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Post subject: Re: Did I get Ripped?
Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 5:05 pm
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Rebelsoul wrote:
T2 hit on one thing that's very important to me and is sometimes overlooked and ...that is Arjay's willingness to help people here,as long as that person doesn't come off as what we've seen in this thread....his knowledge of all things Fender is more than impressive.
bluesky and I have traded words at times,but he has proven himself to be a very knowledgable person about guitars and amps with a working history of repairing and building both....I trust his opinion on these things because he's not out to blow his own horn...but to pass along what he knows.
Both of these guys can come off as abrasive at times...but not as bad as me. :lol:
the others here,no need to mention names....have helped so many in the past get through something they're struggling with on vintage amps,that if the person had gotten the info elsewhere,they would have paid for it.
To come here and challenge people to dispel "tube amp myths" when I don't even remember people passing along these statements might be your right mhowell,....but you might be barking up the wrong tree here...these guys know what they're talking about...and they "walk the walk'.


I've reread my comments in this thread and see now how I've come off as an $@!. My apologies. I don't why I take myself so seriously sometimes - nobody else does. :roll:

I'm really not a troll and I really do prefer tube amps. But what's in my mind and what comes out the keyboard often don't translate well. I'm the guy that shoots fast and usually misses.

Arjay is a treasure and so are you. I know you guys could fix amp problems blindfolded that would leave me scratching my head. You probably play better too. :wink:

If we ever meet in person feel free hit me in the head with a rolled up newspaper like a dog that craps on the floor.

Cheers,

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Post subject: Re: Did I get Ripped?
Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 5:11 pm
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mhowell wrote:
Not sure why some are getting their panties in a wad. I love tube amps and actually prefer them and I've stated as much. I've also stated, in other threads, that I respect the opinion of experienced players and techs. But it's still opinion and not to be taken as fact. Even experts disagree on many things so I'm not buying into one over the other.

My main beef is with some of the hype and factual errors that are prevalent in discussion of tube amps. And you all know there's lots of garbage that gets repeated. (example; tube watt is louder than SS watt - that's BS)

Fact: There's good tube amps and there's bad tube amps and there's also good solid state amps and bad solid state amps. There's far more bad SS amps because it is much cheaper and easier to get them into production compared to tube amps. It's far less likely that a manufacturer is going to invest the material cost of a tube amp into a POS design or botch the production implementation. That's not true with SS where anything is likely to get designed, produced, and put on the shelf at your local music store. The issue is with design and implementation and has nothing to do with device characteristics. To say any amp is better than any other, regardless of device architecture, we should be able to definitively and empirically show the good and bad traits. Everything else is subjective.

I don't have much tube amp experience but I'm not a complete novice. I've done some repair, and built two tube amps from scratch - one was a kit (ax84 p1) and the other my own design (actually more of a modification of an existing design). But I could never work with tube amps for a living.

However, I do understand electronics. I know what a bode plot is, I know how db is calculated, I know how power is calculated, I know what resonant frequency is, etc. My degree is Electrical Engineering, I have telecommunications experience in the Navy and seven years experience manufacturing circuit boards. I currently work in the semiconductor industry doing EDA (Electronic Design Automation) support and development. Not trying to toot my horn but Arjay was implying that I'm an idiot ... and I'm still waiting for him to show me where I was factually incorrect. So far all he's done is name calling.

Cheers,



You lost validity. Here on the planet Earth tube amps are far louder than SS amps! That is no BS. I don't usually take sides but, from that statement alone it proves to my humble butt that you are mistaken. This is why Arjay and the rest of numb skulls like myself are chuckling as we read your manifesto. No hard feelings. If you don't believe me, then fire up a 15 watt Pro Junior next to a 20 watt SS Mustang I. Go ahead and dime them both! The SPLs will be substantially different, I can assure you sir!


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Post subject: Re: Did I get Ripped?
Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 5:28 pm
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JACSTRAT wrote:


You lost validity. Here on the planet Earth tube amps are far louder than SS amps! That is no BS. I don't usually take sides but, from that statement alone it proves to my humble butt that you are mistaken. This is why Arjay and the rest of numb skulls like myself are chuckling as we read your manifesto. No hard feelings. If you don't believe me, then fire up a 15 watt Pro Junior next to a 20 watt SS Mustang I. Go ahead and dime them both! The SPLs will be substantially different, I can assure you sir!


