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computer-audiophile said:
I don't miss any accuracy in my tube amplifiers, quite the opposite. I also have no problem with S/N, I can go with my ear to the loudspeaker, there is silence without signal.
For me it is fascinating what excellent results can be achieved with ancient triodes that date back to the very first sound film amplifiers a hundred years ago.

I have demonstrated this more than once e.g. by giving concerts for loudspeakers. On the picture that was in France @ CARMEN - Centre Alsacien de Recherche pour une Musique Electronique Nouvelle.
Click to expand...


Well sure, Many audiophiles, here as well, obsess about measurable difference that are aren't likely to be heard under normal listening conditions. Or they just want the 'comfort' of 'knowing' that their gear has stellar measurements, whether they can hear them or not.
 
egellings said:
The guitar amp is built to produce distortion. Tubes do not generate that amount of distortion when the circuit design is competent as tube designs go.
Click to expand...
That's not correct. Plenty of guitar amps were designed to sound clean, many famous Fender amps for example, and turned out to have various creative possibilities later in practice with different pickups, mods, boosters and whatnot. And not all of these creative possibilities produced clearly audible clipping distortion. For example the Baseman produces an interesting compression if you play it just so owing to power supply sag.
 
Multicore said:
That's not correct. Plenty of guitar amps were designed to sound clean, many famous Fender amps for example, and turned out to have various creative possibilities later in practice with different pickups, mods, boosters and whatnot. And not all of these creative possibilities produced clearly audible clipping distortion. For example the Baseman produces an interesting compression if you play it just so owing to power supply sag.
Click to expand...
Bass guitar amps historically were designed to be cleaner. Then came the dirty bass explosion :)
 
fpitas said:
Tubes have a unique place for guitar amps, the distortion is the characteristic sound of a HiWatt, Marshall, Fender etc. It can easily be about 30% THD. Not hi-fi by any stretch.
Click to expand...
That, also did not endure the scrutiny of Science. There is, somewhere in ASR a thread where a person shows that ... same sound can be achieved with SS and some EQ....

High nd Audio has become a design aesthetics. The components have a look. These pleases the eyes, more than they actually please the ears. The differences between a decent tube and a deceent SS are not as marked as they want you to believe... In many instances they sound likely the same .. I haven't verified but, there is a thread here that has some sound clip from SS and from a SET amp .. It is not easy as one would think, to pick which is which
Pictures are better to describe my point...

Here is a superb ASR-reviewed amplifier, capable of driving most headphones on the planet:

DropTHXaaa789-e1573399500919.png


around 4 wpc of pure low THD ... >100 SINAD, perhaps 110 dB

And the Woo Audio Luna.. Pure Class A Tube .. they don't mention its power, not much technical specifications but ..

DSC03510-2.jpg


Even for us ASR'ists. We have to admit this is beauty.. And it costs $8,999.99...

Peace.
 
FrantzM said:
That, also did not endure the scrutiny of Science. There is, somewhere in ASR a thread where a person shows that ... same sound can be achieved with SS and some EQ....

High nd Audio has become a design aesthetics. The components have a look. These pleases the eyes, more than they actually please the ears. The differences between a decent tube and a deceent SS are not as marked as they want you to believe... In many instances they sound likely the same .. I haven't verified but, there is a thread here that has some sound clip from SS and from a SET amp .. It is not easy as one would think, to pick which is which
Pictures are better to describe my point...

Here is a superb ASR-reviewed amplifier, capable of driving most headphones on the planet:

DropTHXaaa789-e1573399500919.png


around 4 wpc of pure low THD ... >100 SINAD, perhaps 110 dB

And the Woo Audio Luna.. Pure Class A Tube .. they don't mention its power, not much technical specifications but ..

DSC03510-2.jpg


Even for us ASR'ists. We have to admit this is beauty.. And it costs $8,999.99...

Peace.
Click to expand...
Well, if I had to choose between these two in terms of looks, I'd go for the black box without tubes.
 
FrantzM said:
That, also did not endure the scrutiny of Science. There is, somewhere in ASR a thread where a person shows that ... same sound can be achieved with SS and some EQ....

High nd Audio has become a design aesthetics. The components have a look. These pleases the eyes, more than they actually please the ears. The differences between a decent tube and a deceent SS are not as marked as they want you to believe... In many instances they sound likely the same .. I haven't verified but, there is a thread here that has some sound clip from SS and from a SET amp .. It is not easy as one would think, to pick which is which
Pictures are better to describe my point...

Here is a superb ASR-reviewed amplifier, capable of driving most headphones on the planet:

DropTHXaaa789-e1573399500919.png


around 4 wpc of pure low THD ... >100 SINAD, perhaps 110 dB

And the Woo Audio Luna.. Pure Class A Tube .. they don't mention its power, not much technical specifications but ..

DSC03510-2.jpg


Even for us ASR'ists. We have to admit this is beauty.. And it costs $8,999.99...

Peace.
Click to expand...
There is DSP available to simulate tube guitar amps. I highly doubt you can get there with just EQ. Often the amps feature sagging screen voltage and other distortion mechanisms.
 
Multicore said:
That's not correct. Plenty of guitar amps were designed to sound clean, many famous Fender amps for example, and turned out to have various creative possibilities later in practice with different pickups, mods, boosters and whatnot. And not all of these creative possibilities produced clearly audible clipping distortion. For example the Baseman produces an interesting compression if you play it just so owing to power su
Click to expand...

FrantzM said:
That, also did not endure the scrutiny of Science. There is, somewhere in ASR a thread where a person shows that ... same sound can be achieved with SS and some EQ....

