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Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
I like the blackstar stuff, but it's a bit dull. Not quite a blanket over the speaker, but it almost sounds like a recorded amp. Not sure how else to put it!
I really liked the Marshall mosfet lead 100. Really neat, vintagey kind of sounds. Actually, I probably (from memory a few years back now) preferred that to the blackstar ht, though it's a bit apples and oranges.
The funny thing is, I have a mate with a JCM900 Dual Reverb 100W 2x12 combo. He absolutely refuses to use distortion pedals, only using his amp because "you can't play complex chords with distortion boxes, only valves keep the note separation, intermodulation distortion, blah, blah, blah".
I haven't had the heart to tell him what's really going on inside his amp.
Oddly, the JCM900 sl-x was often touted as being the nu metal amp, but it had some pretty sweet sounds on it that had nothing to do with nu metal. Sounded different to the other JCM900 amps though.
Nearly bought one, should have done - it put a big grin on my face in store, but they kept asking me to 'downtune that shit, man'.
Cleans are a bit poo though.
The valves are used for the tone stack and a couple of (clean) intermediate gain stages before and after the reverb, and the phase inverter.
The SL-X is actually a bit different - it's a derivative of the High Gain MV model, which uses valve gain with solid-state diode clipping, but replaces the diodes with another valve stage, so it is *close* to all-valve... but not quite, because the FX loop and MV control stages are still IC, although they don't contribute to the distortion.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
The valves are used for the tone stack and a couple of (clean) intermediate gain stages before and after the reverb, and the phase inverter.
The SL-X is actually a bit different - it's a derivative of the High Gain MV model, which uses valve gain with solid-state diode clipping, but replaces the diodes with another valve stage, so it is *close* to all-valve... but not quite, because the FX loop and MV control stages are still IC, although they don't contribute to the distortion.[/quote]
Okay, cool! I wouldn't say I preferred the sound of it to a boggo JCM900 but it was a good sounding amp.
What an odd range though.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Also... I HAAATTTEEEEE the sound of a cranked 65 Bassman - in Axe FX world anyway....
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
You can definitely overstate the differences (all that guff like "only tubes react to your playing"... they react better, IMO, but it's not like solid state doesn't at all), and I don't think tubes are magic either, but at the same time I hear (and maybe more importantly, feel) definitely differences between tube amps and ss amps (or pedals).
Any chance you could explain why the distortion is mainly tube-generated in the BS HT series? I've seen the schematic and I've seen the clipping diodes (which one of the BS engineers, when emailed by someone on another forum, tried to claim weren't clipping diodes), but I don't want to be posting incorrect information, either. Doesn't it also have a bunch of op-amp gain stages before the preamp tube, too? I suppose they could be working like a clean boost, though.
I still don't like it, either. Like you, the problem isn't that it's hybrid, the problem is that they're very coy about the fact it's hybrid. I know when it was first released I was actually quite interested because I assumed it was all-tube. )
People say (much like in those jan ray etc. threads in TGP) "Oh, move on, everyone knows now." I disagree. Not so much here (since you're fighting the good fight pretty effectively ) ), but I know on UG (where we similarly try to point out they're hybrid, but it has much more members than here, or at least much more casual members) any time there's a thread about Blackstars it's clear that some people think they're all-tube. And even argue they're all-tube for a while until we put them right.
I know a guy on UG says a lot of people he knew at the time (including him) were pissed when they realised the 900s were hybrid. Obviously that's second-hand information on my part, but yeah.
I suspect - in my completely uneducated non-physics trained way - that it's to do with the interactions going on between the input of the amp, the power section sag+bloom stuff, and the interaction with the speaker. I don't think you get a lot of that stuff with a pedal, so you lose thunk, chunk, and whatever other bullshit adjectives you wanna throw at it.
To me, there is a very drastic qualitative difference between clean amp+ pedal, and just a dirty amp. People have gotten around this by saying that pedals are their own thing and that it isn't a fair comparison. I guess that is true in one sense.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Obviously, advertising is misleading, but imagine how much less punchy an advert would be if it said, 'near enough all valve. We've used some solid state components which are not truly used for clipping in the traditional sense, but are important to the circuit', or 'some clipping comes from solid state components, but it still sounds awesome'.
No one would buy them, because everyone knows 100 percent all valve sounds better.
Especially when pushed by a fet clipping circuit
Edit: obviously, they shouldn't claim it's all valve, but I think the term 'hybrid', while accurate, diminishes the importance of the valve circuitry in these amps.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein