Vintage Volume VS. Modern Volume

[Gaolee]

Vintage electrons were higher quality than the electrons you can get now. You have to plug the vintage amp into a vintage socket to get the full effect, but as long as the magic smoke stays inside the large smoke reservoirs that weigh so much, you are going to get at least a good approximation of the vintage electron effect. Anther reason vintage watts are so much stronger is because they didn't have so many labor saving devices. Back when, watts put in an honest day's work instead of surfing the interned and then sitting in an air conditioned car on the way home to watch TV and eat potato chips. Those old watts got up at the break of dawn, several hours before they went to bed, walked to work in deep snow in the blazing sun, uphill, and then did backbreaking labor all day. Then they would walk home uphill all the way and be ready for the party and noise making that your amp expects out of them. No messing around for those old guys.

Be careful about letting those watts out too much. They might get into trouble if you let them. You will catch them in an alley, smoking cigarettes and beating up the neighbor's guitar. Not good.

 

[Steve Dallman]

I struggled with a 50 watt Bassman the first few years I played bass. I had efficient speakers but it was never enough.

I lived with 300 watts the next 25 years, first with an SVT and later with SS power amps in a biamped rig.

I have two Bassman 100's. Stock, one is not enough for most my gigs. The other I modded to use 6550's and quadrupled the B+ filtering. Watts wise, because the power supply is still the same voltage, it's the same 100 watts. But the stiffened power supply eliminates sag, and the 6550's have different characteristics, the 6550 Bassman 100 is plenty of power...

...or should I say, "headroom?"

I bought a used old Peavey MkIV cheap. It works, but doesn't have the headroom my old MkIII had. Replaced the old 5,000uF caps (2) with new 10,000uF caps. Lots of headroom now. Loud, tight and all PV.

 

[Steve Dallman]

I gigged with a 540 watt GK1001RB for years. One night the amp died in a tragic "ice water dumped in the top cooling fan" accident.

My backup head was an Acoustic 370. Into the 4 ohm speakers I used it puts out 160watts.

The amp felt and sounded much louder than my GK, not that I maxed out either. The GK always had such a polite, tight, controlled low end. The Acoustic was big, loose, loud and uncontrolled in the low end...old school fat.

 

[sunbeast]

It's all about voicing- both of the speakers and the amps. The deeper more modern speakers can reach, the less efficient they tend to be in midrange. Many older speakers could barely reproduce true low end, but tended to have huge spikes in response in the midrange (as well as the tendency to distort at high volumes, sometimes in a pleasant way- adding even more mids). Because of the limitations of speakers and to preserve power, many older amps had pretty highly placed high-pass filters built in, so there wasn't much true "bass" ever making it to the speakers (even with "bass" amplifiers). Often times the "Bass" control on older amps was actually more a low-midrange control. Try playing an older head through a more modern full-range cabinet like a fEarful and you will see where it falls short by today's standards!

 

[Bassmec]

It's all about voicing- both of the speakers and the amps. The deeper more modern speakers can reach, the less efficient they tend to be in midrange. Many older speakers could barely reproduce true low end, but tended to have huge spikes in response in the midrange (as well as the tendency to distort at high volumes, sometimes in a pleasant way- adding even more mids). Because of the limitations of speakers and to preserve power, many older amps had pretty highly placed high-pass filters built in, so there wasn't much true "bass" ever making it to the speakers (even with "bass" amplifiers). Often times the "Bass" control on older amps was actually more a low-midrange control. Try playing an older head through a more modern full-range cabinet like a fEarful and you will see where it falls short by today's standards!

Avast and belay me hearties!
Well sonny there was no such thing as a high pass filter in a tube amp in the good old days. The only thing that might limit the VLF was the output transformer. If you bothered to find out about that, you would know that quality amps like Hiwatt DR201's had partridge transformers that didn't roll off even .2 of a dB at the frequency a 3015LF in a Fearful would be at least 10dB down at and making nothing but an odd sort of fluttering sound.
An old Simms Watts AP 200 would do an even better job of controlling VLF due to its enormous five wire primary Ultra Linear output transformer. You won't find one of those self inventing any kind of asymmetric waveforms at full power like a good few Solid State amps.
RCA bins with barn doors on would do a very loud clean 30Hz with just a dribble of power. Handy as an eight man rowing skiff with guitars for oars when push comes to shove an all.
Yes the stuff was heavy, yes it was large and unwieldy, but bass players where strong too and what's more Knobs where far far bigger than the pathetic little thing you get today.
Men where men and women were glad of it.
This is what I looked like back in the early seventies way before photoshop enhancement was even thought of.

So get a couple of real cabs, like an pair of ACC 408's driven with a couple of SVT's and stand your girly fearfull rig alongside, you won't even hear it.

 

[sunbeast]

Avast and belay me hearties!
Well sonny there was no such thing as a high pass filter in a tube amp in the good old days. The only thing that might limit the VLF was the output transformer. If you bothered to find out about that, you would know that quality amps like Hiwatt DR201's had partridge transformers that didn't roll off even .2 of a dB at the frequency a 3015LF in a Fearful would be at least 10dB down at and making nothing but an odd sort of fluttering sound.
An old Simms Watts AP 200 would do an even better job of controlling VLF due to its enormous five wire primary Ultra Linear output transformer. You won't find one of those self inventing any kind of asymmetric waveforms at full power like a good few Solid State amps.
RCA bins with barn doors on would do a very loud clean 30Hz with just a dribble of power. Handy as an eight man rowing skiff with guitars for oars when push comes to shove an all.
Yes the stuff was heavy, yes it was large and unwieldy, but bass players where strong too and what's more Knobs where far far bigger than the pathetic little thing you get today.
Men where men and women were glad of it.
This is what I looked like back in the early seventies way before photoshop enhancement was even thought of.
View attachment 466543
So get a couple of real cabs, like an pair of ACC 408's driven with a couple of SVT's and stand your girly fearfull rig alongside, you won't even hear it.

