Don't forget the serious use of Melodyne (vocal pitch correction software).
Check out some of Jesse Cook's guitar playing.....or this guy:
Luca Stricagnoli - Sweet Child O' Mine (Guitar) - YouTube
Thanks for this find.
I had a gut feeling the song was recorded with an "AB763" family amp.
Louie confirms it:
Tele into Super Reverb, no pedals.
On the original recording, the Super is breaking up slightly in the treble region.
Turn the volume control down a bit on either the tele or super and you have shimmering clean all day long.
Super Reverb: The slight breakup, the shimmering clean, and cranked. It's all good to me.
Gnobuddy mentioned George Benson, another example of Fender amp clean tone.
One of the great things about Benson is how he gets so much mileage out of the standard pentatonic scale shapes we all know and love, by throwing in some chromatics, octaves, "neighbor notes", slides, bends, and every other trick in the book.
For example, take an Amin7 chord.
The "academic" jazz approach would be to play A Dorian mode.
Benson's approach is to play snippets of E minor, B minor, and A minor pentatonics.
It all works out to Dorian in the end.
It's a great trick for us "knuckle dragging" rock players to get some jazzy sounding lines, otherwise we tend to just run the Dorian up and down quickly and think we've actually accomplished something.
Blackmore used AC30s in his early days, but went to Marshalls to get more volume. He also used ES335s instead of Stratocasters in his early career, but Machine Head sounds totally Strat. i believe the Aiwa tape machine came later. You can see it behind him on stage in Rainbow concert videos on YouTube.
Many have said that the JJ 6V6 appears to be something between a 6V6 and a 6L6, presumably a re-purposed tube from the communist era. I also wonder if JJ's 7591 has the same characteristics as a real 7591, or was another communist era approximation.
The new recording PRR found certainly sounds very different than the other clip. I still hear the very bright 'Tele, but no longer the harsh crunchy distortion. I like this sound a lot more.
I'm intrigued that Shelton's 'Tele (in the new clip) doesn't have that typical harsh sound that comes with the poor intonation which was more or less guaranteed by Leonidas' original "3-barrel" 'Tele bridge saddle design. You can never get more than 3 of the 6 strings intonated properly with the original hardware.
I wonder how Shelton did it. Is he using one of the relatively modern fixes, like angled saddles, or a six-saddle 'Tele bridge? Did anyone make angled 'Tele saddles back when "Clarksville" was recorded, I wonder?
I bought the '65 Princeton Reverb reissue from a Craigslist ad. Supposedly it had had a quiet life in a Los Angeles recording studio, and came with the JJ 6V6 S valves installed.
One reason I never changed them was the rather terrifying anode voltage specified on the official Fender schematic for this (reissue) amp: 440 volts! I'm not sure if any of the current-production 6V6s (other than the JJ) will tolerate this much abuse of the maximum anode voltage specification.
That eyebrow-raising 440 V seems to be the result of two things, first Leonidas' attempts to wring more power from the cheapest output valves he could find, and second, the rise in AC mains voltage in North America over the last fifty two years.
I've thought about doing something to lower the B+ (series MOSFET, bucking transformer, etc), but don't want to affect resale value. Now that I'm building my own amps, I have less reason to keep the PRRI around.
So I have been told a few times.
It certainly seems weird that the hybrid Super Champ XD quite clearly sounds more "valvey" than the real thing!
I don't really like any of the digitally modelled distorted tones on the "dirt channel" of the Super Champ XD, but the clean channel has nice blackface cleans, presumably all deriving from the power amp, since the preamp is sterile-clean opamps (and you can confirm the sterile-clean preamp tones at the line out jack, which is just before the signal feed to the all-valve power amp (half a 12AX7 gain stage, half a 12AX7 cathodyne phase splitter, pair of 6V6 outputs.)
I have an L-pad between amp and speaker, and I found that it really helps with getting some of that valve sound without getting too loud for my tastes. Yeah, I know, its no 'Twin, but 15 watts into a 95 dB sensitivity guitar speaker is still ear-shatteringly loud.
I did make some progress on the project amp today - now the speakers are installed, as is the cabinet handle. I've cut the aluminium for the control panel, sanded it to a satin finish, and did a little internal carpentry to make the control panel fit (I had to rout a little clearance groove in the hidden internal back panel). I expect to make a little more progress tomorrow, and may have some pics to share.
-Gnobuddy
This is very close to the sound on the vinyl record.
I have no idea, I have a six-saddle bridge on my tele - problem solved.
