There it is - the YT reason most videos go on and on and on before making any kind of point. I never watch one till the end.
Three letters: I, M & D. Particularly IMD from power supply recharge in AB style amps (that is, almost all of them). There's plenty of bass available should that be your thing (can you say "Chugg" ?). Then there's what's going on in the speaker box, particularly if sealed (e.g. typical quad box).
It's also this thang that there's no more a typical guitar amp than a typical person-who-rides-a-bicycle.
Worse, we all hear differently, and are listening for different things.
Also, as Abstract points out, there's certain things that we only notice after hours and hours and hours of listening.
I recall that someone filtered the heck out of the PS and when overdriven the Marshall did not sound 'right'. Seems our ears (or at least some) have been trained to like the sound. Another story that I read was that in the studio they could not figure out why they could not get the sound they wanted. The bug it seemed was the difference between 60 Hz and 50 Hz and the IMD components.
Dont tell me someone is going to come up with a power supply that has a forced 50Hz ripple - from a 60 Hz actual AC line?
They do have the so called AC source, which was a piece of equipment I used to use to test computer power supplies. 50 Hz in, 60 out no problem. There's your hum or power supply ripple. Price of a good pedal on the used market, which makes it actually reasonable / obtainable for a studio that wants to offer this level of detail;
How do you know the amps weren't designed that way because humans naturally tend to like the sound? Maybe something about it being that way comes closer to mimicking some emotional expression in the human voice?
Only point in mentioning the above is that being "trained" to like it may be an assumption without supporting published research, much like many other things about audio perception?
I guess I'd be leaning toward the we've been trained theory. Take two bands, early 60's, competing rivals, one from the west coast usa, one from England, Fender, Vox and you're 9 years old; not thinking about sounds like this or that, just turned upside down by the sounds coming off that 45 in the school gym. Pretty subliminal training if you ask me.
Later, someone asks you "draw in the sand what an electric guitar looks like" and I'd bet every kid growing up in the 60s would draw a strat or ES335 shape. Now by analogy "draw in the sand what a guitar amp sounds like". You know automatically what it sounds like; cant draw it, but it's as ingrained as the shapes, maybe even moreso.
Later, someone asks you "draw in the sand what an electric guitar looks like" and I'd bet every kid growing up in the 60s would draw a strat or ES335 shape. Now by analogy "draw in the sand what a guitar amp sounds like". You know automatically what it sounds like; cant draw it, but it's as ingrained as the shapes, maybe even moreso.
Why would you use a guitar amp if it sounded like a hi-fi amp? As a guitarist and or as a guitar amp designer, would you say a hi-fi amp sounds like a fantastic, incredible instrument (i.e. if playing guitar through a hi-fi amp sound)?
IOW, Marshall didn't train guitarists to choose a particular sound. Guitarists chose Marshall (or Fender) for their personal sound because they thought it sounded good for their style of music.
IOW, Marshall didn't train guitarists to choose a particular sound. Guitarists chose Marshall (or Fender) for their personal sound because they thought it sounded good for their style of music.
The bassist for the house band at the blues jam held at the Blue Buffalo in Framingham, some 30 years ago, had the Mesa Boogie 100W all tube bass amp. I asked him how he came to choose that particular unit. He told me he brought his bass to the music store, tried it with all the different amps they had and picked that one because it sounded best. I was impressed, as I was expecting a different method.
The early, non master volume Marshalls were never intended to be overdriven in the power amp section. And that power amp section was pretty much almost a hifi design with tons of negative feedback (in relative terms), coming from higher gain EL34's used compared to the 6L6 in the original Fender design they built upon, plus feedback taken from 16 Ohms tap and low'ish feedback resistor. This produces the famous "Plexi" sound from the very abrupt transition from clean to nasty overdrive. And the supply sag and ripple appears directly in the output signal, creating additional IMD components. The sound of this "abuse" mode of operation (at insane output levels) never was intentional, not explicitely shaped.
Okay, so guitarists chose it? Then when that started to take off, did manufacturers give attention to what their customers were demanding?
Also, would you say it was the guitarists' intention to train audiences to like the sound even if the guitarists thought it sounded bad? IOW, to what extent was there training of audiences as opposed to natural preference once exposed to the sound?
