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Post subject: Tube or Digital
Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2009 1:23 pm
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Whats the best amp Tube or solid state?


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Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2009 6:06 am
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im no expert, but your question is unanswerable unless you give some detail, like:

what you want to play.
where you practice (apartment where noise could be an issue to your neighbours.
Budget.

some more detail will help folks give more detail in their answers.


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Post subject: Re: Tube or Digital
Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2009 10:25 am
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A1Goldminer wrote:
Whats the best amp Tube or solid state?
[Tube units on the whole have given a sound which usually can not be duplicated with solid state, additionally sound may be altered with different brands of tubes. So, it depends on the sound your looking for as to what you may prefer. If you want to duplicate a sound an artist got with a tube amp it may best be done with similar equipment. ARC, Affinity, Reality, Communication, Carroll 2009 Jan. 18[/b][/quote]


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Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2009 1:05 pm
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Your kidding, right? You want good tone ya gotta go tube. They can be had cheap if need be and in low wattage for in - home use. Good luck. 8) Mike

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Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2009 8:54 pm
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Whatever works for you. I like tubes, but I know a lot of jazz players and metal players that like solid state. Just try a bunch. Fender makes both as well as a lot of other folks. Have fun shopping! :D


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Post subject: Re: Tube or Digital
Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2009 3:46 pm
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A1Goldminer wrote:
Whats the best amp Tube or solid state?


What's the best car...a Ford or a Chevy? The answer of course is whatever you prefer to drive...personally, I drive a Dodge myself. The same is true of amps...whichever a given person prefers to play. Fender, Marshall, Peavey, Traynor, Ampeg, Mesa Boogie, tube, solid state...it's all good. Personally I have a '73 Bandmaster that I do use on occasion and it -is- a great amp (although she has developed a tendency lately to blow pre-amp tubes a lot...time for a recap I think), but then my main amp is actually an old Lab L5 (like BB King was famous for) which is a 100 watt 2x12 SS combo. I also own a number of Peaveys as well, all SS. Also, someday I would absolutely love to own a Roland JC120...simply incredible sounding amps.

Very simply some people think that tubes sound better...some folks are down right adamant about it. Of course, if you put a blind fold on most of these folks, they can't really tell the difference in any case. I will say that one big advantage of a SS is they are usually hardier and more durable...no tubes to change regularly and no need to keep those tubes biased correctly. You generally just plug and play.

Don't let people B.S. ya with things like "if you're serious about tone, get a tube amp"...the "best" amp is the amp that sounds right to -your- ears.

Peace,
Jim


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Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 10:06 am
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totally agree with Jim - even if I personally prefer the tube amps as I tried both!

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Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 12:19 am
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I like the car analogy, like Chevy or Ford? Taken one step further, will you drive on the highway, the backroads or off road?
Translated, will you be using it mostly for studio, practicing or lots of gigs?

I got tired of lugging big heavy tube amps around to gigs. Plus they generally need to handled more carefully, which doesn't happen as well when someone else is helping with loading and hauling your band's gear.
Also, you most likely will use several effects pedals since most tube amps have just a few different sounds they do really good. That's even more stuff to haul and potentially break.

With that in mind, here's what works for me.
I've found for gigs in smaller venues, a quality hybrid digital modeling amp like a Cyber Twin or similar creates a large variety of tones that sound close to several different tube amps all in one package. Good for clean, blusey and rock, but not sure about the grunting, growling & screaming heavy metal. It has a tube preamp and ss power amp. Especially when you factor in the lousy room acoustics of most places, the sound gets washed out and reflected all over, so a quality digital sound is close enough for rock-n-roll. Plus, it's easy to switch between patches and it's lighter than the big tube amps of a prior generation. My CT has been gigged for about seven years and is still going strong. Just had to replace the tubes once and a few knobs when someone else helped me carry it and banged it into a door jam and shaved off some knobs. It still worked ok, just missed not having the knobs. I try not to let anyone touch it now, so no more problems.


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Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 11:20 am
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Ahh, the never ending debate. I disagree with the car anology, because in the case of amps, both Ford and Chevy make tube amps and solid state amps. There is a reason the ancient tube technology has not gone away in guitar amps, where they have disappeared in almost every other application. It's because of the sound that tubes create. They warm and fatten the tone/timbre like nothing else.

When I was a kid, I believed that tube amps were inferior, as I never had one and didn't understand. The tube amps I had played on was at practice level and they generally were one trick clean ponies. It was when I got my first tube preamp (ADA MP1) that it clicked. Suddenly, the sounds that I heard on my favorite records were closely achievable. The tone, warmth, grind and sustain were great.

