tubes or transformer?

[DJ Bebop]

Wait a minute, I’m confused…a 150 watt tube amp was too loud, but now you have a 800 watt(well, 400 into 8 ohms) transistor amp?

Coming from a 25 watt B-15, yes 150 watts into an 18 or 2x15 was loud in 1974. You know too as the tube folks seem to say, tube watts are louder (?)

Plus speaker sensitivity will make an amp louder.

48 years later yes, 800 watts into 4 ohms, 400 into 8. But with the 8,4/2 ohm switch I can also do 300 watts into 8 and 600 into 4 ohms.

I'm running the WD at 300 watts into this...

 

[byacey]

While many made fun of the Soviet era tube based systems, many of those systems were class leading and inherently more EMP survivable than our SS technologies would have been in the event of a significant nuclear exchange. IIRC at that time most people still thought more about nuclear weapons as a major explosive event with fall-out (i.e. dropping a bomb). There were fewer folks who recognized that other delivery techniques for nuclear effects could have much more wide-spread debilitating impacts and would permit troops to operate more freely after the event.

I would argue that our military and civilian infrastructure today is in many ways more fragile than it used to be. IME denial of service/capability in specific regions can be accomplished with a high degree of precision without even resorting to something like a nuclear airburst. That said, a strategic nuclear event with a significant EMP could transform our smartphone, networked society into a stone age existence in a nanosecond. Almost every device we use on a daily basis has susceptible components...even when they don't actually need to.

Engines are another example. Electric cars would be rendered useless, as well as any gasoline engines controlled by electronics. A diesel engine with a mechanical injector pump will happily keep running, as well as carbureted gasoline engines with points ignition, provided the coil and condenser survive unscathed.

 

[Will_White]

Wait a minute, I’m confused…a 150 watt tube amp was too loud, but now you have a 800 watt(well, 400 into 8 ohms) transistor amp?

With solid state, grit and volume aren't correlated where as tubes have to be turned up to get distortion.

 

[agedhorse]

With solid state, grit and volume aren't correlated where as tubes have to be turned up to get distortion.

How’s that?

Sure grit and volume can be correlated for solid state just like tubes. It depends very much on each circuit’s topology more than the devices (tubes or transistors) themselves ime.

 

[Will_White]

How’s that?

Sure grit and volume can be correlated for solid state just like tubes. It depends very much on each circuit’s topology more than the devices (tubes or transistors) themselves ime.

With a typical modern solid state amp, the grit is added by a module separate from gain, either input gain or volume, or it gets all of its distortion from the preamp (which is the case with the WD800). Yes you can run a solid state amp into clipping but IME it's not a musical experience when you run a solid state power amp into clipping.

That's not the case with a typical vintage tube amp, sure you could have a clean tube pre into a dirty tube based distortion unit into a clean tube power section, but that's not how most instrument amps are made, even having gain and master volume isn't guaranteed with vintage amps, and you can't get power tube and output transformer distortion without turning up the volume.

 

[gtirard]

Also, I wonder how much a transformer accounts for the total weight of a full tube amp (I believe quite a bit). I saw 2 modern 100 W full tube amps that weight less than 10 kg, twice lighter than an Ampeg VB4 and the like. The first one give a few info about their "Handemade output transfformer", the second one don't talk about what transformer he's using…

 

[Old Garage-Bander]

I was taught that electromagnetic pulse doesn't agree with transistors, but I haven't personally experienced that.

Yes. In general a tube circuit is less prone to EMP than solid state.

I know people who cling to their tube receivers and transmitters like grim death, awaiting a nuclear attack or high level solar mass ejection. That seems to not be as much of a concern for musicians. And realistically, if any of those things were to happen, we'd have much bigger problems on our hands.

There are ways to harden SS devices against such measures. The military and space industry have to do this. Even parts of the Emergency Alert System get some degree of hardening against EMP, though more is put into backup power, which is the much more likely "down-time" scenario. But to harden an instrument amp or any other general electronic product would add greatly to its cost.

So yes, it is a thing. Thank you for bringing it up.

 

[Old Garage-Bander]

While many made fun of the Soviet era tube based systems, many of those systems were class leading and inherently more EMP survivable than our SS technologies would have been in the event of a significant nuclear exchange. IIRC at that time most people still thought more about nuclear weapons as a major explosive event with fall-out (i.e. dropping a bomb). There were fewer folks who recognized that other delivery techniques for nuclear effects could have much more wide-spread debilitating impacts and would permit troops to operate more freely after the event.

I would argue that our military and civilian infrastructure today is in many ways more fragile than it used to be. IME denial of service/capability in specific regions can be accomplished with a high degree of precision without even resorting to something like a nuclear airburst. That said, a strategic nuclear event with a significant EMP could transform our smartphone, networked society into a stone age existence in a nanosecond. Almost every device we use on a daily basis has susceptible components...even when they don't actually need to.

I'm kind of experiencing a microcosm of this right now.