The Pro Junior may be louder than the Mustang I but it is not because one is a tube and the other is SS. A watt is a watt whether it's SS, tube, or steam generated. :)

If there were an extra speaker jack on the Mustang you could hook it up to the Pro Jr. cabinet and get a clearer picture of which amp is louder. Speaker sensitivity is a far more important that power rating when analyzing loudness. I suspect the Mustang has a very cheap speaker with a very poor sensitivity rating.

There's also the question of headroom. An amp that is saturating will sound louder than a non saturating amp even if the peaks are the same.

Does that sound credible? I'm willing to be corrected if I'm misstating anything.

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Post subject: Re: Did I get Ripped?
Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 5:37 pm
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We're discussing clipping characteristics of tubes vs SS devices and you post a comparison of 6L6GC clipping to EL34 clipping? How is that helpful? On what page are the equivalent transistor clipping curves?

If you want to compare the 5F6A to the JTM45, I suggest you study this book:

http://ampbooks.com/home/books/bassman/

It makes for a very interesting read, if you can get through the math. Rest assured, I do intend to read the book that you referred to.

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Post subject: Re: Did I get Ripped?
Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 6:02 pm
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bluesky636 wrote:
We're discussing clipping characteristics of tubes vs SS devices and you post a comparison of 6L6GC clipping to EL34 clipping? How is that helpful? On what page are the equivalent transistor clipping curves?

If you want to compare the 5F6A to the JTM45, I suggest you study this book:

http://ampbooks.com/home/books/bassman/

It makes for a very interesting read, if you can get through the math. Rest assured, I do intend to read the book that you referred to.


The point is to show that tubes can clip hard. How would seeing transistor curves help make that point?

Thanks for the link to ampbooks.com. I'd not heard of it before. Looks like a useful source. I don't have the money for the book you recommend right now but I'll keep it in mind.

The SS guitar amp book is free from
http://www.thatraymond.com/downloads/solidstate_guitar_amplifiers_teemu_kyttala_v1.0.pdf

Please do read it. I wouldn't mind a second opinion on it at all. If he's putting out bad info then I wouldn't use him as a source anymore.

Regards,


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Post subject: Re: Did I get Ripped?
Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 6:48 pm
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Don't beat yourself up too much mhowell,we get over things pretty well here. :wink:
I don't know about playing better,and in this clip we're pretty loose,but here I'm playing with my son's band,my point being made here is,look at all that gear behind us,the Marshalls,Line 6 amps so forth and so on,that stuff belonged to the band playing after us...I'm playing through a 35watt '67 Vibrolux Reverb with 2 10s...my son is playing through a '60 Brownface Super,40 watts 2x10s....although the camera recorded sound leaves alot out,our sound was so much clearer and the tone so much better than the other band,who had a loud muddy sound...and most people noticed it too who knew nothing about amps.....hope you like it,I'm the old guy on the left,my son is singing and playing lead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mlw21n ... H1I4QGfwE=


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Post subject: Re: Did I get Ripped?
Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 6:50 pm
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mhowell wrote:
The point is to show that tubes can clip hard. How would seeing transistor curves help make that point?


I never said that tubes don't clip hard. They will under the right (or wrong) conditions. The discussion was whether tubes go through a period of soft clipping while SS devices clip hard once they run out of headroom. Regardless of what your reference claims, that is fact.

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Post subject: Re: Did I get Ripped?
Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 6:55 pm
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Rebelsoul wrote:
Don't beat yourself up too much mhowell,we get over things pretty well here. :wink:
I don't know about playing better,and in this clip we're pretty loose,but here I'm playing with my son's band,my point being made here is,look at all that gear behind us,the Marshalls,Line 6 amps so forth and so on,that stuff belonged to the band playing after us...I'm playing through a 35watt '67 Vibrolux Reverb with 2 10s...my son is playing through a '60 Brownface Super,40 watts 2x10s....although the camera recorded sound leaves alot out,our sound was so much clearer and the tone so much better than the other band,who had a loud muddy sound...and most people noticed it too who knew nothing about amps.....hope you like it,I'm the old guy on the left,my son is singing and playing lead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mlw21n ... H1I4QGfwE=


I love it!

