ORIGINAL: thndrsn

calaverasgrandes,

I keep going back to my rat through a small amp well mic-ed.

One question. Two, actually.

Q1: What size speaker populates the small amp? (EDIT: I read slowly. A: 12")

Q2: Is the amp box sealed/ported or open back? (The nudge trick suggests the latter.)

This is wonderful information you've posted here.

--thndrsn

Its both actually, Its basically identical to an ancient Bell and Howell 16mm projector cabinet. So it has hinges on one side. like a pignose, but a lot bigger. Yes this amp setup has limitations in that its a 5 watt single ended tube amp with only one knob. But for hard rock guitar it rules, and for blues or jazzy stuff its pretty decent. I also run the same head into my Mesa bass cabs for bass recording. It gets a good copmressed tone at moderate volume.
Also in hindsight I forgot to mention two huge things. When you record electric guitar you almost always want to do a low cut (highpass same thing). I get pretty brutal sometimes cutting off everything under 200hz. Also try and keep the low mids in control. The 250-400hz zone is mush central.

PS my comments about hendrixes tone were refering to his live tone which you can examine in detail in all manner of festival footage. But even his studio stuff, Man I empathize with his engineers having to cram such a braod tone into a song. My point wasnt that he had bad tone. Its that he had bad tone by todays standards of professional tone. We can also thank Hnedrix for several decades of less talented guys trying to play like him, and failing miserably. Finally I refuse to idolize or even be respectful of any musician who is stupid enough to die of drug induced asphixiation at the height of their careers. That goes for all of those people who died between like 1968 and 1980. And double fro Cobain. I have lost a lot of people and not too little of myself to drugs and alcohol.

ORIGINAL: DigiDis
Is the tube mindset actually a limitation?

is that a pun , you know how tubes limit the output signal?

ORIGINAL: DigiDis
Why don't vocalists amplify their voices with tube based rigs (TBR)?

because vocalists dont buy PAs sound guys do.

ORIGINAL: DigiDis
Why do most bassists seem to prefer solid state rigs to TBRs?

au contraire; at least in my circle of freinds we all have Ampegs or Mesas or even Traynors. I suppose it depends on style but even most solid state bass heads have a tube preamp these days. Heck if not for the SVT series of tube bass amps I am pretty sure Ampeg would have died a long time ago.

ORIGINAL: DigiDis
Keyboardists don't rely on tubes.

except for Hammond B3's and leslies. Which I have had the unfortunate experience of trying to mic for a live gig.

In theory I agree with you though.

DigiDis,

ORIGINAL: DigiDis
Why do most bassists seem to prefer solid state rigs to TBRs?

Not to agree or disagree, but one advantage transistors have over tubes is that at the very low end, they rule.

A tube has a plate impedance of some 5,000 to 10,000 ohms and operates in the neighborhood of +350 volts DC, a transistor can be configured to drive a speaker with a DC connection at 4 ohms running at a relatively harmless DC potential of 5 volts.

The tube will require an output transformer in any case, both to match impedance with the speaker, and to isolate the lethal +350 volts DC.

The transistor, on the other hand, delivers the power supply DC directly to the speaker coil.

DC current could be considered AC at a phase angle of 90 degrees and 0 Hz (no change).

Transformers are coils, that is inductive reactances, and impede the passage of AC the more so the higher the frequency, but their ability to transfer a signal to the secondary coil has a peak at some resonant frequency, which is well above the range of bass tones. Even at the low frequency of 10 Hz (below human hearing of any musical tone), a transformer will absorb (or fail to transfer to the lower impedance coil) a significant amount of the signal. A direct DC connection will take the amplified signal all the way down to DC (0Hz) with no loss. Thus, all other things being equal, a transistor direct DC output will deliver a fuller bottom to the speaker than a tube can through the best possible transformer.

There is also the matter of interstage coupling in tube amps using interstage capacitors (again, to isolate high positive DC plate output circuit voltages from (typically) slightly negative input grid circuits), and these caps (being capacitive reactances) filter out the lowest frequecies, versus the transistor direct-coupled stages (which are designed to stair-step the power supply DC voltages down through the signal chain), which do not.

