RIP: Amps

PolarityMan

impmann said:

Modulus_Amps said:

, but way more important than that... did Hendrix play a valve amp or a digital amp, what about Slash, Clapton, Page, Beck, Hammet, Hetfield, Bonamassa.... etc etc

Why are those people important? One is dead. Two haven't done anything of any note since the 1970s. Three haven't done anything of note since the late 80s. One could make a fart sound interesting -  and has made great noises with SS equipment. And one is JoBo, who will play anything he's paid to play through (and sound exactly the same).

Genuinely, why are these people still relevant? They may inspire a particular generation of players but younger players won't care. I'm old enough to have seen most of these guys play in their prime, but I'd genuinely not class them as a major influence any more. 

The thing you are missing is, if Hendrix was alive today (and a young man) he would be embracing digital tech. He was always trying to push the barriers and find the limit of the technology. 

If you want to live in the past, fine - but don't assume all guitar players look behind them for their inspiration.

I think Metallica are on axefx these days

sweepy

Amps and Modellers are just tools to be used when appropriate, I’ve owned all the major brands at one time or another and some very lovely valve amps too. There is something almost visceral and very revealing about plugging straight into an amp whereas a modeller comes pre loaded with “fairy dust” so use them both and get on with fun job of playing

roberty

ICBM said:

Teacherphil said:

Hiwatt seem to have gone full Spinal Tap.
https://www.facebook.com/118190701590797/posts/2712902755452899/

Interesting that it has eight KT88s - the originals used six. More confirmation that the JJ ones can't take the power like the old GECs could. It would actually be interesting to know if this is even as powerful - both of the originals I've worked on produced almost 450W at the point of clipping and over 750W fully overdriven.

Great fun for bass, outdoors at a big festival or somewhere similar... probably fairly pointless for anything else. I actually thought the 200 sounded slightly better too.

Apparently the originals were only 300 watts despite having 400 in the name

http://www.chambonino.com/work/hiwatt/hw4.html

WiresDreamDisasters

So much opinion masquerading as fact in this thread.

ICBM

roberty said:

Apparently the originals were only 300 watts despite having 400 in the name

http://www.chambonino.com/work/hiwatt/hw4.html

I respect John Chambers enormously, but he's wrong about that. Bear in mind he's going from a very bad copy, and a theoretical interpretation of the schematic valves.

Both of the originals I've worked on produced close to 450W at the point of clipping into a resistive load.

Jonathanthomas83

Diezel, Friedman and Victory (even though you dismissed them) all announced new stuff too. Marshall did a stealth version of the studio head! ;-) And EVH are doing the Stealth 50w.

Valve amps are here for good! :-)

jpfamps

ICBM said:

Modulus_Amps said:

Considering you can now buy LP's again... I think you are wrong. ....or at least for another 30 years Do valve amps sound better, generally yes, but way more important than that... did Hendrix play a valve amp or a digital amp, what about Slash, Clapton, Page, Beck, Hammet, Hetfield, Bonamassa.... etc etc

Remember that even a company with the dominance of Kodak was caught out by how sudden the demise of mass-market film photography was, once digital reached the tipping point where the consumer market switched to it. Or what happened to the market for CRT TV and monitor tubes when flat screens became cheaper...

Kodak actually developed the first digital camera, so were well ahead of the curve.

It's quite remarkable how they managed to cock it up.

ThePrettyDamned

downbytheriver said:

ICBM said:

Kittyfrisk said:

This has been going on for years.

CD's are now obsolete technology and yet they were all about exactly this.
They contained less musical information, but were sold as sounding better because there was no hiss or background noise.
Even though analogue vinyl sound was (and still is) better.

Thread diversion time... this is not true. CD sound quality is better in technical terms than even the most perfect vinyl record, let alone after it starts to wear. What it might not do is sound more pleasing to the listener.

This is also like solid-state and valve amps. We like valve amps not because they're technically better - they're not, they're worse - but because they sound subjectively more pleasing. Slightly stranger is that they can sound perceptively louder, even when they're producing less power and measured SPL.

