LolI guess ya can't blame a fella for trying to find an answer.
(To which, I don't think there is one).
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Tube vs. Solid-State Amps
- Thread starter Reedi
- Start date
- Feb 12, 2006
- 60,953
- 5
- 220,607
- Disclosures
- Development Engineer-Mesa Boogie, Development Engineer-Genzler (pedals), Product Support-Genz Benz
It's the entire design, the choices that were made. The "sauce" is obviously proprietary to us.
@agedhorse you need to bottle that sauce - I am always looking for something new to put on my eggs.
This is a great point.
Tube amps ruled the music world at a time before road cases existed and were unceremoniously tossed on airline carosels and conveyor systems yet were next seen at a concert hall or stadium doing their thing. Over and over again for years. And then their was a thing called a roadie and a truck.
Tube amps are proven.
Neither are anymore reliable IMO. I’m kinda at half and half as far as failure. I like them all. I usually go hybrid or tube. I personally have not found a class D head I REALLY like yet but I have only used/owned like 6 and there’s new ones coming out all the time so I’m not gonna generalize. Right now about 80% of my heads are full tube with my Ampeg SVT and Mesa prodigy being the ones that come out the most.
Ginger or Mary Ann?
Lily or Morticia?
Bon or Brian?
Wars have been waged over these questions.
In an old Guitar Player magazine interview, Jim Marshall said that when Jimi Hendrix first approached him about getting some Marshall amplifiers, he expected to be asked to supply them for free, for the exposure.
But Hendrix said he'd be happy to pay full retail for them. All he wanted from Marshall was to be provided an amp technician to service the amps on the road and fix them when they broke down.
Marshall countered with an offer to teach Hendrix's roadie/tech the skills needed to keep the amps working. Hendrix agreed.
One other story about amp reliability:
I accompanied a friend when he drove from Connecticut to Long Island to visit Unicord, Inc. (then the importers and distributors of Univox and Marshall amplifiers), sometime around 1975 to buy new sets of tubes for his two Marshall Major stacks. We met one of the two brothers responsible for Unicord's on-site operations and had a great conversation with him, particularly regarding his views on the (lack of) reliability of Marshall amplifiers.
As I remember it, he said that, as the (at that time) official U.S. company responsible for handling Marshall warranty claims, he was constantly inundated with repair jobs.
One reason, he said, was that Marshall amps had been in such demand since the late '60's that the factory was forced to obtain parts from whatever sources they could find in order to keep cranking the amps out.
Probably for the same reason, Marshall also often made running circuit changes, another factor that made fixing them a nightmare.
He then talked enthusiastically about the run of Univox tube amps that he'd designed some years earlier with ultimate reliability in mind. He said he'd figured that those amps, which he and his brother had had built in Japan with military-grade components, would sell plenty.
Unfortunately, people apparently associated them with the sleazy reputation of the cheap early knock-off Japanese copies of Fender and Gibson guitars. And so, despite the instantly recognizable blue-Tolex Univox amps being seen on stage (for a short time, anyway) at Led Zeppelin and Jeff Beck shows, they never sold many of them and soon discontinued the line.
I took his story to heart and, when I came across a used blue 60-watt Unvox guitar head and two matching 2 x 12" cabinets in a local music store a couple of years later, I bought all three pieces for $225.
I played through it as a lead guitarist for years and never needed to get it serviced. Still have it, in fact. (Snapped a photo a minute ago. See below.)
It's not exactly a Marshall. In fact, it's more like a Fender Twin, in that it has to be turned up to about 3/4 volume before it starts to distort, probably thanks to the designer's prizing reliability above all else.
But the four input jacks work just like an early non-master-volume Marshall's inputs. So it's like a clean Marshall, but with reverb and tremolo. Still sounds great.
For those interested, here's some info about the brothers. From a quick search:
"Tony Frank (who is deceased) and his brother Kenny were the in-house service and design engineers at Unicord in Westbury, New York. They were also notably in charge of modifications and service for Unicord's other major import line, Marshall amplifiers, for which Unicord was the U.S. distributor. Tony Frank is also credited with designing the dual-volume control, two-stage preamp circuit that Marshall later adopted for their master volume amplifiers, a significant innovation at the time."