Comparing a Hiwatt DR201 to a Kustom K200b (the amp the OP was referring to) is like comparing a Filet Mignon to a Slim Jim. Notice I said "many" (not all) older amps utilized strong high-pass filters, the SS Kustom included. Kustom even used the same amp for bass or guitar much as many early solid state examples (the guitar ones just had added reverb/effects).

The OP also mentioned that he was using the Kustom through a 215 with old Jensen "guitar" speakers- which at some point would have been Jensen bass speakers for many, and have a huge midrange peak with little reliable bass response (I've melted some finding that out). He is comparing the Kustom to a modern Ampeg combo amp with one single modern 15" speaker, so not only is he using half the speaker area, but he is using a speaker and amp that both have completely different voicings. The Kustom is less powerful sure, but most of that power is going to the midrange- right where the Jensens perform strongly. The Ampeg on the other hand is pumping a good amount of its power into the low end, into a speaker that can actually faithfully reproduce at least some of that low end- though the audible lows would be negligible back-to-back with a midrange-screaming Kustom rig next to it...

I am also not advertising nor condoning the use of fEarful cabinets, nor do I ever plan to own a modern "full-range" cabinet setup, I was just using them as an extreme example to help answer his question about why "vintage volume" seemed so much more powerful than "modern volume". Personally I'd take a medium-powered tube amp and 215 cab with "guitar" speakers anyday over a 1Kwatt SS head and a fEarful. Because of VOICING...

 

[Jim Carr]

...
I am also not advertising nor condoning the use of fEarful cabinets, nor do I ever plan to own a modern "full-range" cabinet setup, I was just using them as an extreme example to help answer his question about why "vintage volume" seemed so much more powerful than "modern volume". Personally I'd take a medium-powered tube amp and 215 cab with "guitar" speakers anyday over a 1Kwatt SS head and a fEarful. Because of VOICING...

Neither "advertising nor condoning the use of fEARful cabinets" is of any consequence—so do as you wish. One bassist's "VOICING" is another's baked-in tone from a budget cab of the past.

 

[sunbeast]

Neither "advertising nor condoning the use of fEARful cabinets" is of any consequence—so do as you wish. One bassist's "VOICING" is another's baked-in tone from a budget cab of the past.

Agreed- a limit in bandwidth/response is definitely a voice, and one that I happen to feel more comfortable with as a bassist. You may have missed that I was responding specifically to Bassmec's apparent belief in his response to me that I am a fEarful user trying to declare modern technology superior to older designs (which isn't the case). My whole point is that the difference between "vintage and modern" is not magical fairy dust, but has to do with the evolution of technology and performance goals- tone wasn't even a part of the discussion as anything but an aside before that, just "voicing" as it relates to apparent differences in volume.

 

[Jim Carr]

...You may have missed that I was responding specifically to Bassmec's apparent belief in his response to me that I am a fEarful user trying to declare modern technology superior to older designs (which isn't the case)...

No, I did not miss the discussion, just following with interest. However, I'm sure we would agree that an ideology for evaluating instruments and amplification based on vintage is short-sighted.

 

[fnordlyone]

I struggled with a 50 watt Bassman the first few years I played bass. I had efficient speakers but it was never enough.

I lived with 300 watts the next 25 years, first with an SVT and later with SS power amps in a biamped rig.

I have two Bassman 100's. Stock, one is not enough for most my gigs. The other I modded to use 6550's and quadrupled the B+ filtering. Watts wise, because the power supply is still the same voltage, it's the same 100 watts. But the stiffened power supply eliminates sag, and the 6550's have different characteristics, the 6550 Bassman 100 is plenty of power...

...or should I say, "headroom?"

I bought a used old Peavey MkIV cheap. It works, but doesn't have the headroom my old MkIII had. Replaced the old 5,000uF caps (2) with new 10,000uF caps. Lots of headroom now. Loud, tight and all PV.

I have recently purchased a very well maintained Peavey Mark IV. I was curious what type (brand) caps you used or is there really no difference? I've never really understood the concept of headroom. My Mark IV is very loud into high gain input into my 4 and 2 ohm cab loads. Thinking of trying to push one of the 8ohm Greenboy designs with the Mark IV (pure PV). Will changing out the caps give me more juice for an 8 ohm load?
thanks,
fnord!

 

[Munjibunga]

You just learned how watts aren't volume and neither is knob position.

He also learned that 100 watts into two 15s is louder than 220 watts into one 15. Keep in mind that 220 watts will be just a little more than 3 dB louder than 100 watts for a given speaker configuration. There's no surprise here.

 

[Basspolizei]

That 200b cab had one heck of a low mid kick!

Yes and still does all these years later. I don't play it though I do look upon it daily and it always brings on a smile just seeing it. Like a newly wed wife but sounds one hell of a lot better!