Do guitarists still view buying a solid state amp as something best avoided ?

Reverend

It is amusing to watch so many stoner and sludge  bands go on about valves when so may of the key influences are SS.

Kyuss were more ss than valve, eyehategod and Crowbar use Randall, Earth used old Sunn ss amps. 

And don't forget the humble Bandit is the basis for one o the best metal albums ever.

usedtobe

Ive mainly had ss amps, but I always feel like I should be using valves. I think we're made to feel that valves are proper, and ss just isn't. I think there's a fair bit of snobbery and guilt tripping about amps, and it works on people. Even when I have a sound I like, part of me is going, yeah but a valve amp would sound even better..

  

Sessionman

ThePrettyDamned said:

ICBM said:

Telejester said:

So what was the stiffest,harshest, most sterile and shitty toned solid state amp you can remember that produced the tones that ensures guitarists only look at tubes these days ?

Peavey Renown. I actually like them as a clean platform for pedals/preamps/multi-FX/modellers… but the inherent tone when they're turned up loud on their own is like being hit in the head with a sharpened pickaxe. Incredibly loud, bright, hard and steely. It makes me laugh when guitarists describe *any* valve amp as 'unforgiving' - clearly they've never had to use a Renown at stage volume!

professorben said:

Telejester said:

Some of the drive channels on solid state fender combos from the 80s must be right up there with some of the worst guitar tones ever conceived, funny enough the hrd drive channel which is full tube is atrocious too.

Brand consistency. 

As you know I like the drive channel on the HRDs - but I would agree about some of the solid-state ones from the red-knob era. The red knob 'The Twin' - which is all-valve - is nearly as bad too! Definitely a consistent voicing thing going on.

ThePrettyDamned said:

@ICBM solid state dual rec red channel modern. Can it be done? 

Probably not, or at least not without some cleverness that hasn't been tried yet - the key to the Dual Rec Modern mode is defeating the power amp negative feedback, so you get that huge whumpy undamped resonance - very hard to do with a solid-state output section, no matter how close you get to the 'tone' of the preamp.

It's a shame - dual recs are beasts and a lighter solid state version would be ace. 

Digital modelling probably does a much better job. 

My experience with solid state design makes me confident that it can be done. The problem is, the market for such an amp would be financial suicide!  No where near enough players would want one.

gitapik

Pritchard makes excellent SS amps. I was flip flopping between one of those and the Port City Pearl (valves) a while back. I ended up with the Pearl but am still interested in Pritchard's work. 

I checked out his site and see that, at this point, he's selling the Legacy. There are/were(?) other models in the past and I've sent him an email asking about them. See where that goes....

http://www.pritchardamps.com/

Sessionman

ThePrettyDamned said:

Telejester said:

Some of the drive channels on solid state fender combos from the 80s must be right up there with some of the worst guitar tones ever conceived, funny enough the hrd drive channel which is full tube is atrocious too.

I like the hot rod deluxe drive channel... 

Best distortion on an amp ever is the dual rec. Not sure how close you can get to that from a solid state amp but it'd be interesting to find out. 

Best clean tone i've heard was probably a silverface head from the 70s. Went into a 4x10 tweed cab that was new, Cor, that sounded nice. 

Best in between dirty clean is my vox ac15 or a JTM45. 

It'd be interesting to see how close solid state would get, but it caters only to the lower end of the market. The more pricey solid state amps are generally aimed at jazzers and clean players. 

@ICBM solid state dual rec red channel modern. Can it be done? 

The Hotrod is an amp where the drive is post-EQ.  This makes for an 'old-school' type of tone (like distortion in the power amp).  Most rock players prefer the distortion pre-EQ.  Sessionette's distortion  is Post-EQ too, like the Hotrod.

Incidentally, I have no interest in promoting the Sessionette on Fretboard... we haven't made it since 1988!  So no commercial interest for me. 

The Sessionette:75 and the Hotrod have the same circuit topology... Sessionette was first by thirteen years!  So, it is already out there.  The problem with a direct comparison is that the 1980s Sessionette did not have constant current speaker drive, where the Hotrod does.  Sessionette also has a small cabinet and the speaker is very much different tonally.  This will make a huge difference in tone and feel of the amp. And you would rightly think the Hotrod is tonally superior against the un-upgraded 1980s Sessionette.  Once they are RetroTone upgraded... the picture is very different... they are then ready to duel!