Yikes, 440 volts, that's pretty high, My Twin Reverb is 465v, AC mains 121v.
I really wish Fender would have stayed with the RCA tube manual recommendations for plate voltage on the 6V6, as they did in the tweed era.
Does yours have the 5AR4/GZ34 rectifier?
The 65 DRRI schematic I have shows 5AR4 and 440v on the plates.
I've seen Princeton Reverbs with both GZ34 and 5U4
5AR4/GZ34 wants 2 Amps filament current. 5U4 wants 3 amps.
I guess the old transformers could handle a 5U4, I wonder if the reissue can?
A 5U4 would drop that 440v down quite a bit, maybe enough to allow use of other 6V6 besides the JJ.
A 5Y3, with its 125ma plate rating, might be stressed in this situation, but would definitely drop the voltage down to reasonable levels.
Kind of disappointing Fender would design the reissue like this. This 6V6 plate voltage situation has been known for a long time.
Aw heck, go for it.
It's a reissue, it's not like you'd be hacking up a vintage 5F6 or something.
Fixing the voltage situation and running real 6V6 could be just what the doctor ordered to let the amp live up to its potential and become a keeper.
Looking forward to it.
That would have been nice. Looks like its about a hundred volts higher than it should be.
Yes, I just checked. 5AR4.
I don't know my Fenders very well. From the schematic the DRRI looks a lot like a PRRI with a long-tailed-pair phase splitter instead of a cathodyne. That about right, or have I just horrified legions of Leo-lovers?
I had the same reaction. I know that they were going for authenticity (using the same components) as they did in '65, but seriously, they could have just changed the power transformer HT winding ratio a little, and it would have been an improvement that benefited every user.
Here are a couple of pics. Speakers in place, brushed-nickel drawer pull handle from Home Depot, and I just finished the "There's no going back!" step, gluing in the hidden internal back panel that seals off the air volume behind the speakers.
As you can see from the front view, one of the speakers encountered, shall we say, a minor domestic incident that left it with a mauled dust-cap. Very fortunately for me (since these speakers are irreplaceable), there is no detectable mechanical damage to the cone, spider, surround, or voice coil.
There will be some sort of grill installed over the front before the amp is finished. I'll just have to make sure it's visually opaque enough to hide the dust cap damage. And with the de-nastifying filter rolling off treble starting at 2 kHz, I don't anticipate any audible treble loss as a result of using a slightly more opaque grille cloth.
One benefit of the smaller speaker drivers should be less beaming of the treble - at least, if you stand the cab on its side so the drivers are in a vertical line. I know that this is the right thing to do from the acoustics point of view, but I also know my conservative, non-technical, older friend will not understand that, and it will just look wrong to him.
So I gritted my teeth and designed the cab to do exactly the wrong thing, i.e. place two full-bandwidth drivers side by side several inches apart, just as the last fifty or sixty years of guitar amps have done.
-Gnobuddy
Attachments
Rats, I mean PRRI when I said DRRI, didn't mean to get the deluxe reverb involved in this.I don't know my Fenders very well. From the schematic the DRRI looks a lot like a PRRI with a long-tailed-pair phase splitter instead of a cathodyne. That about right, or have I just horrified legions of Leo-lovers?
But, looking at the 65 DELUXE Reverb Reissue schematic, we see the same 5AR4 rectifier but only 391 volts on the plates of the 6V6.
The PRINCETON reissue, 440v.
Deluxe Reverb AB763, 415v.
Princeton Reverb AA1164, 410v.
If we look at Fender's other popular 6V6 amp from the blackface era, the Champ AA764, there's a proper 5Y3 rectifier and 350v on the 6V6, the way things should be.
So with the Deluxe reissue, Fender actually went in the right direction (slightly), but with the Princeton reissue, the wrong direction. Frustrating.
Fender did add 470 ohm screen resistors to the Princeton reissue, this is not "authentic", the AA1164 did not have them. This is an attempt to keep the 6V6 output tubes from melting.
This is known as "Be kind to your screens and you can punish your plates."
Even better, I prefer to "Be kind to everything"
So what if you only get 14 watts out of a pair of 6V6.
As you mentioned, the major differences between a Princeton and a Deluxe is the long tail phase splitter, a choke, a non-reverb channel, and 12" speaker in the Deluxe.
The Deluxe has an extra tap for fixed bias supply and Princeton does not.
Deluxe uses a photoresistor "roach" to do tremolo, Princeton directly modulates output tube grids.