Is it me or do the drummer's cymbals sound a little off time for about the first minute?

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Post subject: Re: Did I get Ripped?
Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 7:18 pm
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bluesky636 wrote:
mhowell wrote:
The point is to show that tubes can clip hard. How would seeing transistor curves help make that point?


I never said that tubes don't clip hard. They will under the right (or wrong) conditions. The discussion was whether tubes go through a period of soft clipping while SS devices clip hard once they run out of headroom. Regardless of what your reference claims, that is fact.


There are multiple traces and it looks like a quick onset of hard clipping to me. I am assuming that the same inputs were tested for both amps. The Marshall does the compression that we expect from a tube amp and the Bassman does not. :shock: You know better than me. Tell me what you think is happening there.

The Univox looked like some traces of a u741 where the top of signal just gets chopped off. Maybe it needs a low-pass filter to soften those transients. Wouldn't you agree? :lol:

Did you download Teemuk's book? I don't think he mentions it in his book but he conducted a double blind test several years ago. They compared modeling amps to tube amps. Most could not correctly ID which was which. However, there was one professional studio guitarist that correctly ID'd the tube amps 100%. Go figure.

Regards,


Last edited by mhowell on Mon Apr 16, 2012 8:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post subject: Re: Did I get Ripped?
Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 7:52 pm
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Rebelsoul wrote:
Don't beat yourself up too much mhowell,we get over things pretty well here. :wink:
I don't know about playing better,and in this clip we're pretty loose,but here I'm playing with my son's band,my point being made here is,look at all that gear behind us,the Marshalls,Line 6 amps so forth and so on,that stuff belonged to the band playing after us...I'm playing through a 35watt '67 Vibrolux Reverb with 2 10s...my son is playing through a '60 Brownface Super,40 watts 2x10s....although the camera recorded sound leaves alot out,our sound was so much clearer and the tone so much better than the other band,who had a loud muddy sound...and most people noticed it too who knew nothing about amps.....hope you like it,I'm the old guy on the left,my son is singing and playing lead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mlw21n ... H1I4QGfwE=

I swear you have the same axe I have. You definitely play better than me. I do well on rhythm but when playing lead I exhaust my repertoire is fairly short order. Playing an extended lead in a jam like you did is out of the question for me.

Hard to tell about the sound quality but I'm willing to wager that if the sound had been bad in the original then a camera recording would have been god awful. As it was I was able to pick out most of the parts except the bass was hard to pick up.

Cheers,

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Post subject: Re: Did I get Ripped?
Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 8:34 pm
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Bluesky...you're right they do sound out,something about the begining hasn't sounded right to me from the get go,we're really loose at that point and the drummer throws in lots of stuff throughout the night....some of which sounds off to me at times,when I'm playing I don't notice it,when I'l listening I do sometimes.
He's really good...that song has a weird time that changes from the beginning,you drop a beat and that throws lots of people off...that beat drops again between the chorus and the beginning of the solos...I've seen time sigs for it,but to me the beginning is 11/4,verses and chorus 12/4.
The next weekend we really burned it up and that's the show I wish we had a video of.
Thanks for the positive vibes....oh and mhowell,that Strat is a '62 AVRI,I love it,the one my son is playing is a '57 AVRI....they both have the mojo.
as for the extended soloing,when I listen back to things I cringe at some of the stuff I do...sometimes I nail it sometimes I miss a little here and there. :lol:
Warren Haynes told one time when we were listening to a tape of him flying on a jam,he said,"when I'm up there playing it seems to go by fast,then when I listen back to it,the s*** goes on forever." :lol: :lol: to me he's one of the best!


Last edited by Rebelsoul on Mon Apr 16, 2012 8:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post subject: Re: Did I get Ripped?
Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 8:36 pm
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BTW,the venue we were playing had pro sound guys and it was a killer live sound,really tinney sounding to on the video...thanks guys!


