Ha ha. Crate Powerblock. They stopped making the pieces of shit, I wonder why?

Somewhere between your ridiculous "Dr. Z" Luxury Chooch amp and your disposable tiny Crate toy lies a wide range of great sounding, reasonably priced, "hand made, all-tube" amplifiers of various brands.

I'll stick to that realm.

monkeybob wrote:Most of my tone comes from pedals anyway

mr.arrison wrote:

monkeybob wrote:Most of my tone comes from pedals anyway

:roll:

C`mon. Leave the kid alone. He likes gimmicks - we all did when we were young...

Did you blow a few grand on a Boutiquey Tubey Snob Amp when you were young and then decide to not use it?

you guys are all a bunch of tube bullies.

If you were truly confident about your tube amps, you wouldn't even respond to the crate guy.

Is there some secret childhood trauma with solid state? Did solid state give you a wedgie or pull down your pants in front of that cute girl? Why all the anger?

Since tubes and transistors do the same exact thing, i.e. allow a small voltage control a larger voltage, what's the difference?

Oooh, it's the Magic. Your instruments and meters cannot detect the Magic of Tubes.

I'm not against solid-state amps. Just Crate.

I wish you could get big sound from a little box.

I wish you could. I'd play thru nothing but a Pod if it could give me big sound from a little box.

The closest thing I ever heard to BSfaLB was for bass--Walter Woods amps. I had a jillion-watt WW, and I liked it, and I wish I hadn't sold it. But it wasn't getting much use, since I preferred my V4 and B18 and '65 Bassman and every other amp I had in the basement.

I have a little bitty GK head that I use on the road sometimes. It's not inspiring, but it's reliably OK, which is preferable to a total crap shoot.

zom-zom wrote:Did you blow a few grand on a Boutiquey Tubey Snob Amp when you were young and then decide to not use it?

Good point. Not once.

madlee wrote:Since tubes and transistors do the same exact thing, i.e. allow a small voltage control a larger voltage, what's the difference?

They don't do the exact same thing the same way. Transistors are high-current, low-voltage devices and tubes are high-voltage, low-current devices.

The sonic difference is due to their respective distortion characteristics.

Solid-state devices emphasize higher-order harmonics characteristic of 'hard' clipping and a harsher distorted sound. Many of these devices emphasize odd-order harmonics in particular (MOSFETs being the notable exception, though MOSFETs still emphasize higher-order distortion more than tubes).

Tubes emphasize lower-order harmonics, which are more euphonic.

Tubes 'emphasize' lower-order harmonic distortion by having more of it.

Most tube stages that are apprehended as being euphonic have a very high degree of second-order distortion in particular.

By having more of this lower-order distortion, esp. 2nd-order, the higher-order HD (which is present) is masked somewhat.

Also, as tube stages are overdriven increasingly, the lower-order distortion increases disproportionally to the higher-order distortion. This is not true of many solid-state stages.

You can measure all this shit.

When run clean (esp in true high-fidelity applications), it can be extremely difficult to tell the difference between tubes and solid state. And if one has a very clean guitar or bass sound, it is much less likely to make a big difference what kind of amp you use.

A distinguishing characteristic of tube amps is the output transformer. A big hunk of iron w/wire wrapped around it, the transformer allows the high-voltage, low-current output tubes to interface with the loudspeaker, which requires lots of current. Solid-state amps can source a lot of current, so they don't need a transformer. Transformers have all sorts of special distortion characteristics and overload behavior of their own. If you've ever blown up a Partridge in a HiWatt and had to replace it w/something else, you know what I mean.

tmidgett,

I guess I was just talking shit, because people were picking on the solid state guy. I agree that there is a definite audible difference, as well as the technical aspects, regarding clipping and the output transformer.

There's also the voltage drop if you have a tube rectifier. I know that there are SS rectifiers that emulate the voltage drop, but in a 100% SS amp, is there any need or even ability to create this effect?