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Why are amps still dinosaurs?

#81
Analogeezer said:
The keyboard player from a band I was in a while back went to see Eddie Jobson (most famous for being in
Zappa's band and then UK) and he ran an all virtual system for his synthesizers on Macs.

My buddy spent some time talking to the keyboard tech and there were two parallel systems, on UPS systems of course and the tech had the ability to instantly switch the keyboard controllers Jobson was using to the other system if the primary computer locked up.

That's kind of the reality of using SW live really.

Jobson's sounds and switching between patches and setups is of course quite complex; not something your average bass player ever needs to do.

Back in the day (late 70's) Jobson's keyboard of choice was the Yamaha CS-80; trust me you have heard this thing on MANY records (most famously the main motif keyboard riff on "Born in the USA".

CS-80's weighed 220 pounds and were difficult to keep in tune on the road, so it's not like Jobson was going to tour with his 40 year old CS-80. But I bet he still owns it :)

Analogeezer
Click to expand...
There’s a great YouTube video describing the redundant keyboard systems being run during a Billy Joel show. The backup/portable rig is a single keyboard.
If everything digital fails, the plan is to use the B3 and Leslie to play the parts ( knowing the voice will be different).
 
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#83
kcducttaper said:
I've been low-key searching for a 'forever' bass amp and I'll be danged if I can't find at least a couple things about most every head that I don't like. Anything from EQ points, to general tone, to lack of features, build quality, price, etc... That got me thinking. If I were to design/build my own amp from the ground up (or have someone else do it), how would I spec it out and what options would I include in it? Shortly after that, I got to wondering why we actually need 'hard wired' amps anymore in the first place.

Why can't manufacturers put in a digital software EQ section where we can set eq points, change the type (shelf, paramatric, 'Q' of the parametric, etc), add/remove high pass filters, even dynamic EQ would be easily possible (EQ that changes based on how hard you play), noise gate, compressor, etc. Then, once you've gotten up a sound you like for whatever gig, you can save it to a handful of storage slots for easy recall later.

Seems that would be super easy to put in a solid state amp for sure, but why hasn't anybody done it? It would open up a whole world full of additional tone options and dramatically increase the versatility of the amp! Plus, that component could be fairly copy+paste throughout several models, so perhaps they could either lower the pricing of the amp or reinvest that money back into the power amp section....?
Click to expand...

You're actually describing an amp that already exists: the @Jim Bergantino B|Amp :cool:
 
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#84
I think there will be changes though. Stage clutter could be a big motivator. I can't be bothered to faff round with separate wireless gear, but a receiver built into an amp would be pretty cool, perhaps even more cool in a practice amp. I hate having leads round the music room, getting rolled on by chairs, trodden on etc.

And an amp with the bare minimum of knobs and a bluetooth feed to a phone would be cool. The shaping type filters on my markbass are worthless to me, I'd have rather had a two more bands of straight tone control. It would be kinda neat to be able to select the tone config that suited you on a screen in front of you. And yeah, while we are at it lets have a single neat floor box that also wireless bluetooths into an amp for effects... an amp, a floor switch, both micro size stored in my bass case with maybe a phone or tablet, and a cab I can pick up with the other hand, and just one power lead, that's how I want to go to pub gigs...
 
#87
Lot's of interesting thoughts on this thread, that's what I love about TB. I don't know what your use cases are but if you play live, most players would probably think what you describe is overkill. It's hard for me to imagine something like a Mesa TT-800 not having enough tweakability for someone, let alone digging through menus for EQ points at an actual gig sounds like a nightmare scenario for me. Heck I gigged a Quilter BB800 for quite awhile and honestly there was never a time I couldn't dial in a great tone and that thing has 2 EQ knobs.
 
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#88
I thought I had "forever" gear, until Class-D and Neodymium came along. ;)

But I could have lived with the old heavy gear. My needs are modest -- 100 Watts into a 12"er will obliterate most of the bands that I play with.