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Post subject: Re: Did I get Ripped?
Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 9:39 pm
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mhowell wrote:
There are multiple traces and it looks like a quick onset of hard clipping to me. I am assuming that the same inputs were tested for both amps. The Marshall does the compression that we expect from a tube amp and the Bassman does not. :shock: You know better than me. Tell me what you think is happening there.

The Univox looked like some traces of a u741 where the top of signal just gets chopped off. Maybe it needs a low-pass filter to soften those transients. Wouldn't you agree? :lol:

Did you download Teemuk's book? I don't think he mentions it in his book but he conducted a double blind test several years ago. They compared modeling amps to tube amps. Most could not correctly ID which was which. However, there was one professional studio guitarist that correctly ID'd the tube amps 100%. Go figure.

Regards,


Darn it. I was almost finished with my response when I inadvertantly closed the tab. :evil: Let's start over.

I reread section 1.5, pages 18 through 26 and found numerous confusing and contradictory statements by the author.

On page 20 he states:

"Since distortion created by a clipping tube amplifier sometimes (but not always) has a “soft limiting” effect it is possible to harness an external soft limiter circuit to make a solid-state amplifier “clip” the signal as gracefully as tubes do – this kind of circuit can also have"

Ok. Tubes "sometime" have a "soft limiting" effect and clip "gracefully". Yep. Depending on their operating characteristics, they certainly do. In fact. most tube amps are designed around just that premise. If solid state amps clipped softly, why is it necessary to build an "external soft limiter circuit" to replicate tube clipping (the additional circuitry I referred to in my earlier post)?

On page 22 he states:

"Soft clipping characteristics of a vacuum tube (transfer curve) are easy to replicate with both analog and digital circuitry ...." Again, an admission that tubes clip softly but SS devices need additional circuitry to replicate soft tube clipping.

But then on page 23 he states:

"How about the hyped soft clipping? Well, we see that it’s pretty non-existent: The amplifier clips as abruptly as an ordinary solid-state amplifier." So which is it? Do tubes clip softly or not compared to solid state devices? You can't have it both ways.

Now regarding his figures showing tube amp clipping, I am not sure what he is really trying to illustrate. On page 22, figure 1.5 is supposed to show the frequency response of a tube power amp with a speaker load. He shows the response with a high output impedance and a low output impedance. Ok. Tube amps have high output impedances. That's why they have matching output transformers. Are they perfect? No. Do they sound good? Well designed ones definitely do.

What are the clipping graphs (the second part of figures 1.6, 1.7, and 1.8) showing? What do the voltage swings represent? The tube output as measured at the primary side of the output transformer? The voltage as measured at the speaker? It is never stated that I can find.

Finally, on page 25 he says:

"We have now debunked at least two 'tube myths': 1. That tubes always clip softly and 2. The claim that tube clipping inherently creates a dominant amount of even harmonics."

Regarding "myth #1", as the author attempts to illustrate himself, how a tube clips is dependant on the circuit design and operating characterisitics of the tube. Does it surprise me that an EL34 clips differently than a 6L6GC (which clips differently from a 6V6 which clips differently from a KT66 etc.)? Not in the least. That's why tube amps are designed around certain specific tubes: the designers are looking for a certain "sound" that the different tubes provide. Do transistors have a particular sound? Is one transistor "crunchy" while another is "sterile"? I don't know.

Regarding "myth #2", who ever said that a clipping tube generates a dominant amount of even order harmonics? Not me. Not any of the other authors I have ever read. Certainly not in a push-pull amp (although as I stated earlier, a single stage amp can generate a lot of even order harmonics). So exactly what "myth" is he debunking?

I do have to say, that after reading this single section, I am not at all impressed by the author's knowledge or writing abilities compared to others that I have read. He does offer the excuse at the beginning of the book that English is not his native language. However, that is why writers have editors and consult with other experts on reviewing their works.

I could go on, but I am tired and am going to bed.