Thus direct-coupled gain stages in a transistor amp feeding a speaker with a DC direct coupled output can faithfully reproduce and amplify a signal from DC (0 Hz) on up.

--thndrsn

PS my comments about hendrixes tone were refering to his live tone which you can examine in detail in all manner of festival footage. But even his studio stuff, Man I empathize with his engineers having to cram such a braod tone into a song. My point wasnt that he had bad tone. Its that he had bad tone by todays standards of professional tone. We can also thank Hnedrix for several decades of less talented guys trying to play like him, and failing miserably. Finally I refuse to idolize or even be respectful of any musician who is stupid enough to die of drug induced asphixiation at the height of their careers. That goes for all of those people who died between like 1968 and 1980. And double fro Cobain. I have lost a lot of people and not too little of myself to drugs and alcohol.

OK. We mostly agree

But, to say Hendirx had bad tone is as inacurrate a snapshot as to say he had great tone.. truth is, he had all kinds of tones. Considering the exremes at either end, possibly the most inconsistent guitarist ever recorded. Did you hear the recording of he and Johnny Winter jamming? Johnny played circles around him.

I don't know what he sounded like in the room on his better days, but a LOT of what ended up on vinyl is great, so great that the other stuff is eclipsed and largely forgotten, or else forgiven.

I have to disagree in one regard, though. When the Good Jimi showed up, he was untouchable, and in some ways remains so even by today's standards. I've struggled for hours to get just the vibrato on one note to sound like him, yes indeed, failing miserably.

ORIGINAL: thndrsn

DigiDis,

ORIGINAL: DigiDis
Why do most bassists seem to prefer solid state rigs to TBRs?

all other things being equal, a transistor direct DC output will deliver a fuller bottom to the speaker than a tube can through the best possible transformer.
--thndrsn

Well you seem to have a lot of the salient details of musical electronics down pretty well. Except for one thing. You really dont want DC showing up on your speakers coils. It turns them into heaters! As far as being able to go physically lower in frequency I am sure a well designed solid state amp will run cirlces around an equivalent tube head on paper. But put both amps in a room with a 2x15 or 8x10 and see which is perceived as louder. There is a reason why tube bass amps are all about 300 watts and solid state ones keep escalating their power rating. Becasue when you run a solid state amp into clipping, the resulting square wave produces DC at the voice coil. Again this is bad and makes for dead speakers. A tube head driven into clipping just gets fuller sounding.

The non-linearity of transformers you pointed out is pretty much why they sound good. Thats where a lot of that tube compression happens! Besides the 10-30hz region is overated. You dont hear that, you feel it as the "THX tone" in movie theatres. Bass guitar is happening more from 60hz-200hz. Which is why the ampeg 8x10 continues to sell very well!

ORIGINAL: thndrsn


But can I really get authentic tone from a guitar made in China?

--thndrsn

I will admit that I have always been a guitar snob and my minimum quality was always USA Jacksons, and a good guitar comes from Shur or Jacaranda. That being said, the quality of "Eastern made" guitars has begun to really impress me, especially the Peavey's and LTD from ESP. Assuming there is a minimum of qualty control abd they use decent aged woods for the construction you very well may be able to do just fine with one. Most likely you will have to change out the pickups.

ORIGINAL: DigiDis

ORIGINAL: thndrsn


But can I really get authentic tone from a guitar made in China?

--thndrsn

I will admit that I have always been a guitar snob and my minimum quality was always USA Jacksons, and a good guitar comes from Shur or Jacaranda. That being said, the quality of "Eastern made" guitars has begun to really impress me, especially the Peavey's and LTD from ESP. Assuming there is a minimum of qualty control abd they use decent aged woods for the construction you very well may be able to do just fine with one. Most likely you will have to change out the pickups.

A good guitarist can get a good tone from any guitar, even if made in china or kalamazu.

CJ

ORIGINAL: CJaysMusic

A good guitarist can get a good tone from any guitar, even if made in china or kalamazu.

