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Re: Finally! It's Over! (Reply to this comment)
by vanwarp
You obviously did not read the article as the conclusion was that "tube Amps continue to rule when it comes to its’ mild overdrive soft clipping sound and tone!" Anyway, glad you joined Eps even if it was just to comment on my factual essay...
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Mar 26 '11
5:00 am PDT
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Finally! It's Over! (Reply to this comment)
by jfly7814
Well this is it. Finally, the debate is over! Thanks to a bunch of guys hanging around in a basement doing their own test we now know that solid states are better than tubes!
You know what this sounds like? A bunch of people who bought solid-state amps and got sick of people telling them how bad they suck compared to a tube amp. So to try and justify their purchase they do a stupid little test to make themselves feel better about playing their crappy solid state amps. Maybe you all are tone deaf and can't hear the difference. No question about it, tube amps are MUCH better than solid state amps. Especially when you are playing with a band. A tube amp cuts through the mix much better.
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Mar 24 '11
3:36 pm PDT
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Tube or Not Tube...that is the question. (Reply to this comment)
by garyguitar1117
After more than 50 years of playing in bands, and still going, I was hoping that a realistic tube-sounding amp would come about. My old back would greatly appreciate it. I'm still listening but haven't found one yet, though great progress has been made. The proof is still in the four hour gig--not in the music store. I have bought several non-tube amps but discovered that I really didn't hear what I thought I did while in the store. I won't do that again. In the meantime, I'm still dragging around my '65 Tremolux and my Blues DeVille. I want an amp about the size of a shoebox that sounds like an old Twin. Please hurry. Great review by the way.
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Mar 17 '09
12:43 pm PDT
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comment (Reply to this comment)
by cheetah1
excellent article, I showed this article to group of guitarists. One guy was a professional recording engineer and he really didnt care one way or the other if guys brought in solid state amps or tube amplifiers for him to record. Another fellow mentioned that because so many famous players from decades past used tube amps he felt inspired to also play tube amps like them. I personally prefer modeling amps because of their lower cost, better overdriven tone at lower volume levels and better sound versatility as you don't need to play around with expensive tubes changes to alter the amps sound character. Sometimes modeling amps are better for a musician and sometimes a tube amp may be the prefered way to go but there is certainly room in the universe for both.
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Aug 06 '07
11:37 am PDT
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Tubes still rule as far as I am concerned (Reply to this comment)
by jjbraunius
The thing is that with most modelers you can fake an audience for one take on an album, but if you don't have a live tube amp miked on the record the vibe of the recording keeps going downhill.
it depends very much on the players as well - YNGWIE will sound like himself on anything but amplifer tube still hasn't been modelled to the extent that I feel gets close to tube.
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Jul 20 '07
4:43 pm PDT
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Re: This is completely invalid to a guitar player (Reply to this comment)
by vanwarp
Sorry I took so long to respond, got sidetracked with too many things going on in my life...
Anyway, I don't agree with most of what you say but I do agree with the following comment you made:
“This is what guitarists are talking about - the way the amp responds to different picking styles, use of the guitar's volume control, different pickup settings, and general playing style. You can't tell that from listening to one guitarist. All you can say from this test is that the amps can all sound good.”
Yes, you got it right here! If we would have used 3 different guitarists on all of the same amps, we would have gotten mixed results for sure. There's no doubt about it. The exercise was to see if one guitarist could fool anybody into thinking he was playing a modeling amp and not a tube amp. And since he did, then it goes to reason that others can as well. For these musicians, "tube feel" is like you say, completely invalid to him. But I agree with you, many musicians who try this exercise would probably not or couldn't possibly fool anybody. This goes back to the theory that tone is really in the fingers, in the musicians own hands, in his technique and his knowledge of guitar amps and the skill level with which one plays said guitar.
Sorry you didn't find my review helpful in any way, but the conclusions at the end of my essay still stand.
~Vanwarp~
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Jul 28 '05
8:08 am PDT
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This is completely invalid to a guitar player (Reply to this comment)
by dbkelley
I have to state the obvious here... the article suggests that things like "tube feel" etc that guitarists claim is so important were somehow proven to be well imitated by the non-tube modelling amps on test. Where did he get that idea?
All this demonstrates is that the SOUND can be impossible to tell apart consistently. It doesn't involve the guitar player's reviews of each amp. To truly do this right, you'd need a bunch of guitarists who claim to be able to tell the difference between tube amps and non-tube amps, and have the plug their favorite guitar into the different amps without knowing which was which, and allowing them to have control over the common tone, gain, volume, presence and master volume controls - again without them knowing which amp they were using. It's close to impossible, but if someone DID want to do it the test could certainly be done.
This is what guitarists are talking about - the way the amp responds to different picking styles, use of the guitar's volume control, different pickup settings, and general playing style. You can't tell that from listening to one guitarist. All you can say from this test is that the amps can all sound good.
And a clarification here about the design - I own a Vox ad50vt modelling amp - it IS A tube amp. It's a modelling amp but it uses a real tube preamp and real tube poweramp stage to not just copy, but actually truly have a real tube feel to it. And if it didn't sound tube-like in the non-vox settings then there's something wrong with the perception of what a tube amp sounds like, or something wrong with how the guitarist was setting the amp, since in every setting available the vox amp is actually a real tube amp. It just has extra digital signal processing (for effects, which can be bypassed, and for tone controls, which won't affect how "tubey" it sounds anyway), and it also has an additional solid state power amp section at the end with it's own level control, but the tube amp is still running as a full tube amp no matter how you play it.
I think a little more scientific approach, combined with a more thorough understanding of what makes a guitarist like playing through a tube amp, a test like this could be interesting in the future. As it stands now, it's only proof that anything can sound good if it's well played.
What makes a tube amp a tube amp isn't just how it sounds to others, it's how it responds to the player, how hard you have to work to get your TONE :-).
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Jul 07 '05
1:25 pm PDT
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hmmmm (Reply to this comment)
by musicsucks
as long as I'm playing guitar, I don't really care what kind of amp I'm using, but that may just be me:)
Great Review!
musicsucks
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Jan 20 '04
3:40 pm PST
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