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Post subject: Re: Did I get Ripped?
Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 10:51 pm
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bluesky636 wrote:

Darn it. I was almost finished with my response when I inadvertantly closed the tab. :evil: Let's start over.

I reread section 1.5, pages 18 through 26 and found numerous confusing and contradictory statements by the author.

On page 20 he states:

"Since distortion created by a clipping tube amplifier sometimes (but not always) has a “soft limiting” effect it is possible to harness an external soft limiter circuit to make a solid-state amplifier “clip” the signal as gracefully as tubes do – this kind of circuit can also have"

Ok. Tubes "sometime" have a "soft limiting" effect and clip "gracefully". Yep. Depending on their operating characteristics, they certainly do. In fact. most tube amps are designed around just that premise. If solid state amps clipped softly, why is it necessary to build an "external soft limiter circuit" to replicate tube clipping (the additional circuitry I referred to in my earlier post)?

On page 22 he states:

"Soft clipping characteristics of a vacuum tube (transfer curve) are easy to replicate with both analog and digital circuitry ...." Again, an admission that tubes clip softly but SS devices need additional circuitry to replicate soft tube clipping.

But then on page 23 he states:

"How about the hyped soft clipping? Well, we see that it’s pretty non-existent: The amplifier clips as abruptly as an ordinary solid-state amplifier." So which is it? Do tubes clip softly or not compared to solid state devices? You can't have it both ways.

Now regarding his figures showing tube amp clipping, I am not sure what he is really trying to illustrate. On page 22, figure 1.5 is supposed to show the frequency response of a tube power amp with a speaker load. He shows the response with a high output impedance and a low output impedance. Ok. Tube amps have high output impedances. That's why they have matching output transformers. Are they perfect? No. Do they sound good? Well designed ones definitely do.

What are the clipping graphs (the second part of figures 1.6, 1.7, and 1.8) showing? What do the voltage swings represent? The tube output as measured at the primary side of the output transformer? The voltage as measured at the speaker? It is never stated that I can find.

Finally, on page 25 he says:

"We have now debunked at least two 'tube myths': 1. That tubes always clip softly and 2. The claim that tube clipping inherently creates a dominant amount of even harmonics."

Regarding "myth #1", as the author attempts to illustrate himself, how a tube clips is dependant on the circuit design and operating characterisitics of the tube. Does it surprise me that an EL34 clips differently than a 6L6GC (which clips differently from a 6V6 which clips differently from a KT66 etc.)? Not in the least. That's why tube amps are designed around certain specific tubes: the designers are looking for a certain "sound" that the different tubes provide. Do transistors have a particular sound? Is one transistor "crunchy" while another is "sterile"? I don't know.

Regarding "myth #2", who ever said that a clipping tube generates a dominant amount of even order harmonics? Not me. Not any of the other authors I have ever read. Certainly not in a push-pull amp (although as I stated earlier, a single stage amp can generate a lot of even order harmonics). So exactly what "myth" is he debunking?

I do have to say, that after reading this single section, I am not at all impressed by the author's knowledge or writing abilities compared to others that I have read. He does offer the excuse at the beginning of the book that English is not his native language. However, that is why writers have editors and consult with other experts on reviewing their works.

I could go on, but I am tired and am going to bed.

Thanks for the feedback. Good critique and good points. I'll have to go back and read that section again sometime.

Cheers,


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Post subject: Re: Did I get Ripped?
Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2012 12:23 pm
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O.K. then lets try this again

Howdy mhowell
I'm Chris the local apprentice / new at restoring and repairing tube amps.
You can learn volumes from the guys here (I have).
Did my first Cap job on a 67 Bassman and several other small repairs all with help from
several of the regulars here, it turned out very well !!!

I'm a Bail Agent in northern Indiana and so I hang out in four pawn shops in my county several times a week, I lurk on Craigs list too, I buy up every piece of gear I can get at extreme bottom feeder prices, nearly all of it needs repaired.

Thats what I do when not talking amps with these guys.

My only gigs these days are coffee shops and blues jams and that is just fine with me !!!
Oh and i teach a handful of middle aged wannabees and sometimes their kids how to play some blues.

Nice to meet ya
Chris

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