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Wait until you hear about the wars over Dave or Sammy...
I think we should surgically insert tubes in our ears. That way EVERY sound that we hear will be "warm", and have bragging rights for better hearing and better sound to boot.
There will be blood…
I’ve heard ancient tales of the Liverpool/Tottenham conflict that left many a young girl weeping, complicated by the intrusion into the fray by these loutish invaders from Dartford…
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It really comes down to what kind of music you're playing and the kind of tone you're after. I play in a Led Zeppelin tribute band, and although JPJ was a fan of ss right from the start (as well as an ACC 360, he had an early Gallien-Krueger GMT, and used SWR at the 2007 reunion), I find tubes add some heft, or 'pillowy bigness' to the music. Of course, the 360/361 is/was a unique ss beast that I would certainly use if I could find one, especially after seeing the guy in 'LedZepAgain' use one (or two, actually).
I have various ss amps - an Acoustic 220 (very clean, but almost too sterile without a tube pre in front), and 140 (warmer, but not as punchy), as well as an Alembic/Crown rig that's very clean and solid, although I may upgrade to a Crest CA9, or Prolite 3.0 (ears say CA9, back says 3.0). I also used a SWR 2x12 Silverado for many years and found it a great mix of transparent ss and warm tube preamp, but I think it's had it's day.
As far as tube goes, the best sounding rig I've had was a Sunn Sonaro and Traynor 18" cab, which was lacking in volume for gigging, but sounded amazing in the concrete basement with my 1964 Gibson EB2. I also currently have a Sunn 200S and '73 Fender Dual Showman Reverb, which sound great, but, again, iffy for volume at larger gigs, and not Zep-worthy, so I got an Orange AD200, which has the best of everything tube-ular I've tried so far.
I have various ss amps - an Acoustic 220 (very clean, but almost too sterile without a tube pre in front), and 140 (warmer, but not as punchy), as well as an Alembic/Crown rig that's very clean and solid, although I may upgrade to a Crest CA9, or Prolite 3.0 (ears say CA9, back says 3.0). I also used a SWR 2x12 Silverado for many years and found it a great mix of transparent ss and warm tube preamp, but I think it's had it's day.
As far as tube goes, the best sounding rig I've had was a Sunn Sonaro and Traynor 18" cab, which was lacking in volume for gigging, but sounded amazing in the concrete basement with my 1964 Gibson EB2. I also currently have a Sunn 200S and '73 Fender Dual Showman Reverb, which sound great, but, again, iffy for volume at larger gigs, and not Zep-worthy, so I got an Orange AD200, which has the best of everything tube-ular I've tried so far.
JPJ said he found tube amplifiers to be “too wooly” sounding. The Acoustic 360/361 he described as, “being reliable, while also having the proper amount of power.” He tried a lot of different amps before, but they always broke down. He said the Univox amps sounded good, but again, they didn’t hold up.
I believe he started with the GK GMT amps in 1975?
Today I believe he is using tc electronics amps.
W
They are kinda like batteries in an onboard active tone circut vs a passive one. I've had many bad/short life batteries out of the package, and also had them die while playing. But I still play Both active and passive basses.
Isn't the idea of tubes being unreliable just due to some batches being poorly produced, and the fact that they all have a lifespan?
They are kinda like batteries in an onboard active tone circut vs a passive one. I've had many bad/short life batteries out of the package, and also had them die while playing. But I still play Both active and passive basses.
I owned a Walter Woods MI-100-8 and a B-15N ( rev C) at the same time. Less than a week after later it had to have components in the SMPS Power Supply replaced . Walter replaced the parts and I was off and running in a few days. My B-15N was called into service at a street fair when the Woods would not come one due to a faulty portable generator. The B-15N did work after that gig ( the tubes were glowing Blue) but it weakened the PT which eventually failed. I don’t think that reliability was that much of an issue, just weird circumstances. Both amps were super reliable after their repairs.