A lot of Fender's design decisions were likely based on available inventory at the time.
"Let's use up the leftover 5E3 power transformers in the Princeton reverb".
On the other hand, there was marketing pressure for MORE POWER.
"So instead of 5Y3, we'll put in a GZ34, and run those 6V6 hard"
"There's no tap for fixed bias, but we'll just hang a 100k resistor and diode off the 340 VAC and voltage divide it down.
Sure, it's high impedance, and totally sketchy, but we'll make it even sketchier by putting a 250k tremolo pot in there as well"
(Note, this tremolo arrangement is "non-sketchy" with cathode biased output tubes and "less sketchy" in the Vibroverb 6G16 with a proper fixed bias tap.)
So there's a lot of design flaws with the Princeton Reverb, but Fender got away with it because of the robust 6V6 of the day.
That leaves Princeton Reverb Reissue owners in a sad situation where they are almost
"locked in" to JJ's so called 6V6 or horrendously expensive NOS 6V6.
I can see why you would consider selling the amp.
I kind of have a sentimental feeling for the PR.
The first time I played through a friend's silverface princeton reverb, it was "that's the sound I'm looking for" and it got me to learn about tube circuits and amp modding/building.
Lookin good!
Yikes. I hadn't noticed they were that low. And had no idea the original had no screen resistors at all. Double yikes.
One of the ironies here is that a 12% increase in power is only one decibel - barely detectable by human ears. And even going from 10 watts to 14 watts is only three decibels - quite a small change as far as our brains are concerned.
I've seen long Internet discussions on the joys of "bias wiggle tremolo". Honestly, I don't care much either way, because I hardly ever use tremolo when playing. As long as the bias wiggle trem doesn't fail and cause the output valves to overheat, I'm fine with it.
I think I used the tremolo on the PRRI, set to almost subliminal, when a friend asked me to play The Kinks "Waterloo Sunset" with him at a jam.
That sounds like Leo the accountant, all right!
Hmm. Impedance issues presumably fixable with an appropriate Zener diode (and a few resistor changes to supply enough zener current)?
My Super Champ XD was the first ever valve (well, half valve) guitar amp I'd ever played through. It was a major eye-opener for me, and the first time I'd ever heard an electric guitar sound good in my hands.
At that point, I had hated every sound I'd ever made with an electric guitar for over 20 years, and was about ready to give up on them. I had built or bought at least a dozen different SS guitar amps and amp emulators by then, as well as two or three different electric guitars, and every one of them sounded nasty.
All the magazine articles promised that this guitar or that guitar sounded great; none of them said "All solid state guitar amps on the market sound utterly horrid, what you need is valves." None of them said "The amp is what really matters, not the guitar", either.
So I didn't know what I was missing. I thought it must be my failings as a guitarist that made me sound so awful through an amp. (No such problems with acoustic guitars, though, with which I sounded at least reasonably competent.)
Once the Internet had moved from research level science repository to mostly commerce and trash, I looked at dozens of guitar amp reviews online too. It was the same story. Huge praise for the Line 6 amps, which promised a hundred glorious amp sounds in one box - and turned out to deliver a hundred nasty kazoo noises instead.
Digitally modelled kazoos have certainly improved since then, but I have been burned far too many times to go down that road for a while. I still have a few Zoom thingies collecting dust in the closet.
So here I am, trying to make a solid-state guitar amp that sounds "not horrid". Amazingly, at least to my ears, I seem to already have beaten the very low bar set by the affordable offerings of the major manufacturers. But there is no doubt in my mind that KMG's work is the gold standard in this area.
Thanks!
Truth be told, this one of the first few somewhat presentable pieces of carpentry I've ever done. Even my wife likes the look of it, and she rarely cares about the appearance of functional objects like guitar amps.
I made some slight progress last night - I laid out the control panel and drilled holes for the 1/4" guitar input jack and a big red power indicator LED. It took about half an hour, which was all the time I had after getting back from work yesterday.
One big decision remains - three knobs (gain, tone, volume), or two (gain, tone)?
To be honest, my friend has frequently demonstrated an uncanny ability to accidentally dial in the worst tone any amp is capable of, and then to stick with it until the next accidental change.
So I am inclined to go with only two knobs, and limit the available tone control range, so that no truly bad tones can be dialed in...
-Gnobuddy
470 ohms/1 watt is a standard Fender value for screen resistors, maybe you are thinking of the 1k5 series grid resistor?
The amps without chokes didn't need screen resistors because there is a 1-10k resistor between B+ and the screen supply. The screen would be at a lower voltage than the plate, following RCA tube manual recommendations.
