Is FR the only important measurement? Real life testing.

[cheapmessiah]

as others mentioned, the video is quite amazing. That amount diligence is most unusual for a "curious amateur". Not to mention that it was done ~perfectly. If most of us did at least 10% of that, the world will be a much better place ... or not

And a few nitpicks:

• the thread's title "Is FR the only important measurement" sounds quite misleading to me. Yes, one can do tone control by manipulating the FR but most "guitar effects" are actually distortion-based. The 'sound' of the (hard)rock guitar is basically the sound of >100% THD and clipping (usually tube-clipping).
• The term tone used in the video title is a pretty confusing mix of pitch/volume/timbre/etc. A guitar's player tone/style/sound is mostly a matter of timbre. It comes from a (more or less) unique combo of strumming techniques plus 'effect pedals' (which ~translates into timbre envelope plus timbre harmonics). But then, a few also use pitch-altering techniques and volume is very important in some cases (e.g. AC/DC's 'tone' does not make much sense at low volume). Anyway, even musical experts often disagree about terms like tone/timbre and we cannot expect a "curious amateur" to use them 100% properly. And this might be the tiniest and most useless nitpick of the month

My understanding is that yes, there are more factors involving the final sound profile of each amp, but the essence of the video is that the "unavoidable sound differences" of each design weren't as unavoidable once frequency response was equated, hence the title. Of course anyone could get different results by altering the control parameters of each amp to get sound profile divergence, but that is the expected result advertised by manufacturers and expected and experienced by customers, there's no premise to counter there.

As for tone, yes, it's a missused word in the music world, and very commonly used, sound signature would be more appropriate both for equipment and performers.

 

[paulraphael]

I would not care to apply the same analytical methodologies to guitar gear as hifi gear. With guitar amps, it’s not simply about the audible quality of the sound. It’s an extension of your instrument, it has a feel to it - it responds to the way you play, and you respond to it.

This is something that many artists are hesitant to talk about for some reason. I've noticed in photography that most arguments about the superiority of analog materials are based on nonsense ... but if you really press the person, you realize that they just prefer the workflow and the feel of the materials. Artists are in dialog with their materials. It's important to be inspired by that dialog. This is really all anyone has to say: "I print in the darkroom because I like it." That should be the end of the argument. There's no need to get into pseudoscientific rationalizations.

A guitar amp is no different. The way it looks and feels can inspire confidence or doubt. The layout of the controls can be intuitive and can feel like it was made for you, or it can inspire dread every time you have to mess with. The way its gain structure pushes into distortion can feel smooth and natural to you, or unpredictable and hard to control. Some of these differences are based on something objective. Some are just esthetic and psychological. But they all influence your experience.

I've noticed the same thing with my stereo. My hybrid tube/ss integrated amp has been in storage for years. After reading a million pages of ASR, I was convinced I'd sell it and replace with a DAC and some modern powered monitors. But the minute I unpacked the thing it seduced me all over again. I just love the look and feel of it. It affects how I perceive the sound. I know that it probably has around 0.2% harmonic distortion. But I also know from blind testing that I can't hear distortion at that level. Which means it sounds as good (to me) as a state of the art amp with similar power. And I find it a pleasure to use and look at. So why am I selling it again?

None of this is to dismiss the video. I think everyone with a guitar should be bound and gagged and forced to watch it. Just don't expect everyone to give up on their favorite amp afterwards.

 

[paulraphael]

A few basic circuits - the Western Electric one that Leo Fender adapted for his line that was then copied by Jim Marshall for his first hardwired amps (but using UK tubes like KT66s and EL 34s instead of 6V6s and 6L6 variants that US base Leo used), Vox introduced its amp based around a unique tone stack and EL84s. The "fork in the road" came @1969 when amp mods created by Randall Smith adding another gain channel resulted in the Mesa Boogie of Carlos Santana fame and others modified Marshalls and Fender Circuits with added gain circuits and master volumes - Jose Arredondo, Howard Dumble, Mike Soldano...everything else is a spin on this stuff.

Very interesting stuff. Can you recommend a source that discusses this in more detail?

 

[57gold]

Sorry PaulR - Do not know a single source with concise description of guitar amp history.

Decades of reading Guitar Player, Vintage Guitar and discussions with amp gurus like Ken Fischer (Trainwreck) , Holger Notzel (Komet Amps), Alan Philips (Carol-Ann Amps), Gregg Levy (HiTest Guitars/NOS Tubes)...are my sources. Guys like Holger or Gil Southworth (Southworth Guitars) have museum quality collections of essentially all the models/circuits employed by Fender, Marshall and Vox. A guy like Greg Germino who builds great vintage Marshall hand wired replicas and variations, could tell you about every variant of Marshall, when parts, transformers, tubes, and circuits changed (like tube rectifiers were replaced by SS rectifiers).