Firstly, sorry ICBM, unlike 99% of what you post, I fervently disagree with this. Records, through even a half decent system, sound MUCH better than CDs. “In technical terms” is a nonsensical argument. If it sounds better, it is better - the listener is the only arbiter. If “technically” it isn’t then it is perfectly clear that the technical argument is flawed- it’s either being measured Ineffectively or the technical argument is addressing the wrong aspects. 

Having said that, I have always been a valve amp user (yes even in my Hifi). I’ve been through masses of Fenders, one Marshall (very briefly), Victorias, Lazy Js, Dr Z etc etc BUT at the same time I have owned Sessionettes, a Blues Baby, Peavey Bandit, a Roland Blues Cube, a Roland VGA-3 (which for some reason I remember very fondly), Roland JC120 and probably several more solid state heroes. They were all, in shorthand terms, less than. I kept trying because you are right - one day it will be game over for the valve. 

What changed everything was buying the Fender Tone Master Deluxe Reverb. This is the first solid state (modelling, whatever) amp that delivers something very close to the valve amp experience. Enough that I’m selling valve amps and gigging the TM. 

BUT... it’s still the “amp experience” - box at the back with racket coming out of it. I can’t get past that! I’m sure the DI thing is a very effective way of delivering but it isn’t very visceral is it? 

On the the other hand, I am a bit mental - I used to shop at Russ Andrews Hifi in Edinburgh - that might say a bit too much about me.  

The first part of the solution is admitting you have a problem  

Absolute cowboys, no idea how they manage to sustain their business, although they probably only need to sell one of everything to pay all the overheads and salaries for the year.

With CDs, part of the problem was mixing - listen to early CDs and they don't sound great. Later remasters often do - people were not understanding the tech and so the sound quality suffered. There is no reason a CD would have worse sound quality than a record - whether it sounds better is up to the listener  

My phone streaming Spotify sounds great through my cheap Bluetooth headphones. It sounds much better when I borrow dad's fancy £250 Sony ones. They sound better than his more expensive still wired ones... 

impmann

clarkefan said:

Why do people always say Hendrix would go blah blah blah, how do they know? Maybe he'd be addicted to the sound of valves like the rest of us?

Simply because he was all about pushing barriers and using as much high tech that was available to him - bear in mind most guitar players didn't know what a UniVibe was, let alone owned one in the late 60s and few players had their own pet effects boffin... he did.

I don't think he'd be as backwards looking as most guitar players are.

But as Drew rightly says... lots of opinion masquerading as fact. There's no wrong or right - just what works for you.

clarkefan

impmann said:

clarkefan said:

Why do people always say Hendrix would go blah blah blah, how do they know? Maybe he'd be addicted to the sound of valves like the rest of us?

Simply because he was all about pushing barriers and using as much high tech that was available to him - bear in mind most guitar players didn't know what a UniVibe was, let alone owned one in the late 60s and few players had their own pet effects boffin... he did.

I don't think he'd be as backwards looking as most guitar players are.

But as Drew rightly says... lots of opinion masquerading as fact. There's no wrong or right - just what works for you.

All I'm saying is Hendrix could every bit as easily have decided over time that, like his contemporaries, Beck, Clapton, Page, etc, valve amps sound better.

We'll never know of course, it just irritates me that it seems to be internet gospel lore that Hendrix would not have.

Jonathanthomas83

It's very weird that people take that stance with Hendrix. One of the best guitarists to walk this earth "wouldn't be using a valve amp in 2020", righto.

ICBM

If he’d lived and his music had evolved totally differently, perhaps the new solid-state amps from Acoustic, Sunn etc would have been his choice, and now they would be the most valuable vintage amps. Who knows...

He certainly didn’t like his sound on stage, by all accounts - although the terrible monitoring of the time can’t have helped.

roberty

ICBM said:

roberty said:

Apparently the originals were only 300 watts despite having 400 in the name

http://www.chambonino.com/work/hiwatt/hw4.html

I respect John Chambers enormously, but he's wrong about that. Bear in mind he's going from a very bad copy, and a theoretical interpretation of the schematic valves.

Both of the originals I've worked on produced close to 450W at the point of clipping into a resistive load.