The choke amps have nearly the same voltage on plates and screens, and need to limit screen current. In the blackface/silverface amps, the 470 ohm/1W carbon comp resistor is mounted on the tube socket and is subject to overheating. I have seen these things reduced to ashes.
I prefer a 1K / 5watt here for extra protection. Some say this affects the tone, I don't really hear much difference, if any.
I use bias wiggle tremolo in my homebrew amps. Those "roaches" are expensive, and I am cheap. Not a big tremolo user, so the simple and cheap way is fine with me.
Here's why bias wiggle is sketchy in the Princeton Reverb:
According to the RCA Radiotron Designers Handbook page 597 (in the version I have), for a 6V6GT, the maximum grid resistance is 100k for fixed bias and 500k for cathode bias.
I believe the specifications are the same for 6L6 family as well.
Fender used 220k in the cathode biased tweed amps, no problem there.
They also used 220k in the blackface era fixed biased amps. A bit risky, but history has shown this isn't really a problem.
They changed to 100k or even 68k in some silverface models, which everyone mods back to blackface specs.
The Princeton Reverb has 220k, but it connects to the 250k tremolo pot, which depending on its setting, can add up to 250k to the grid resistance.
Combine that with a high impedance half wave rectified voltage source for the fixed bias, and things get a bit scary. Especially when combined with the too-high plate and screen voltages. Here, Fender is violating multiple RCA specifications.
But in those days 6V6 were dirt cheap and you could buy them at the drug store next to the shampoo and laxatives. About 10 zillion TVs, radios, and portable record players used them as audio output stage.
Things are slightly less sketchy in the brownface Vibroverb 6G16, because fixed bias is derived from a tap on the power transformer and is low impedance, the output tubes are 6L6GC running at fairly sane voltage 440v on the plates. The grid resistance is still too high according to RCA, but it's less of a problem here.
In my homebrews, I use bias wiggle with cathode bias, 220k grid/250k trem, and sane plate voltages. No problem, stays within RCA specs, tubes last a long time, even the Sovtek 6V6 that were notorious for melting in Deluxe Reverbs.
That sounds like a really good idea.
Interesting.
I have never owned a SS amp.
But not all valve amps are good.
I started with a little Silvertone amp, one of those 50C5 line powered jobs that could shock you bad. It actually didn't sound too bad, but was strictly a practice amp.
Then I got a Sunn 1200S. I was young and stupid, but got it cheap, and hey, Hendrix used Sunn amps occasionally, so it's got to be good. I had to borrow a friend's cabinet, I didn't have one.
That amp was the loudest shrillest thing I've ever heard. You could not get it to break up at all, it just got louder and louder. And it wasn't a particularly engaging tone, just freakin LOUD. It was 120 watt, 4x6550 ultralinear. A weird combination of printed circuit and point to point. Ended up selling it to a bass player, it was an excellent bass amp.
Then around spring 1981, I got a "Plush" head and cabinet. It had the tuck and roll covering like Kustom. It was pretty much along the lines of a blackface Fender and had fresh tubes in it, but just didn't sound that good for some reason.
Soon after, a musician friend needed some cash and sold me the 1970 silverface Twin Reverb.
The Twin was certainly a step up from the Silvertone and I lost interest in the Plush, so I sold the head but kept the cabinet.
But the twin reverb was the dreaded AA270 abomination. Was kind of sterile.
It was at this time my friend brought the Princeton Reverb over to the house.
He was quite the Fender amp guru and brought a stack of schematics (no internet in those days) and he told me about the evil things CBS did to Leo's sacred blackface amps.
He recommended I do the blackface mod, and also to pull out 2 of the 6L6 and plug into the Plush 4x12 8 ohm cabinet, instead of the 4 ohm load of the twin's speakers.
Essentially it's like a Super Reverb with 12's instead of 10's
Bingo, that was the ticket, and my main rig for many years.
My mistake, I thought 1k was the normal value. Makes sense to me that you prefer this larger value.
I've experimented with screen grid resistor values in my little 6AK6 amp, because I couldn't think of a way to calculate the right value (due to the weird and very non-sine screen current waveforms). When the resistors were too big, they made an obvious difference to the sound (premature and fairly abrupt-onset distortion.)
Nah, I'm just ignorant of many of the details of classic Fender amps.
Though 1k5 grid stoppers are way, way too small to avoid severe bias-shift and blocking distortion when overdriven. And the low input capacitance of pentodes lets you get away with much larger grid stoppers without intruding on guitar bandwidth.