Have to remember Leo and Jim initially "worked in the garage" designing amp models in response to players' demands...more power, bigger and more speakers, from the late 40's through the 1960s. The famous 100 watt Marshal Plexi Lead amp was a result of Pete Townshend and Jimi wanting more than the 45 watt JTM45 could deliver, briefly met by the JTM-45/100 with 4 KT66s (rumored to be on many Cream tunes, earlier EC played a JTM45 combo on the Beano album) but it was quickly supplanted in 1967 by a solid state rectified 4 X EL34 100 watt beast. FWIW, many dig the sweeter tone of the JTM45; in a recent interview Peter Frampton reminisced about a very sweet Marshall he played on with Humble Pie, the best he ever played...had to be a 1965-66 JTM45!

Can you tell I dig JTM45s? One of the last made in 1966:

 

[david.aj.silva]

@57gold - thanks for the historic eye candy!!!

 

[eddantes]

I think Eddie Van Halen proved an exceptional player can make any piece of junk sound good.

You mean like this:

or this

more here

 

[DrJayDub]

Just watched this, great video and thanks for the link. The most important factor in how an amplifier sounds? Frequency response and distortion, who would’ve thunk it?

 

[57gold]

DR JayD - Ask a guitarist, say one of a couple of the best players in the world, and you'll get a different answer as to what factor/quality in a guitar amp is most important...other than it lets them get their sound, message and emotions to the listener. See amps doing their varied jobs below, what one player wants/needs is very different than the next:

Versus this starting at 4:45:

Very different applications of old Leo's basic designs.

 

[paulraphael]

Anyone notice that he uses the same rhetorical device as Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer?

 

[Deleted member 48726]

I'm just a performer, I don't know anything about circuits... but I am feeling very edgy, hairy and touch sensitive after watching this video.

Absolute gold!


JSmith

Many are that. You shouldn't feel bad

 

[anmpr1]

1) IMHO there is a lot less "marketing mumbo jumbo" in the guitar amp world than in home audio.

2) The mumbo jumbo gets jumbo with the effects pedals.

3) The second fork in the road for guitar amps are the modeling... amps.

1) You are probably correct. I wouldn't argue against it. What I don't understand, however, is the 'relic' scene. Folks will pay top dollar to buy an expensive new guitar that looks like a beat up old guitar. Why isn't it that that way in hi-fi? If I was advising McIntosh, I'd suggest they come out with a relic'd MC2300, looking like it was just pulled out of the Grateful Dead's sound rig. With a scratched up faceplate and hammered body. Maybe a crack in the meter glass, with only one meter working. I mean, if they can sell a box with nothing in it for almost two thousand dollars, they could certainly sell a beat up amplifier with a Steal Your Face sticker on it, for a lot more.

2) That's why I laugh with Josh Scott. He'll sell you what you want for a reasonable price, and then after (or even before) the sell admit to you that Amazon basics will probably get you what you want, for less money than whatever he can build at his Kansas factory. [To be fair, he draws the line at facsimile visual rip-offs. Obvious trade mark violations.]

3) As a couch potato player, modeling amps are great. On stage? Let's face it (and as Les said), we hear with our eyes, so few musicians are probably going to want to go on stage with a Katana or Catalyst, if they can front a vintage Marshall, or are 'lucky' enough to have a Dumble (that they can tell the audience about). That said, a Kemper certainly has that 'cool' retro visual vibe going for it. Along with a lot of knobs to dial in 'that perfect sound' (see below).

Speaking of Dumble, two very funny anecdotes I came across from YT slumming. Sorry, I don't remember the exact videos. First (I think it was ) a guy who makes fairly expensive Dumble clones. He said (I'm paraphrasing), "Yeah, they are the holy grail for sure. Howard really knew what he was doing. But they all sound different!"

Second, a player who was using (again, I think) one of Dumble's original Fender mods. The musician said something like, "Yeah, once I get it dialed in, I really like it. Nothing comes close!"

Now, what was it the guy in the O/P video was saying...

Guitar v Hi Fi? Here's how I break down that film: The hi-fi scene is often ridiculously idiotic. I think it's always been that way. At least from about the mid '70s. The guitar scene has its own idiocies, but is generally superior to hi-fi for the following reasons:

a) any half-way decent guitar will hold value pretty well, and some even appreciate;

b) when it's time to move on, it's a lot easier to sell or trade a fifty year old guitar/amp than a fifty year old receiver or cassette deck;

c) it's generally easier for the average cat to 'mod' a guitar (new or different pickups, wiring, machine heads, etc.) than it is for them to change out an amplifier's circuitry;

d) you can put stickers on your guitar and pretend you're back at Yasgur's farm. If you put peace stickers on your loudspeakers they just look stupid;

e) it's a lot more fun to spend a couple of hours each day playing guitar(s), and fooling with your amp's knobs in order to experiment with all the different sounds, than it is to fool with the knobs on your hi-fi in order to change how that sounds.