I ask those things having a Marshall 18 Watt clone here, along with Celestion Blue and Gold speakers to choose from. Sounds pretty good, much better than the 6-transistor radio I had in my early teens. That radio sounded awful. At least it did to me. I never did become trained to like that sound either. OTOH, the Marshall 18W or the slightly modified Blues Jr. through one of the speakers here can sound quite gorgeous. Never heard that sound until I grew up and could afford the hobby of good sound. So how could I have become trained to like it if I never heard what it really sounds like before?
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It was quickly noted that while sounding good, overdriving a 50W or 100W power amp was highly impractical. Around 1975 or so the master volume series was born with all of the distortion now coming from the preamp (unless, again, used at insane output levels). The distortion character of these new amps was quite different from the older ones.
Okay. So what about the question of audiences being trained to like the sound, as opposed to it simply sounding good? That was the only question I was really trying to get at.
IMHO, some types of distortion applied to an instrument playing certain types of music can naturally sound good. OTOH, as the loudness wars progressed, audiences may have started to become trained to interpret heavy distortion as emotional intensity.
Also, aside from HD, the Fender tone-stack turned out to be a great invention for guitarists. It can make what is physically a boxy sounding guitar sound like all sorts of very expressive instruments. Maybe that idea came about through a different process than what happened for overdrive and distortion. IOW, some of what we have now was the idea of a clever instrument designer, and some other things such has HD were things that musicians found to be useful for musical expression.
In yet other cases, the need to compete in the loudness wars introduced trends that were less naturally musical except for audiences trained by exposure to like it. Here I am taking about filling up the high frequency space that would be tapering off in amplitude as frequency increases in natural instruments. When all frequencies are turned up until clipping or near clipping, the sound becomes unnaturally bright. But its louder, and all other things being equal, louder is perceived as better (at least until pain starts to develop).
So, in my personal view it isn't so simple as whether or not people are trained to like distortion. Once again, the reality is probably more complex than a simplified model of it.
IMHO, some types of distortion applied to an instrument playing certain types of music can naturally sound good. OTOH, as the loudness wars progressed, audiences may have started to become trained to interpret heavy distortion as emotional intensity.
Also, aside from HD, the Fender tone-stack turned out to be a great invention for guitarists. It can make what is physically a boxy sounding guitar sound like all sorts of very expressive instruments. Maybe that idea came about through a different process than what happened for overdrive and distortion. IOW, some of what we have now was the idea of a clever instrument designer, and some other things such has HD were things that musicians found to be useful for musical expression.
In yet other cases, the need to compete in the loudness wars introduced trends that were less naturally musical except for audiences trained by exposure to like it. Here I am taking about filling up the high frequency space that would be tapering off in amplitude as frequency increases in natural instruments. When all frequencies are turned up until clipping or near clipping, the sound becomes unnaturally bright. But its louder, and all other things being equal, louder is perceived as better (at least until pain starts to develop).
So, in my personal view it isn't so simple as whether or not people are trained to like distortion. Once again, the reality is probably more complex than a simplified model of it.
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Or, as was the case for a lot of us, because that's what we saw on stage/film.
Back to those leading the charge, you've got to look at people like Carlos Santana, Pete Townsend and others who did, as you point out, go shopping for things they liked (e.g. chosing the Marshall JTM45 over their previous Vox AC30 & AC100 amplifiers).
Your chronology is out. Seriously loud guitar amps were a '70s thing (OK starting in late 60s with the AC100, Crown DC-300 and early Mesa/Boogies & Marshalls) as the psychedelic rock and progressive rock bands a) had lots of money b) played to seriously big crowds and c) shifted into hard rock and then metal.
Eventualy the front of house/ PA market evolved to the point that guitarists no longer needed to reach the back of the house: that's what the stack of Altec bins were for. Plus a lot of people realised they could find their sound with the increasingly available (and cheap) overdrive pedals or a smaller, older (cheaper) amp.
However the wall of marshall cabinets remains a visual trope in certain glam/hair metal circles even today.🤘
The loudness wars really belong to the late 80's and early nineties as the required digital techniques and computing grunt became widely available. At that point major brand gutar amplifiers were, frankly, forgetable solid state fizz boxes (the Roland Jazz Chorous 120 was from '75).
Which lead to the "rediscovery" of "vintage" equipment, a journey which brings us back to this thread.
You're getting closer. There's certainly some theory supporting "industrial music for industrial people" going back to the early 20th century where people want to reproduce their increasingly mechanised background noise scapes in their music. Then there's the "this one goes to eleven" syndrome, where yesterday's "hard rock" is today's safe church music.
After all, if it doesn't upset your parents, what's the point?