Solid State Vs Vacuum Tube

[kagliostro]

 


Franco

[shooter]

nice!  my old desk was full of snipits like that

[silverfox]

Very timely subject, for me anyway as I was logging on to post something about this very subject. But first, after about 7 years, or something like that on this forum, I've finally changed my Avatar. PRR cropped it and I don't recall if the little fox was up in the right corner or not but I like how it turned out and decided to use if after all this time. The full image is below. A little history: Where I live a Fox farmer quit the business sometime ago and just let all the Foxes' out so the area was inundated with them when I first arrived. I liked the ones I saw and we even trapped one once. It is amazing how ferocious a wild animal can be! I did let it go some distance from our place but afterwards decided to adopt the name. At some point I searched the INTERNET to see who else may have taken up the name and was quite surprised to find the varied uses of "Silverfox". I later also found out it was the name of a Locomotive so that was even better. Vanity...

Here is the relevant portion of this post. On the way to building a High Gain amp, I splurged a little with tax money and bought a Fractal Audio AX8. Hate to say it guys but in the same way the computer has replaced the Linotype and Robots are now starting to Jog... The digital circuitry is on par with vacuum tube tonal quality. This gem has every amp I wanted to build at some point and tons of high quality effects. It is truly built heavy duty also. Sounds great. The manual that came with it goes into good depth on a number of tube amp theories such as: How power and output transformers influence the tone of an amp. You can change things like, bias, output transformers frequency response, power tube types, cabinet cutoff and resonance to name a few. It really responds like a tube amp also in the way it feeds back.

See section 3

silverfox.
 

[smackoj]

very interesting information.   

[pompeiisneaks]

I'm not sure I totally agree, but then again it's just opinion, and everyone has one ;)  I can peg digital every single time as 'different' and even though I can't say for 100% which one is the 'digital'. I can tell they don't sound the same, and with a pretty decent accuracy I do get which one is tube and which is digital, but not always.  I do always know they're not 100% identical.  I'm a software/systems engineer and major nerd that loves technology, but I still firmly believe the tube amplifier has some legs left in it.  I still see major acts that make tons of money still intentionally opting to use all tube amps even to this day, I think due to the fact that they can tell.  This is their full time job and they want it to sound the absolute best.  Not to say there aren't tons of amazing professional guitar players that use SS and sound amazing, as that also has a sound that can be used very effectively and made to sound just like someone wants. 

:)

Edit: runon sentence and clarity ... bleh

[drgonzonm]

I'm not sure I totally agree, but then again it's just opinion, and everyone has one ;)  I can peg digital every single time as 'different' and even though I can't say for 100% which one is the 'digital'. I can tell they don't sound the same, and with a pretty decent accuracy I do get which one is tube and which is digital, but not always.  I do always know they're not 100% identical.  I'm a software/systems engineer and major nerd that loves technology, but I still firmly believe the tube amplifier has some legs left in it.  I still see major acts that make tons of money still intentionally opting to use all tube amps even to this day, I think due to the fact that they can tell.  This is their full time job and they want it to sound the absolute best.  Not to say there aren't tons of amazing professional guitar players that use SS and sound amazing, as that also has a sound that can be used very effectively and made to sound just like someone wants. 

:)

Edit: runon sentence and clarity ... bleh

Please don't tell the bass player, it seems that the Captain Kirks' keep asking for more power, and the Scottys' are providing the power with Class D amps.  The captain just wants to keep up with the Romalans (AKA, the lead guitar).

Did Disaster Area, in Douglas Adam's books play tube amps? 

[robrob]

I keep reading about long time tube amp users switching to the newer modeling amps because they have gotten so good. One pleasant aspect of this is people are dumping some very nice tube amps on the market for guys like us to snap up.