High nd Audio has become a design aesthetics. The components have a look. These pleases the eyes, more than they actually please the ears. The differences between a decent tube and a deceent SS are not as marked as they want you to believe... In many instances they sound likely the same .. I haven't verified but, there is a thread here that has some sound clip from SS and from a SET amp .. It is not easy as one would think, to pick which is which
Pictures are better to describe my point...

Here is a superb ASR-reviewed amplifier, capable of driving most headphones on the planet:

DropTHXaaa789-e1573399500919.png


around 4 wpc of pure low THD ... >100 SINAD, perhaps 110 dB

And the Woo Audio Luna.. Pure Class A Tube .. they don't mention its power, not much technical specifications but ..

DSC03510-2.jpg


Even for us ASR'ists. We have to admit this is beauty.. And it costs $8,999.99...

Peace.
Click to expand...
Get a couple for the kids!
 
FrantzM said:
That, also did not endure the scrutiny of Science. There is, somewhere in ASR a thread where a person shows that ... same sound can be achieved with SS and some EQ....

High nd Audio has become a design aesthetics. The components have a look. These pleases the eyes, more than they actually please the ears. The differences between a decent tube and a deceent SS are not as marked as they want you to believe... In many instances they sound likely the same .. I haven't verified but, there is a thread here that has some sound clip from SS and from a SET amp .. It is not easy as one would think, to pick which is which
Pictures are better to describe my point...

Here is a superb ASR-reviewed amplifier, capable of driving most headphones on the planet:

DropTHXaaa789-e1573399500919.png


around 4 wpc of pure low THD ... >100 SINAD, perhaps 110 dB

And the Woo Audio Luna.. Pure Class A Tube .. they don't mention its power, not much technical specifications but ..

DSC03510-2.jpg


Even for us ASR'ists. We have to admit this is beauty.. And it costs $8,999.99...

Peace.
Click to expand...
True. Then listen with the first box and put the second one unused for beauty and to please the eye ;) First - ear, second - eye.
 
fpitas said:
Bass guitar amps historically were designed to be cleaner. Then came the dirty bass explosion :)
Click to expand...
When it comes to clipping distortion, the behavior of the Bassman isn't so different from other early Fender amps. It wasn't a bass amp, it was a combo with speakers and cab beefy enough to work for both guitar and bass guitar. It actually starts to break up at a rather low gain settings, below noon.

My point is that all the amps necessarily had simple circuits and controls that left gain matching to the user. Instrument output varies a great deal depending on the combination of variables including pickup design and manufacture tolerances, magnetization, distance between pickups and strings, and the strings themselves. Then there's the passive volume and tone control RC circuits on the instrument. So for an amp to perform at its maximum clean(ish) loudness for most users, it needed enough gain to do that with weak inputs. So that meant that all amps could be overdriven with other inputs and/or control settings.

So I don't accept the proposition: guitar amps are designed to distort. That came later and became a big deal, of course, but I don't think it was what e.g. the classic Fender amps that so many guitarists love were designed for. That they could be overdriven, more-or-less depending on model and what you plug into it, was a necessary outcome of practical engineering, under the constraints at the time, for the variable inputs.
 
Multicore said:
When it comes to clipping distortion, the behavior of the Bassman isn't so different from other early Fender amps. It wasn't a bass amp, it was a combo with speakers and cab beefy enough to work for both guitar and bass guitar. It actually starts to break up at a rather low gain settings, below noon.

My point is that all the amps necessarily had simple circuits and controls that left gain matching to the user. Instrument output varies a great deal depending on the combination of variables including pickup design and manufacture tolerances, magnetization, distance between pickups and strings, and the strings themselves. Then there's the passive volume and tone control RC circuits on the instrument. So for an amp to perform at its maximum clean(ish) loudness for most users, it needed enough gain to do that with weak inputs. So that meant that all amps could be overdriven with other inputs and/or control settings.

So I don't accept the proposition: guitar amps are designed to distort. That came later and became a big deal, of course, but I don't think it was what e.g. the classic Fender amps that so many guitarists love were designed for. That they could be overdriven, more-or-less depending on model and what you plug into it, was a necessary outcome of practical engineering, under the constraints at the time, for the variable inputs.
Click to expand...
Certainly some amps were prized for their distortion signature when overdriven. If you want to sound like e.g. Jimi Hendrix, you use that amp.
 
fpitas said:
Certainly some amps were prized for their distortion signature when overdriven. If you want to sound like e.g. Jimi Hendrix, you use that amp.
Click to expand...
Absolutely.

Those big Marshalls were the first amps that were designed for that in the sense of being optimized for it: They sound pretty bad unless you turn them all the way up and have a hot guitar.

I'm glad you mentioned this because I never tire of sharing this video of someone who took the Hendrix equipment (and some of his style) and immersed himself completely in it and came up with this, which I love with all my heart and what remains of my hearing's dynamic range given the tinnitus.

 
Multicore said:
Speak for yourself. I think it looks daft. A poodle can be a good looking dog but the ones that win prizes at the big shows look daft. Analogy intended.
Click to expand...
Not my cuppa either. Trying too hard, or something like that. I do like most DIY efforts, to look at anyways.
 
egellings said:
Power amps weigh 75 pounds, and you need one for each ear! They'll definitely anchor a boat; no problem. Darn things also manage to sound quite good too. Transformers are a bit overblown, I must admit. I'll never saturate any of that iron, no matter how hard I try, so I can take comfort in that.
Click to expand...
The tubes shown in the photo of the amps are KT88s. The amps support KT150s as well, and will do a bit over 200 watts each with those. So yer powah, you got it. They can throw the boat right over the hedge, no problem.
 
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