Went in for a Dr. appointment yesterday. The computers were down. (Apparently system wide, not just locally.)
Couldn't see the Dr., couldn't get the scheduled blood draw, and other things on the books (uh the computer) for that day. They couldn't even call to cancel the appointment because my number is in the computer. Only found this out after getting there.

Normally, I am only about 10 minutes away from there. And all the time going in I was worried about being late because of two accidents on my route during the morning rush.

They say that we are just one, well positioned EMP attack or Solar Mass Ejection away from being thrown back into the dark ages for decades. I believe that to be a true assessment.

 

[Old Garage-Bander]

They don't agree with a lot of things, including human health...

And it doesn't just need to be a pulse.

Once we got past the business of PCB's in transformers and large capacitors (not stuff found in instrument amps) the focus of safety in my industry was on RF exposure for people in and around high power transmitter sites (FM and TV) where the RF was constant. Exposure limits here are based in part on the duration of exposure and measured in minutes.

If you start climbing one of those towers more precautions are in order. That and tower safety for those who do climb are today's safety focus. And with all the precautions s#@t still happens, just as one wrong move while working on an amp can lead to bad things. So is the case in tower work. Unfortunately, rules and guidelines often don't get put in place until someone has been hurt or killed. But for all of us benching an amp, a little common sense goes a long way.

Stay safe. Keep one hand in your pocket.

 

[Old Garage-Bander]

I was taught that electromagnetic pulse doesn't agree with transistors, but I haven't personally experienced that.

And hope you never do.

 

[Al Kraft]

I'm kind of experiencing a microcosm of this right now.

Went in for a Dr. appointment yesterday. The computers were down. (Apparently system wide, not just locally.)
Couldn't see the Dr., couldn't get the scheduled blood draw, and other things on the books (uh the computer) for that day. They couldn't even call to cancel the appointment because my number is in the computer. Only found this out after getting there.

Normally, I am only about 10 minutes away from there. And all the time going in I was worried about being late because of two accidents on my route during the morning rush.

They say that we are just one, well positioned EMP attack or Solar Mass Ejection away from being thrown back into the dark ages for decades. I believe that to be a true assessment.

It's also interesting to me how we've let cost and convenience migrate us to a single point of failure society. Many companies, especially those who depend totally on cloud storage, software as a service, etc. lose everything including phones/fax when the internet is down. In many cases an electrical power outage that may not affect you directly can take out communications nodes that also create a service outage.

Years ago when the power went out we would call the utility company on copper lines and they would dispatch trucks by radio. Their number was written down in a personal address/phone book, available on last month's paper bill we kept for our records, or easy to find in the paper phone book. Today, all of that is typically done via cell/computer networking which is also typically the first thing to go in a power outage.

 

[ardgedee]

Many companies, especially those who depend totally on cloud storage, software as a service, etc. lose everything including phones/fax when the internet is down. In many cases an electrical power outage that may not affect you directly can take out communications nodes that also create a service outage.

A popular saying within the IT industry is "There is no cloud, it's just someone else's computer." If your computer can go down, so can theirs -- the advantage of cloud services is that presumably a company that specializes in it will be retaining a scale of equipment and staff necessary to minimize downtime and lossage which your non-IT business can't hope to match. If the reality doesn't live up to it, you have to find a better provider.

The whole of the Internet is startlingly robust, you can't gauge it by how well one particular region or type of service is staying up. The Internet was designed from the beginning to route around failure and that continues to be a principle responsibility of the people in ICANN, IETF, and other related organizations. Being able to survive nuclear attacks was a key remit of the design back when the Internet was merely DARPANet. Russia has been attempting to disable Ukraine's internet for half a year now with nearly no success whatsoever -- all that really happens is one area goes without service for a while, the rest of the country is unaffected, and then the affected area soon gets restored by reconnecting to the unaffected areas.

When people say, "The Internet is down," all they really mean is that their connection is down, or their service provider is down. The Internet as a whole has gone up but has never been down.

 

[agedhorse]

IMO, the term “cloud” is a clever marketing term, to make the technology appear more “friendly” to non-technical folks .

 

[ardgedee]

IMO, the term “cloud” is a clever marketing term, to make the technology appear more “friendly” to non-technical folks .

It's a complex and sometimes extremely complex category of services, so coining something that makes it easier to grasp is good marketing. On the surface it's not even wrong, since there are categories of cloud services that can fraction and disburse your data (and data processing) across multiple sites and there is no way to point to a single computer or computer cluster and say "that's where your stuff is", and trying to convey a literal understanding of what's going on gets into the weeds almost immediately. The problem with "the cloud" is that instead of being a gateway into comprehending how this works, people stop at the catchy memorable metaphor and when things go wrong they just shrug their shoulders and write it off as the usual miracles in the big vagueness stopped happening and there's nothing humanity can do until the miracles resume on their own somehow.

I... might have worked too closely to this for a little while.

 

[byacey]

I associate cloud with vapor. Vaporized data, hmm.

