just valves vs. silicon. There's cabinet design (check with Mark on that one), and you name it.
For the purposes of a touch of overdrive, I currently have an EXH Bass Soul Food on the board. That's the one non-utility pedal that's there for now. It's not the kind of soft clipping that you get when a tube amp starts to distort, but it's always there if you want it, meaning I don't have to kill the back of the room to get it.
We can get into wave forms and all that if we want, but there's a whole lot more to it than just valves vs. silicon. There's cabinet design (check with Mark on that one), and you name it.
Gaolee
Official leathers tester and crash dummy
Not yet. There's another one out there that includes DI capability and that would take the place of the ToneHammer on my board if/when I get one.
I can't argue with a word you've just said. You might've wandered outa the yard though. He just asked about a tube unit to shove into his existing amp. Not a whole new rig. He's looking to get the best he can outa what he has, on a limited budget...
Ok, I give up, I will have fun later with a small full tubes of 20 to 50w.
A Fairfield Barbershop does it for me. Its a mild OD pedal and doesn't have a tube, but does a great job of recreating the heft of a tube amp in my Class D's. It's an "always on" for me. They're built in Canada, but I don't know how available they are in France.
Gaolee
Official leathers tester and crash dummy
Point being that a pedal won't do what he's asking it to do, in my opinion.
Interesting....
- Mar 8, 2011
- 12,232
- 51,187
- Disclosures
- Authorized greenboy designs builder/Owner of BNA Audio
Ummmmmmmm. What you need to find is a pedal which runs at high voltage/has an AC adapter and those are very few and far between. Even then it might not do what you are looking for.
Most of the pedals out there run somewhere between 9V and 24V and sound like a room full of angry bees having a farting competition -- not nice at all. Despite my love of valve amps, if looking for a pedal to warm up a solid state amp, I'll go for valve emulation. It's not perfect, but you won't get the angry bees. The DG Vintage Ultra works for me, and now that the v2 is out there should be a few going in the classifieds. If you cut the saturation in the top and bottom ends, you should be able to get a very nice and warm tone.
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Don't get him started...
Gaolee
Official leathers tester and crash dummy
You can always use the output of one of those low powered tube amps through an attenuator and into your bigger amp.
I've done it many times.
Fwiw, SansAmp VT pedal. Well, it mostly emulates an SVT, but it's not quite a one-trick puppy.
Ahhhhhhhhh. I had one of those. I hated it. Never managed to get a good sound out of it and it wasn't for want of trying. At least it was a cheap-ish way of finding out that Ampeg isn't really my thing. If you offered me a choice between a V-4B and a 7ender Bassman, it would be the Bassman every time.