 

[Multicore]

It's nothing new that 'tone' can be duplicated. Josh Scott (JHS pedals) has some YT videos showing how experienced players can't reliably tell the difference among cheap 'clones' and multi thousand dollar original boxes.

Yeah, but you gotta admire Jim Lill's video as an educational film, no? Educating committed gear heads isn't simple but I think he may persuade some.

 

[bobster]

Great stuff.

And I love the quote "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Couldn't this easily be extended to a lot of audiophile reviews?

OT, but for anyone interested in the origin of that quote:

Writing About Music is Like Dancing About Architecture – Quote Investigator®

quoteinvestigator.com

 

[fpitas]

I've spent many years dancing about architecture. I'm not about to stop because of Martin Mull's mockery.

 

[Multicore]

1) You are probably correct. I wouldn't argue against it. What I don't understand, however, is the 'relic' scene. Folks will pay top dollar to buy an expensive new guitar that looks like a beat up old guitar. Why isn't it that that way in hi-fi?

That's because of where the relic concept comes from in guitars and other instruments.

Imagine, just for example, a scene in a venue with a cover charge on nights when they don't have a touring act and advance ticket sales. The venue has a house band of sorts. The more established musicians that take part in the band have the same gear they've been using for ever. It works for them, they play well, the gear is almost the extension of their person into the musicians they are in this context.

The younger, or less established, or relative newcomer musician (the irregular, let's say) shows up with a shiny new instrument, perhaps a very good one, certainly an investment of some kind, and enthusiastically shows it off. The regular, without needing to say much, although saying it is certainly an option, expresses scorn for it and the irregular. The irregular feels belittled and regrets being so foolish to think that shiny new instruments, even those with useful innovations, are worthless in themselves. They need to be played as the regulars prove every night.

Eventually some of the irregulars become regulars. And even those that don't learned their lesson. So the scene is full of musicians with their old gear, sounding great and looking like pros. And instrument makers sell a lot to those that are content to emulate them in private. Hence signature models and relics.

This just doesn't really happen in Hi-Fi, does it? This brutal and largely valid crushing of consumerist enthusiasm and desire for the tools rather than what you make with them.

 

[KSTR]

I rarely enjoy watching educational videos but this one is a jewel!

He really precisely breaks down things in a textbook divide and conquer approach, decomposing guitar tone creation into chained functional building blocks like EQ, gain, distortion, compression etc and by this he materializes a basic but functional analog modelling amp and proves that it nails most target sounds pretty well, bravo.

In the simplest case simple concatenation of building blocks works already quite well but nothing stops you to set up more complex networks with parameter feedback loops etc, think of the stuff the modular analog synth posse is using, creating very unique amplifiers. The sky is the limit...

 

[Multicore]

3) As a couch potato player, modeling amps are great. On stage? Let's face it (and as Les said), we hear with our eyes, so few musicians are probably going to want to go on stage with a Katana or Catalyst, if they can front a vintage Marshall, or are 'lucky' enough to have a Dumble (that they can tell the audience about). That said, a Kemper certainly has that 'cool' retro visual vibe going for it. Along with a lot of knobs to dial in 'that perfect sound' (see below).

A lot of pros are simply using DI from their floor gear now. It doesn't look rock-and-roll but that's just not so important as it was. Not important enough to justify a van and either a roadie or risk of back injury. Instrument amps on stage are the relic now. And they might well be decorative replicas, lightweight and easy to transport.

 

[57gold]

anmpr1, I'll react to your numbered points:

1) The relic stuff is mumbo jumbo, Keef kinda gets credit for starting it in my book. He was taking vintage blackguard Teles on the road and they were @50 years old at the time and getting worn, very expensive to replace and even if you found one for sale, no guarantee it would sound and play like the one you loved. So, someone at Fender offered to replicate his main ones down to the wear marks, the replaced neck pick up PAFs...These would be "stage props"; Keef could keep the look of the instruments he was associated with, get 85-90% of the tone and 100% of the look. For him and Fender it made sense, there was a period in late 1980s when he would show up on stage with some new stuff (not Fender or Gibson vintage instruments - he plays Jrs and 355s, as well)...Fender would keep the icon playing Fenders. Then Fender and others started the relic stuff. Found this to be ridiculous as I had for decades been on the hunt for vintage instruments that were great examples, in clean and original condition as possible, paying premiums for clean stuff as folks by the boatload were spending extra money to by new, generally bad looking simulations of worn vintage guitars...utter nonsense. Only relic I play is the relic I relic (wear by playing).