CJ

Especially today with 99% of all guitars being made by CNC. But, there is a tonal advantage when a talented luthier takes resonantly matching woods that are of high quality and crafts a guitar to perfection. I have the privilege of playing many of Jacaranda's handmade instruments and am able to notice a big difference in tone. When a string vibrates, the whole instruments contributes to delivering the tone to be amplified by the pickups.

So, its true that a good guitarist can get a good "sound" out of almost any guitar today, but put a luthier made guitar in his hands and that's when the magic starts.

calaveresgrandes,

Yes, all that you say is correct. That's one of several reasons I prefaced my remarks as I did. I omitted several details, as you mention, since I didn't want to write a textbook.

The DC sent to the speaker from a direct-coupled amp is usually at 0 volts WRT ground when no signal is applied, so no current flows through the coil then. Otherwise, a speaker is a heater in any case, tubes or transistors. (Some of the most impressive damage I've ever done to a speaker coil is melting it by playing too many very loud notes into too much amplification for too long a time for the speaker!) If you put your hand on any speaker coil after a gig it will be warm. For direct-coupled amps to work, there must be a +/- swing around 0 volts, so the power supply is appropriately configured to source voltage at two opposite polarities WRT ground.

And what you say about the clipping is true, though, per the above and depending on the duty cycle, it won't exactly be DC, but it certainly won't sound good, if the cone remains connected to the coil, or much at all otherwise.

What you said about frequencies is pretty much true, too. And the more accurate power one gets from keeping the 10Hz to 30Hz isn't music tone, as I said, but still, it may effect one's perception. Look at a waveform display of a synthesized bass sample with a lot of "sub-bass", such as those used in Hip Hop dance music. If a one-second sample is displayed across a two-inch stretch of the screen, it may well be mostly displaced to one side of the zero crossing, dipping in that direction, and then back. That's a 1Hz sub-fundamental. If we fed that waveform to an oscilloscope with the input switch set to DC, it would look like it does in SONAR, with more area on one side of zero than the other. If we put the input switch of the scope on AC, it will move until it has the same area on both sides of the zero crossing. Can we feel it in our ears? I don't know. Maybe. (I would guess 'yes', just as we feel a change in pressure on an airplane.) Could a tube amp reproduce it? Probably not.

But you are also right about the perception of a bass being "fuller" from a tube amp, because of the range of frequencies that contribute to its 'fatness'. I probably should have used a different term. An oscilloscope will show a bigger swing in the 10Hz - 30Hz range (or a more accurate waveform) from a good transistor amp, than from a good tube amp (all else equal) from the same input, but this does not necessarily equate to 'fatness' in the sound. (It depends on the speaker, too.) And I am assuming that the transistor amp has the current handling capacity to deliver the same power level to the speaker without going anywhere near clipping. If clipping happens in the transistor amp, all bets are off.

Yes, the tubes will handle being overdriven much more musically than the transistor. And the built-in compression of the tube circuit limitations "on paper" do, in fact, create that sound we're after, whereas transistors give back one of two things: an accurate reproduction of a lifeless input tone, or the shredded and mangled shattered glass distortion of a square wave with a "jackhammer" like high-frequency ringing at the edges. Neither of these is as musical as the tube output, which both compresses and reshapes the sonic spectrum of the input.

The reason that manufacturers keep "upping" the power rating of transistor amps has to do with marketing hype and the various ways one can measure "output power", not with any of the physics discussed here.

In other words, you are basically right. (Pun intended)

--thndrsn

A good guitarist can get a good tone from any guitar, even if made in china or kalamazu.

Yes and no.

Some quitars (from the same model and production run) have a special quality that just makes them sing, and others have an opposite quality that just makes them dogs. The former almost play themselves and sound like a crystal bell, the latter have to be fought with tooth and nail just to get a tolerable mud.

True, a good quitarist can make music on either one.

But a good musician will be inspired by the former, and discouraged by the latter, and both that attitude and the actual difference in clarity, sustain and brilliance in the tone can and will be heard by an audience in an intimate setting. (Saying that no one can tell the difference in an amphitheater gone mad is pointless.)

On the former, a held note, a pause, a bit of vibrato, is an emotional moment prolonged.

On the latter, a held note, a pause, a bit of vibrato, ... is dead air.


This much is not negotiable.

--thndrsn