Jazzers have very critical ears too!  So I'm not sure it's good to pass them off as insignificant.  We are building a BluesBaby for Nigel Price... an extremely picky customer and voted Britain's top jazz guitarist 2016.  It was love at first pluck and BB45 is now replacing the Rocket 44 he's been using for 20 years!  Nigel plays over 300 gigs a year, so reliability and low running costs are also vitally important, as well as great tone.

As a professional designer, it's not appropriate for me to cater for just rock players.  That would be a very narrow outlook.  There are many makes and models of amps which a certain small minority of players here would not like one bit.  But that's what happens on forums... you get one or two players who kind of set the scene on 'what is best' and are particularly vocal about their likes and dislikes (alpha males). 

But I can guarantee you all, there are many players who just 'lurk' and hardly ever post.  These are often the players who like other forms of music and will tend to not agree with the small minority.  That's why there's so many products that sell well which might not be 'hip' on many forums.  NOT everyone likes or wants a heavy old JTM45 or Dual Rectifier.  Actually, I have heard from two Fretboard players by email... one where weight was a key issue and who hates rock music!  These are the players that keep Session and all the other amp makers going and why there's such a diversity of amps available.  Viva la choice! 

SS is a very serious contender now in the analogue amp market!  All of the modelling amps depend on SS power amps equipped with constant current (CC) drive to sound convincing!  Without CC, all that R & D would be totally wasted!  CC cannot be replicated in software.  CC is what makes a valve amp sound the way it does.

Sessionman

What would be really interesting is if there was a some kind of annual  'Forum Members Meeting Event' where we could all meet up and show off our gear and allow other forum members to try 'our' favourite amps, pedals and guitars.  We used to this back in the 'pre forum' days of 'News Groups' - "UKMG".  The last one I went to was in Wigan in 2001!

Bridgehouse

Sessionman said:

What would be really interesting is if there was a some kind of annual  'Forum Members Meeting Event' where we could all meet up and show off our gear and allow other forum members to try 'our' favourite amps, pedals and guitars.  We used to this back in the days of 'News Groups' - "UK.Guitar. Amps".

Internet people meeting up in real life?? 

Crikey.


Imagine if we all turned up and none of us could play. And we only had a squier affinity tele and a blackstar practice amp.

Well, that's how internet dating goes, innit?

Sessionman

Bridgehouse said:

Sessionman said:

What would be really interesting is if there was a some kind of annual  'Forum Members Meeting Event' where we could all meet up and show off our gear and allow other forum members to try 'our' favourite amps, pedals and guitars.  We used to this back in the days of 'News Groups' - "UK.Guitar. Amps".

Internet people meeting up in real life?? 

Crikey.


Imagine if we all turned up and none of us could play. And we only had a squier affinity tele and a blackstar practice amp.

Well, that's how internet dating goes, innit?

LOL... I'm exposed already!

Bridgehouse

Sessionman said:

Bridgehouse said:

Sessionman said:

What would be really interesting is if there was a some kind of annual  'Forum Members Meeting Event' where we could all meet up and show off our gear and allow other forum members to try 'our' favourite amps, pedals and guitars.  We used to this back in the days of 'News Groups' - "UK.Guitar. Amps".

Internet people meeting up in real life?? 

Crikey.


Imagine if we all turned up and none of us could play. And we only had a squier affinity tele and a blackstar practice amp.

Well, that's how internet dating goes, innit?

LOL... I'm exposed already!

No wonder your internet dates go badly!

Telejester

First guy to play something plays enter sandman riff...........

gitapik

Sessionman said:

What would be really interesting is if there was a some kind of annual  'Forum Members Meeting Event' where we could all meet up and show off our gear and allow other forum members to try 'our' favourite amps, pedals and guitars.  We used to this back in the 'pre forum' days of 'News Groups' - "UKMG".  The last one I went to was in Wigan in 2001!

I'm new here and this is an unexpected bonus, having you on the site, Sessionman. Session amps have a great rep here in the States, too. Glad you chimed in about the various styles of music other than current mainstream. 

This one's sweet:

Sessionman

ICBM said:

Something really interesting is to hear an original early-60s Vox T-60 transistor bass amp - the first commercial solid-state musical instrument amp, at least this side of the Atlantic. The clean tone is absolutely magical, warm and complex, and very like a valve amp like that JTM45.

The problems with them are that the overdrive sound is apparently not very good, and they're extremely unreliable - the technology just wasn't really worked out yet. I say 'apparently' because I have worked on a T-60 with its original power transistors still present, and since that must be rare bordering on unique, I didn't dare push it hard enough to find out what it sounded like overdriven!

Unfortunately a lot of the circuit improvements which followed that made transistor amps much more stable and reliable also removed that wonderful tone…

Dave @ecc83 has proposed building a very simple transistor circuit like that but with everything so over-engineered that even pushing it into distortion couldn't kill it - but that would be expensive, likely as much as an equivalent-power valve amp.

"Unfortunately a lot of the circuit improvements which followed that made transistor amps much more stable and reliable also removed that wonderful tone…"  That's simply not true.  What is true, is that the manufacturers didn't bother to find the right designers (wouldn't pay the money) to create good designs.  Plus the technology wasn't ready for electric guitar at the Vox T-60 and Burns Orbit 60 time!

Well, the T60 had a driver transformer to get those OC28 working.  This would have introduced some warmth, although not CC, as not in touch with the speakers. 

Power transistors of that generation could not stand the high voltages required to get the swing to deliver as much as 60 Watts across the speaker.  Secondary breakdown it was called and was a major problem until the very last generations of bi-polar 2N2055s in the mid seventies.

By then, as far as the musician was concerned, the reputation of SS amps was well and truly trashed.  This allowed valve amp techs to really dig in with the 'SS is crap' message.  And that holds true even now... although totally untrue... as everyone knows.  Nothing ever stands still... not least the development of some truly fantastic power transistors.  The MJ11015 & MJ11016 bipolar Darlington complimentary pair being just two... still being made today and used by Session in the 1980s!  Brilliant TO3 can and can operate up to 120V @ 30 Amps (200W) each!

Once you get the amp design right... you never have to worry about changing anything... except cruddy jack sockets and crackly pots now an then!

Nikko

Telejester said:

First guy to play something plays enter sandman riff...........

Nope...I wont go first. Too shy to do that, but my 'Enter Sandman' is the best!!

Sessionman

gitapik said:

Sessionman said:

What would be really interesting is if there was a some kind of annual  'Forum Members Meeting Event' where we could all meet up and show off our gear and allow other forum members to try 'our' favourite amps, pedals and guitars.  We used to this back in the 'pre forum' days of 'News Groups' - "UKMG".  The last one I went to was in Wigan in 2001!

I'm new here and this is an unexpected bonus, having you on the site, Sessionman. Session amps have a great rep here in the States, too. Glad you chimed in about the various styles of music other than current mainstream. 

This one's sweet:

Thanks for your kind words!  I did say in an earlier post that our potential American customers are a lot more enthusiastic about new gear.  You guys always want to hear 'the story behind the product.'

Frankly, the whole musical instrument market is geared up to 'rock.'  But actually, outside Britain, jazz, folk, country, pop, swing... you name it... is also a huge market too.  So here in the UK players do have a problem finding a nice reliable amp that's NOT a Fender Blackface.  That's where SESSION steps into the market... we cater for those NOT rock players!  Classic tones in solid state and highly reliable with practically NO running costs!

"Have a nice day"... lol!

bingefeller

Reverend said:

It is amusing to watch so many stoner and sludge  bands go on about valves when so may of the key influences are SS.

Kyuss were more ss than valve, eyehategod and Crowbar use Randall, Earth used old Sunn ss amps. 

And don't forget the humble Bandit is the basis for one o the best metal albums ever.

Josh used SS in Kyuss?  I thought he used a Tubeworks head.....

ThePrettyDamned

I mention jazzers as clean tones seem more doable with solid state. 

I loved my bandit, both channels. But both channels sounded their best clean! Although it could do a decent dirt too. 

I suspect getting that huge, whumpy punch of a dual rec or even a 6505, which is tighter but still gut punching, is a bit tougher. It's not so much the amount of distortion as the character of it. 

If it can be done, it'd probably be cost prohibitive... 

Although an Ola video proves most amps, in a mix, sound different-but-good. Or similar at least. So... Who knows. 

Guitarse

SS is great for clean tones, but have a horrible raspy edge to them with distortion.

Telejester

I think SS just cannot replicate the 3d tones which valves amps produce, the SS amps just sound so 2d and hifi to my ears.

ThePrettyDamned

Telejester said:

I think SS just cannot replicate the 3d tones which valves amps produce, the SS amps just sound so 2d and hifi to my ears.

This I don't get. 

I've played a lot of high end amps that people describe as 3d sounding and, to me, there is no special quality to them. Although they sound great. 

Solid state just sounds different. 

Sassafras

The wonderful thing with valve amps is you can smell the cork.