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Tube Rectified bass head.
- Thread starter jeff ward
- Start date
Tube rectifiers in bass heads? Old low power Ampeg Portaflex maybe. Sunn first came out with tube rectifiers but went shortly to SS diodes as the tube rectifiers were blowing too often in the 120 watts.
I have played the old sunn 200s and an ampeg porteflex with tube rectifiers and loved them. I know all the technical reasons why SS is used over tube Rectification.
I feel the imperfections and ineffiecency of the tube rectifiers are one of the main contributiors to those vintage amps Tone and coloration.
I feel the imperfections and ineffiecency of the tube rectifiers are one of the main contributiors to those vintage amps Tone and coloration.
Put a sag resistor in a SS rectified power supply and get the same inefficiency.
Lol I see this thread going south quick. I know no modern bass amps will be sporting Tube rectifiers I was thinking more along the lines of vintage bass amps like the Sunn 200s or 2000s. The Traynor Yba 1 "with tube rectifier" and good ol 50s and 60s amps that where made by men that could pick up an 80lb bass amp with out crying lol full of paper and oil caps and no circuit board in sight lol
Seems like B-string is going out of his way to politely talk you out of a problem. 
Odds are if you find an older (and it would have to be older) bass head that still has a tube rectifier and the original paper and oil caps, you have found yourself a fixer-upper (at best). I wouldn't trust a cap that old at all. And, honestly, if I were going to run the head live with a tube rectifier, I would literally have another head sitting on top of it ready to go so I could do what IT guys call a "hot swap" in the middle of a song. I love tube amps as much as the next guy. I own several. None have a tube rectifier. They just aren't any good over a certain wattage, and even then they can be problematic. I would call them "a guitar thing". It's just not a design that is (in my view) well suited for bass, with its wide frequency range and need for higher wattage.
Sure, this is TalkBass. Someone will chime in and say "I've been using the same tube-rectified bass amp since September of 1847 with zero issues whatsoever." And, yes, there are probably boutique builders who make them today. Good luck with that. The point of diminishing returns..... you have found it.
Odds are if you find an older (and it would have to be older) bass head that still has a tube rectifier and the original paper and oil caps, you have found yourself a fixer-upper (at best). I wouldn't trust a cap that old at all. And, honestly, if I were going to run the head live with a tube rectifier, I would literally have another head sitting on top of it ready to go so I could do what IT guys call a "hot swap" in the middle of a song. I love tube amps as much as the next guy. I own several. None have a tube rectifier. They just aren't any good over a certain wattage, and even then they can be problematic. I would call them "a guitar thing". It's just not a design that is (in my view) well suited for bass, with its wide frequency range and need for higher wattage.
Sure, this is TalkBass. Someone will chime in and say "I've been using the same tube-rectified bass amp since September of 1847 with zero issues whatsoever." And, yes, there are probably boutique builders who make them today. Good luck with that. The point of diminishing returns..... you have found it.
At the beginning of my first stint as a bass guitar player (mid/late 70s) I borrowed a friend's old tube-rectified Bassman.
Talk about something being "slow"....
I swear the sustain phase of notes was louder than the attack phase.
Talk about something being "slow"....
I swear the sustain phase of notes was louder than the attack phase.
You know, I once imagine a bass rectifier. which of course would be a distorted bass. I would of imagined that mesa-boogie would make a bass version of their rectifier amps. I would imagine it would have a pretty heavy sound like a proco rat or a hardwire tl-2. or better yet, have the same distortion sounds as the dual/triple rectifier but with a blend control so you can have a killer distorted bass sound without obliterating lows. I would like to see mesa-boogie create a bass amp like that. I am aware that there is a mesa-boogie bass amp that has an overdrive channel, but I figure this idea would be the next big step in designing killer bass amps.
Lol it seems like lol you aren't really lol interested in lol other people's points of view lol. You may have read lol about tube lol rectifiers lol but it's going to make zero lol difference except that it will lol make the amp lol a lot more prone to failure. Lol
Seems like B-string is going out of his way to politely talk you out of a problem.
Odds are if you find an older (and it would have to be older) bass head that still has a tube rectifier and the original paper and oil caps, you have found yourself a fixer-upper (at best). I wouldn't trust a cap that old at all. And, honestly, if I were going to run the head live with a tube rectifier, I would literally have another head sitting on top of it ready to go so I could do what IT guys call a "hot swap" in the middle of a song. I love tube amps as much as the next guy. I own several. None have a tube rectifier. They just aren't any good over a certain wattage, and even then they can be problematic. I would call them "a guitar thing". It's just not a design that is (in my view) well suited for bass, with its wide frequency range and need for higher wattage.
Sure, this is TalkBass. Someone will chime in and say "I've been using the same tube-rectified bass amp since September of 1847 with zero issues whatsoever." And, yes, there are probably boutique builders who make them today. Good luck with that. The point of diminishing returns..... you have found it.
This is the correct answer.
There's nothing wrong with low power tube amps. The Ampeg B-15N is about as good as you can get in a lower wattage vintage amp. I have a 50W tweed bassman with a tube rectifier as has been mentioned. If you need more power, put a dummy load on the speaker output and take a line out level signal that can be fed into a larger slave amp. This will give you sag and loud.
Adding a sag resistor was mentioned. [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] sells a tube rectifier SS plug in replacement called a WZ34 that has a sag resistor built in. They aren't the same as a real GZ34/5AR4 but they do add some sag.
They used to use parallel tube rectifiers to boost the current capacity. This allowed higher power designs. The 5AR4 used to be a $2.50 tube, now they are considerably more. Parallel tubes also require double the 5V heater current so the power transformer has to have more capacity. Then there is the space needed on the chassis for the extra tube. Some reasons why solid state is considered better.
Adding a sag resistor was mentioned. [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] sells a tube rectifier SS plug in replacement called a WZ34 that has a sag resistor built in. They aren't the same as a real GZ34/5AR4 but they do add some sag.
They used to use parallel tube rectifiers to boost the current capacity. This allowed higher power designs. The 5AR4 used to be a $2.50 tube, now they are considerably more. Parallel tubes also require double the 5V heater current so the power transformer has to have more capacity. Then there is the space needed on the chassis for the extra tube. Some reasons why solid state is considered better.
If you want to design a tube rectified power supply from scratch to support a modern high power tube amp, I suggest visiting some of the forums where tube geeks hang out like DIYTube.com, and DIYAudio.com. Those guys know their stuff!