 

[byacey]

A popular saying within the IT industry is "There is no cloud, it's just someone else's computer." If your computer can go down, so can theirs -- the advantage of cloud services is that presumably a company that specializes in it will be retaining a scale of equipment and staff necessary to minimize downtime and lossage which your non-IT business can't hope to match. If the reality doesn't live up to it, you have to find a better provider.

The whole of the Internet is startlingly robust, you can't gauge it by how well one particular region or type of service is staying up. The Internet was designed from the beginning to route around failure and that continues to be a principle responsibility of the people in ICANN, IETF, and other related organizations. Being able to survive nuclear attacks was a key remit of the design back when the Internet was merely DARPANet. Russia has been attempting to disable Ukraine's internet for half a year now with nearly no success whatsoever -- all that really happens is one area goes without service for a while, the rest of the country is unaffected, and then the affected area soon gets restored by reconnecting to the unaffected areas.

When people say, "The Internet is down," all they really mean is that their connection is down, or their service provider is down. The Internet as a whole has gone up but has never been down.

If I recall right, Talkbass Forums went down a few years ago because of a fire at a "Server Farm". I didn't know one could cultivate servers. I imagine when the clouds roll in, it rains data down upon these farms.

 

[Al Kraft]

When asking people to surrender some level of control to technologies that they don't completely understand it's always a great idea to offer up a benign and/or friendly name and cite the incredible convenience. I'm not anti-tech as I've been an advanced technology developer for my entire adult life.

It's just that many of today's technologies encourage people to become lazy IMO as we expand the IoT so that now their toaster can talk to their vacuum cleaner about their checking account balance. While all this seems free to the end user and may even offer some perceived valued/utility, it also opens up cyber attack surfaces and avenues for attack that are on top of exposing many personal details of your life, daily routines, and life choices that many people are unaware of.

My concern is that certain areas of tech are starting to reach a tipping point where our dependence is critical/essential (i.e. we have lost the ability to do things ourselves or there is no viable back-up) just to execute simple daily tasks. Those who deliver that tech and manage it (as well as nefarious state and non-state actors) in many cases now have previously unimaginable opportunities to influence/change our lives in ways of their choosing without most people even having a clue. I spend a good part of my days in the cyber warfare/risk world and it is not a heartwarming picture.

All new technologies bring their own problems and vulnerabilities, but the tech marketing world would generally have you believe that's not a concern - in many cases that's probably even true. FWIW, I can say publicly that the military is concerned enough about service denial of modern comms that they are working on significant advances (especially bandwidth) in HF radio, antennas, and tuning couplers for over the horizon long distance communication as a back-up to the SATCOM we mostly rely on today.

 

[byacey]

Over the horizon triggered memory of this:
Duga radar: Enormous abandoned antenna hidden in forests near Chernobyl
The Russian Woodpecker: Official Bird Of The Cold War Nests In Giant Antenna
I imagine this was all built using tube equipment; Billions of dollars wasted on paranoia.

 

[Old Garage-Bander]

When asking people to surrender some level of control to technologies that they don't completely understand it's always a great idea to offer up a benign and/or friendly name and cite the incredible convenience. I'm not anti-tech as I've been an advanced technology developer for my entire adult life.

It's just that many of today's technologies encourage people to become lazy IMO as we expand the IoT so that now their toaster can talk to their vacuum cleaner about their checking account balance. While all this seems free to the end user and may even offer some perceived valued/utility, it also opens up cyber attack surfaces and avenues for attack that are on top of exposing many personal details of your life, daily routines, and life choices that many people are unaware of.

My concern is that certain areas of tech are starting to reach a tipping point where our dependence is critical/essential (i.e. we have lost the ability to do things ourselves or there is no viable back-up) just to execute simple daily tasks. Those who deliver that tech and manage it (as well as nefarious state and non-state actors) in many cases now have previously unimaginable opportunities to influence/change our lives in ways of their choosing without most people even having a clue. I spend a good part of my days in the cyber warfare/risk world and it is not a heartwarming picture.

All new technologies bring their own problems and vulnerabilities, but the tech marketing world would generally have you believe that's not a concern - in many cases that's probably even true. FWIW, I can say publicly that the military is concerned enough about service denial of modern comms that they are working on significant advances (especially bandwidth) in HF radio, antennas, and tuning couplers for over the horizon long distance communication as a back-up to the SATCOM we mostly rely on today.

Right after some CA earthquake 25 or 30-ish years ago. I fired up the ham rig and put out a few calls to check on my cousin. Got a fairly quick response that all was well, his home was undamaged. Aunt and Uncle were grateful for the news.
Now I'll be the first to admit that luck played the largest part in this. I had gotten on the air before the disaster nets had started rolling out or I would have been in a longer wait to get info. And that another ham was on the air in cuz's hood was also fortunate.
Now you set up these things in advance and plan and test frequently, HF can be very effective.

 

[KevInDaBassment]

Dude made an entire video just talking about his opinion without a shred of data, sound clips, or anything lol

Idk...still wanna own a MB Titan V12 before I croak anyways. Would love a WD800 too