My god really? That's a frightening amount of power. I can't fathom it

roberty

ICBM said:

If he’d lived and his music had evolved totally differently, perhaps the new solid-state amps from Acoustic, Sunn etc would have been his choice, and now they would be the most valuable vintage amps. Who knows...

He certainly didn’t like his sound on stage, by all accounts - although the terrible monitoring of the time can’t have helped.

You'd have a hard time tweaking a kemper off your tits on LSD

ICBM

roberty said:

My god really? That's a frightening amount of power. I can't fathom it

Yes, really. I had to make a special dummy load to handle it - luckily I found that an old 2KW kettle has a cold resistance quite close to 16 ohms!

It is the most powerful valve amp I’ve ever tested - but there are more powerful solid-state bass amps. 450W or more is actually not at all unusual - I have a 500W 1x10” bass combo that I think weighs less than one of the transformers in a Hiwatt 400...

AndyJP

Wasn't Hendrix more interested in getting plaster casts of his knob towards the end?

Modulus_Amps

impmann said:

Modulus_Amps said:

, but way more important than that... did Hendrix play a valve amp or a digital amp, what about Slash, Clapton, Page, Beck, Hammet, Hetfield, Bonamassa.... etc etc

Why are those people important? One is dead. Two haven't done anything of any note since the 1970s. Three haven't done anything of note since the late 80s. One could make a fart sound interesting -  and has made great noises with SS equipment. And one is JoBo, who will play anything he's paid to play through (and sound exactly the same).

Genuinely, why are these people still relevant? They may inspire a particular generation of players but younger players won't care. I'm old enough to have seen most of these guys play in their prime, but I'd genuinely not class them as a major influence any more. 

The thing you are missing is, if Hendrix was alive today (and a young man) he would be embracing digital tech. He was always trying to push the barriers and find the limit of the technology. 

If you want to live in the past, fine - but don't assume all guitar players look behind them for their inspiration.

Almost all guitar players look behind them for inspiration, nobody picks up a learn to play guitar book and then starts writing music without having first been influenced by music before hand. Doesn't mean they have to play valve amps, but the influence is still there and tonal reference, which is the same tonal reference that digital products are measured against.

Those people are important because they are still covered heavily in guitar magazines and online chats, go to a guitar show selling amps and classic tones of the past come up all the time, and it sells amps, it is very important, yes you can get there with digital or close enough, but there will always be those that want it the old way.

WiresDreamDisasters

Shakespeare would've loved double-sided dildos. Totally would've been his thing.

GrahamG

I think it may be oversimplifying the discussion to say Valves/Analogue is better/worse than Digital/S/S.
I regulary go to watch a young band who use all Digital tech(modelling),they have 4 Vocals Lead & Rhythm Guitars & the Rhythm also doubles on Keys,they use a Roland V-Drum kit,so no backline(not even monitoring) all going through quite a decent PA system with a "modern" Digital Desk.
I get to watch them on 3 different venues & the sound is incredibly consistent & almost always better than us old tech old guys/bands playing the Same gigs( Pub/Club gigs).

As a for instance i watched them 2 weeks ago at a regular Venue & this week at the same gig i watched a "typical" old arse Band(like ours) with the usual array of valve guitar amps accoustic drums,all good quality gear & equally good if not better players,but the overall sound is not in the same league,IMHO.
I should just add that i'm an old arse Guitar player who uses Valve gear,but their approach to gigging/sound has really got me thinking about dragging myself & my band mates into the Digital Tech era,although i have no clue where to start.
As an aside in one of the posts someone mentioned Russ Andrews Hi Fi,it brought back a few good memories(& one bad one)of my trips up in Scotland as a hi-fi rep.
Please excuse the ramblings of an old man.

grappagreen

Valve amps aren't dead yet and won't be until the last valves (or something else) are exhausted. There will always be folks who want them and, as long as the economics work out, supply will meet demand. I loved my Kemper but I just wasn't happy and then went back to the inconvenience of my valve based amps. It's totally irrational but hey I'm human and can accept that. Point is I want to be happy and valve amps make me happier than digital stuff for a number of reasons..most of which are just romanticised nonsense!

Ironically I feel the exact opposite about vintage guitars and I've happily lent out a very old Strat to someone who feels that way about guitars.. strange isn't it?

Si