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Post subject: Tube amp tubes
Posted: Fri Dec 03, 2010 2:53 pm
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What makes the difference in tubes for tube amps? Like what makes one brand better than another? I know nothing about tubes in tube amps except they usually make your guitar playing sound better : )


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Posted: Fri Dec 03, 2010 3:31 pm
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There are a lot of factors such as material, vaccum, shape of electrodes, dimensioning ... and tooling at factory, the same factory in russia is making a lot different brands, other factories are in China, but all use designs according to the same physic principle but can "response" differently. On different brands, new parts, orignal, NOS you will see pro and cons. For some for instance, the best 12ax7 ever made is the ECC83 Telefunken but it depends on what are yours criteria ...

(For transistor versus valve, the valves have more pair harmoniques that are flattering the guitarist's ear, odds are unpleasant and are attenuated by feedback on solidstate)

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Last edited by Tissan on Fri Dec 03, 2010 3:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Posted: Fri Dec 03, 2010 3:32 pm
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The manufacturing quality is the deciding factor......

How tight is the vacuum seal within the bottle?

How pure is the tungsten used to fabricate the elements?

How securely are those elements assembled?

Are the non-tungsten components plated or anodized?

Is the glass sufficiently tempered?

Is the base bakelite or plastic

All of these issues (as well as others) are at play, and they determine both performance characteristics and tube durability.

Arjay

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Post subject: Re: Tube amp tubes
Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 3:14 pm
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As you can see, you can drive yourself nuts with all the tube techno stuff. The easiest thing to do is to try different brands and use what sounds best to you. You will soon discover that you can voice your amp to your liking just by changing preamp tubes. That's the fun of owning a tube amp. The chinese and russian tubes are much better than they were a few years ago, and they all sound different. A 12ax7 is not a 12ax7. I tend to favor the chinese stuff for their warm fat round tone, but that's my opinion. Just try a few, and see what you like best. (you need spares anyway) Enjoy your tube amp......barryg


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Post subject: Re: Tube amp tubes
Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 6:04 pm
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barryg wrote:
As you can see, you can drive yourself nuts with all the tube techno stuff. The easiest thing to do is to try different brands and use what sounds best to you. You will soon discover that you can voice your amp to your liking just by changing preamp tubes. That's the fun of owning a tube amp. The chinese and russian tubes are much better than they were a few years ago, and they all sound different. A 12ax7 is not a 12ax7. I tend to favor the chinese stuff for their warm fat round tone, but that's my opinion. Just try a few, and see what you like best. (you need spares anyway) Enjoy your tube amp......barryg


+1

You can't really say one tube make is "better" than another. They all just sound different. The challenge is finding tubes that sound good to YOUR ear. Your amp will still sound like your amp, but changing tubes will alter the character of the tone.

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Post subject: Re: Tube amp tubes
Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 12:03 am
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For the OP, for why tubes sound "better" solid-state... I think a lot has to do with how tubes handle overdrive. Soft-clipping versus the typical solid-state hard-clipping. And the way tubes produces even-ordered harmonics. Whereas solid-state tends to enhance odd-ordered harmonics.

Acoustic instruments and sounds in nature tend to have more even-ordered higher harmonics. So, I guess the human ear/brain is more "used-to" these types of sounds.


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