I have a digitech 2101 that has tube and solid state preamps, and let me tell you there is certainly a sonic difference, particularily noticable in the harmonics. For a practice amp, I have found that hybrid amps with tube preamps do the job great at low to medium volumes. However, to really get that sound at stage volumes, you need to get the power tubes breathing by turning it up, as preamp distortions can sound buzzy when you crank them up through a clean power amp.

Also, the differences go beyond the general sound. To me there is a feel factor as well. Something about the way the amp responds to your playing. With tube amps, they just seem to have more dynamics and softly clip a bit at a time as you push them harder. Solid state amps tend to clip abruptly, and when they clip, its harsh sounding. This means you can turn up a tube amp were the sound distorts some, and then you can roll off the volume on the guitar and clean it up. Also, its pretty cool when you pick agressively and the sound gets an edge to it, plus can thump you in the chest and pick softly and its nice and clean. I have never got a SS amp to do this as effectively.

With that, there are attractive sonic qualities to solid state amps as well. One thing about them is they tend to keep the bass frequencies tight, focused and articulate, which is great for metal players and bass players. This is why you still see some bass players and metal guitar players that like hybid and SS amps. Fortunately, there are tube amps that can also do this pretty well.

In addition, jazz players go for SS amp mostly, because they are lighter and require less maintanence. With a hollow body guitar, you really only need the amp to reproduce the sound of the guitar, and not color it much, which SS amps do. Since the sound color of a hollow body guitars come from the hollow body and woods used, you really don't need tubes to warm and fatten the sound. But a solid body guitar tends to sound thin and cold if the amp does not color the sound.

Technically, there is a sonic difference that is measurable, so its not all in ones head. It's proven that when tubes clip they naturally create even order harmonics, and the SS amp create odd order harmonics. This means that the harmonics created by tube distortion, have a fundamental frequencies that are related to the root note, which sounds pleasing. Odd order harmonics do not have this same relationship to the root note played, which can make it sound harsh, and in some cases unmusical. So the distortion created by SS amps needs to be processed more to get the even order harmonics and filter out the odd order harmonics. This processing is what amp manufactors have been working on for decades to get them closer to the distortions tubes create.

If you do your homework, you can see where manufactors have tried to achieve tube tones on SS amps, then went to Hybrid, and that was only 50% of the way there, and then finally they started using digital processing and modeling, and its still not quite there. Many of these products ultimately use real tubes somewhere in the signal chain to warm and fatten the tone.

Also, amps are not created equal, and just because an amp has tubes does not always mean that it sounds better than amps with no tubes. Get out there and play em. You will know when you find the right one within your price range. If you decide you want tubes, there will be a $ premium. So your budget is also a consideration.

Recommendation, is to find the amp that has the best clean sound to you in your budget, and a line in to the power amp if possible. This way you have a good foundation to build upon. However, if your looking for that authentic AC/DC grind and thump, you will need a tube amp cranked up to where the power tubes are clipping. That is almost impossible at practice levels, so you have to mimic it with preamp distortion, and a tube preamp will come closest imho. I always use a tube preamp, practice or playing with a drummer/band. But I run the preamps into a one channel 1X10 combo SS amp with reverb for practice (making my own hybrid amp). I run into a stereo tube power amp and 4X12 cab for playing out, and occassional practice, as the preamp still sounds great through this unit at practice levels too.

Sorry for the long rant, but I have been through this before. I hope this helps

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Post subject:
Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 3:52 pm
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Tubes are better :D


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Post subject:
Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2009 10:29 am
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Firstrat: I like your advice. I have an old Fender SS amp, the Stage Lead, (bought in 1984) which really sounds nice in the clean mode. I don't like the gain channel, as it sounds weak, especially for distortion. But I leave it up to a Digitech pedal for the distortion on the clean channel. I am not a big fan of distortion as it tends to bore me and I like Jazz, gospel, and R&B. The reverb on this thing is really wet!

Because of the success with my Stage Lead, I bought a Marshall SS Mosfet 100, which does heavy distortion, even giving a good simulation of the Marshall 'roar' distortion. This amp does mild breakup with volume increases on the guitar, without help from an additional pedal. It also has a push-pull distortion switch, increasing the gain from the preamp to AC/DC type sound. I haven't had any trouble with this amp at all.

I did have the Fender Stage lead re-welded, when the amp would 'bleed' sound in the gain channel from the clean channel. I also need a new speaker as someone put pencil holes in my speaker to 'toughen' the sound. Would a reconed speaker repair work as well as speaker replacement?

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