2) Had to look up Josh Scott, never tried one of his pedals. Most of the pedal junkies buy pedals thinking it will make them play better. Playing with people and practice/study (which is hard work) is what will make a player sound better.

3) Bought a Positive Grid Spark amp (a small modeling amp) for my 30 year old son for Christmas a couple of years ago. He "borrowed" a guitar that Roger Sadowsky made 30 years ago or so and taught himself to play (with some pointers from the old man). Studied music theory and voice as minors in college, sang in concert choir and an a cappella group there. So he was/is a quick study on musical matters. Anyways, he doesn't play out or have a band so the Spark is a great apartment amp for him. I guess one could plug it into a PA and get a fair facsimile of a good sounding guitar rig...but YOLO, why settle for less than the real thing?

On Dumble, it is a Fender circuit modified with extra SS and tube gain stages, further customized to get what the player wants. Robben Ford's Dumble is not the same as what Howard built for David Lindley or Lowell George or Christopher Cross or SRV or Eric Johnson...some have more headroom, some more gain, some 100 watts and some 50 watts, some 6L6 output stages other EL34s...Dumble was a man and his brand, he had several models that he further tuned for individual players. To get him to build you one, either he had to know your playing (EC) or you had to come play for him and if he thought you were "good enough" he'd build and voice an amp for you, like a custom tailor. So, that's why they are all different.

Agree conceptually with all your letters. For example, recently sold a guitar for $60K that cost me $12K 20 years ago, enjoyed the guitar, but it wasn't my 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th...choice to take out to play, so it needed a new home. Audio gear, to my knowledge, doesn't offer that kind of fringe benefit of ownership. Additionally, I recently acquired a 1934 Gibson L-5...great playing and sounding instrument. Pretty sure I'd not enjoy 1936 audio equipment.

 

[57gold]

A lot of pros are simply using DI from their floor gear now. It doesn't look rock-and-roll but that's just not so important as it was. Not important enough to justify a van and either a roadie or risk of back injury. Instrument amps on stage are the relic now. And they might well be decorative replicas, lightweight and easy to transport.

Yeah, arena/stadium concert sound is pretty rough, so why bother with real gear.

Attended a private party sponsored by my company in LV NV with ZZ Top playing the Joint at the now defunct Hard Rock Casino. Had invited a couple of player friends to the party. As we stood by the stage in front of Billy Gibbons, I asked them what was wrong. They shrugged, I pointed to the wall of amps behind Billy as asked, "how is it that we can speak to each other and hear what we are saying?" Answer, the amps were props. Billy has some complicated rig off stage with a speaker isolation box that send a signal to the PA...stage sound is the monitors on the floor and audience hears his guitar through the PA. I read that he also has EQ patches that make all the crazy custom guitars he plays, regardless of the pick ups, sound like his old vintage Les Paul.

Been dealing with weight issues with some of the guys I play with...one is a bass player with cabs with multiple speakers that weigh a ton and then there is my friend who insists upon playing one of his Hammond B3s with a big tube Leslie cabinet (glorious sound). Both guys have bad backs, are a few year older than me, so I end up loading them up. B3 weighs over 300 lbs and Leslie over 125 lbs. Ugh.

 

[Multicore]

Yeah, arena/stadium concert sound is pretty rough, so why bother with real gear.

Attended a private party sponsored by my company in LV NV with ZZ Top playing the Joint at the now defunct Hard Rock Casino. Had invited a couple of player friends to the party. As we stood by the stage in front of Billy Gibbons, I asked them what was wrong. They shrugged, I pointed to the wall of amps behind Billy as asked, "how is it that we can speak to each other and hear what we are saying?" Answer, the amps were props. Billy has some complicated rig off stage with a speaker isolation box that send a signal to the PA...stage sound is the monitors on the floor and audience hears his guitar through the PA. I read that he also has EQ patches that make all the crazy custom guitars he plays, regardless of the pick ups, sound like his old vintage Les Paul.

And with wireless IEMs each band member can have a personal monitor mix no matter where they are on stage. And without back line instrument amps, the front of house guy's job is easier. Modelers sound great IMO but if you prefer a particular amp, plug it into a reactive load DI box.

I think this approach makes sense and is also real gear.

However, it can't do everything. For example

And it's not just a technical problem of achieving feedback. For some guitarists, standing in front of a big stack is a necessary part of their artistic practice.