I have 220k grid stoppers on my 6AK6 amp. No audible treble loss, either. And I wouldn't expect any, with a specified 3.6 pF of input capacitance, and negligible Miller effect.
The big output grid stoppers solved some nasty overdrive characteristics I was struggling with. These are sensitive valves, and without the big grid stoppers, there was lots of bias shift during overdrive, which meant I either had to bias them very hot to start with, or tolerate extreme cold-biasing during overdrive.
You are/were wiser than me. IMO there are few worth owning for use with a solid-body electric guitar.
Big jazz archtops, semi-hollows, and electro-acoustic guitars are different. They can sound good with an SS amp. Clean tones only, of course.
I literally grew up building transistor stuff. By the time I was nine years old, I knew valves were old and obsolete and transistors had replaced them because they were better.
So how would I know that for one single application - electric guitar amplification - valves sounded hugely better?
I very briefly had a Fender Blues Junior. We didn't get along, and it went back on Craiglist. An electric violinist bought it from me - he loved it, and sounded great through it.
Since then I've realized that I've yet to really like any amp that has EL84s in it...and I like almost every amp that has 6V6 outputs. I've also found out that beam power tubes like the 6V6 intrinsically have much higher levels of second harmonic distortion than true pentodes do.
I suspect those two things are connected, i.e. I like the 6V6 amps because of their increased second harmonic distortion. One more data point, I really liked the timbre of the Super Champ XD's little brother, the single-ended Vibro Champ XD. Single ended means no push-pull cancellation of 2nd harmonic distortion...
I've wanted for some time to do a single-ended 25C5 amp. The data sheet specifies so much harmonic distortion that this has just got to sound interesting for guitar!
The tentative plan is heater power for the 25C5 from a 24 or 25V switch-mode power supply, which can also feed two 12AX7 filaments in series for the preamp.
Maybe add speaker emulation and a line-out jack for plugging into a mixer / P.A. system.
You were a musician first, then got interested in electronics? For me, it was the opposite order.
I wish I'd found music earlier in my life (I only started in my twenties). But at least it's nice that my oldest hobby helps out with the newer one.
There will likely be no progress on my amp project until Saturday - there are just too many other necessary things I have to get done before then.
-Gnobuddy
Might be worth trying angling the drivers away from each other a bit in a baffle that has each half angled a bit to each side.. I saw a photo recently of someone who tried this and he liked the results. Plus looks a bit like a old car grille
Thanks for the suggestion. Like the old Watkins Dominator that was cloned to create the original Marshall 18 watt? (Pic attached).
In general, it might very well be a good idea, especially with typical large diameter guitar speakers (which beam like a searchlight, so there won't be much acoustic interference if you aim them, say, 30 degrees away from each other).
In the case of my current project, though, it's taken me over a month of free time, and cost me more than I can spare, to build the (simple rectangular prism) pine cabinet. There's no way I'm starting over with a considerably more complex cabinet design.
I have an Acoustic AG30 (30 watt amp that works well for acoustic guitar, keyboards, or small P.A. system use) that has a non-rectangular-prism cabinet. The front panel is inclined heavily backwards. I think this is part of the reason for the unusually good sound quality (it sounds less boxy than most similar products on the market.)
-Gnobuddy
Attachments
I could offer some ideas concerning this subject.
Perhaps it is time to start an SS-Guitar amp thread?
True. I also like to decrease the usual 100nf coupling caps from the phase splitter. Especially with lower wattage amps pushing an open back speaker. No point in amplifying frequencies the speaker can't reproduce. Helps cure the infamous Fender "flatulance".
Not much wisdom involved, I'm afraid, more due to circumstances.
Kind of happened at the same time. I tinkered with solid state stuff as a kid, built a Heathkit radio, things like that. At the same time, there was an acoustic guitar laying around the house and I learned some folk chords, stuff like "Blowing in the Wind."
The electric guitar came later. I was afraid of the high voltages in tube amps until the Princeton Reverb guy convinced me otherwise.
Fender did some things wrong with the Blues Deluxe, IMO.
The main thing is B+ is way too high at 427v on the plates.
Also EL84 should be cathode biased, not fixed biased. You rarely see EL84 fixed biased, even in the hi-fi world.
The phase splitter has way too little tail resistance and the coupling caps are too large.
Vox did it right with the AC15.
Fender was going for maximum power output once again.
I have amps with both EL84 and 6V6.