I think long term gear investments are possible. I play with a number of old time bandleaders (typically jazz, weddings, etc.). They often show up with what look like the PA system that they bought when they first started out 40 years ago, including mics, stands, cables, everything. If something is new, it's probably second-hand, and probably replaced something that broke. One reed player likes to mention what he paid for his saxophones, one of each size, that he bought in 1960.

These are genres where the preferred sounds haven't changed much, and playing at a lower volume level is a selling point. The guys with newer gear have spouses with day jobs, or their band business has expanded to involve bigger venues. I'd still be playing my original gear too, but curiosity has gotten the best of me.

If I were to use any kind of digital gear, I'd want it to be outboard, because that stuff goes obsolete. My day job is in an industry that makes that kind of gear for non-musical purposes. The problem of maintaining digital technology over a span of decades is not unique to the music industry.
 
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#89
fdeck said:
I thought I had "forever" gear, until Class-D and Neodymium came along. ;)
Click to expand...

I literally just started playing bass from guitar and when I found out the midrange practice amps everyone raved about all weighed less than 25lbs I was kind of blown away. I mean, the Ampeg I bought is larger than my little 1x12 mini guitar stack but it is featherweight in comparison.

That said, if everything had weighed 100lbs I wouldn't have been any less enthused.
 
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#92
There’s been plenty of amps made in the last 20-30 years that have parametric eq ability, so you can select the frequency and then how much boost or cut. My old SWR had a bunch of sliders - but to tell the truth, I hated gigging with that amp. I would spend the whole gig trying to fine tune my sound. At practice it sounded good, but at gogs something was missing, and I’d never figure out what. Perhaps too many knobs to adjust.

Of course you can get any digital preamp you want - from a cheap multieffects pedal to expensive rack gear, and hook that up to a power amp and to your cab. I know people who use an Eleven Rack as their preamp with a class d rackmount amp and are all set. Or go with Line6 or Kemper or many other options.

For FOH, I would just run a DI to the sound board, pre-eq, and let them dial in the bass for the house. I guess I’m not overly picky? As long as I start with a solid tone from my bass.
 
#93
The B-Amp does all of this I think?

Also, there are no fewer than probably 10 amps I'd love to own. Amps by Genzler, Bergantino, Mesa, Ampeg, Aguilar, GK, Epifani, etc.

I settled on Aguilar. It has the ability to sound very clean and transparent as well as very vintage/tubey and vibey/gritty. How you can look at all the available options these days and not find a single suitable amp is kind of ridiculous and contrarian.
 
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#94
I realize now that one of my rigs is essentially this- for a particular band we use UAD Apollo X4 which we can load up on the plugins we want to shape the sound in real time (well, actually 1.5-3ms max latency) then run to powered cabs and/ or in ears. I've taken a light pipe from a drummer (8 channel preamp), up to 4 signals direct, mixed the whole band- 2 ears mixes, and recorded the show live at the same time with premium processing chains.
 
#100
Mantis Tobaggan said:
Hard wire amps last longer and are easier to work on. The only reason they use circuit boards is because it is easier and cheaper to manufacture. If they have a problem, you usually have to install a wiring kit.What you describe sounds like a paperweight waiting to happen.
Click to expand...

How wrong you are here (IMO and IME).

PCB's were introduced to improve reliability, hand wired amps would have a first pass defect rate of about 25% coming off of the production line, and sometimes these defects were impossible to find, or were intermittent and hidden under something else.

PCB's greatly increase the consistency from unit to unit by removing much of the variability due to hand wiring. This has become essential in high gain amps where interaction due to stray coupling is a very real issue.

PCB's allow amps to contain more features, feature sets that would be impossible with hand wired technology.

PCB's improve the reliability of solder joints by a factor of 100 or greater, especially when using double sided PCBs and plated holes.

PCB's greatly decrease the amount of time required to troubleshoot and repair amps with similar feature sets at the component level. I can (and do professionally) repair PCB based amps and it's far easier to do so, and do so in less time and at less cost.

PCB's using quality materials, have been powering our spacecraft, air planes and satellites for at least 5 decades in the most extreme environments. The reliability is WELL proven.
 
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