I'd say EL84 have a bit more "bite" and "chime" and 6V6 are "fuller" sounding, but the preamp and controls on the guitar have way more effect. You can get a very mellow sound on the EL84 amps and you can get "icepick in the ear" sound with the 6V6.
I only have experience with 50C5 but the 25C5 is the same thing with different filament.I've wanted for some time to do a single-ended 25C5 amp. The data sheet specifies so much harmonic distortion that this has just got to sound interesting for guitar!
The tentative plan is heater power for the 25C5 from a 24 or 25V switch-mode power supply, which can also feed two 12AX7 filaments in series for the preamp.
Maybe add speaker emulation and a line-out jack for plugging into a mixer / P.A. system.
RCA recommends max. 135v plate voltage. I'd try for 120v and go with a 150 ohm cathode resistor, bypassed with 22uF, as a starting point.
I've found the commercial 50C5 amps were manufactured to an extreme cost-cutting point and use the smallest cheapest possible output transformers, in addition to minimally filtered half-wave rectification, so they tend to sound a bit ratty when overdriven. Also, being line powered, they were extremely dangerous.
It would be interesting to hear this type of tube with good output iron.
RCA specifies a "load resistance" of 2500 ohms.
If you don't already have an output transformer for this, try one of those Hammond "125 series" output transformers with the multi taps.
I have always said that EL84's ROCK, while 6V6's sing the blues. Pretty much the same thing.
Fender, and others have blasted the poor 6V6 with over 400 volts on the plates and getting maybe 15 watts in the process.
I have recently done some experiments with push pull 6V6's in a HiFi design. I have no problem squeezing 30 watts from a pair and that was with 350 volts on the plates and nothing was glowing. I did bent the plate dissipation a little, but burning 15 watts on full volume peaks in a tube that's rated for 12 isn't going to kill it. I used a 3300 ohm OPT and 250 volts on G2.
That is an interesting question.
And there is some relevant history about this thread.On October 25, 2017, I wrote my first post about a new project I was starting, namely, a solid state guitar amp to be given to a friend as a gift.
It had to be built on the cheap, and it had to sound good enough to be acceptable to my ears - I have no intention of giving a friend a typical awful-sounding solid state guitar amp.
I posted that to the "The Hundred-Buck Amp Challenge" thread, as it seemed a good fit to me.
However the moderators on this forum felt that that post (and subsequent related ones) should be split off and moved into a new thread. Which, to my surprise, was called "Tube Emulation & EQ". That's how this thread, with its somewhat confusing title, got started.
For me, the goal of this project was always to make an inexpensive guitar amp that sounded good (to my ears), and was as light as possible. What I hoped to share on diyAudio was any good ideas I came up with for improving the sound. Of course I also hoped to get good ideas from other people interested in the same goal.
Emulating tubes wasn't my primary goal, though it seemed like one possible route to a "not nasty" SS amp. Similarly, specialized EQ was never a goal; however, experiments with a graphic EQ pedal showed that a notch at 800 Hz and a custom speaker emulation filter took a lot of "nasty" out of my guitar amp, for reasons I still don't fully understand.
So if it had been up to me, I would have picked a different title for this thread. Perhaps "Can We Make An SS Guitar Amp That Doesn't Sound Nasty?"
The project has taken longer than I planned for due to a couple of reasons, so the inevitable "topic drift" is happening. But once the project is finished, I hope to pull together the important things I/we have learned from it.
The question is what to do with that information. Put it into a final post here? Or into a summary post on the Hundred Buck Amp Challenge thread? Or maybe start a new thread with my summary of this project, then invite others to continue with their projects? I'm not sure if that would be considered a violation of diyAudio terms of use or not (the "No duplicate threads" thing.)
To be honest, I'm also a bit leery of the general topic of SS guitar amps. Generally, I loathe the way most of them sound. This thread is about to make an SS amp that somehow avoids the nasty sounds that come out of most affordable SS amps.
But if you have ideas on how to make a "not-nasty" solid-state guitar amp, I would love to read about them, whether on a new thread, or on this one. Entirely up to you!
-Gnobuddy
I wondered when you would work your magic on some 6V6s.
Might I ask what quiescent current you have them (6V6s) biased to?
And the all-important question: does the recipe above work for guitar as well, or is this a configuration that has to be kept away from overdrive, and so only works for Hi-Fi (screen drive, etc)?
TIA,
-Gnobuddy
Emulating tubes wasn't my primary goal, though it seemed like one possible route to a "not nasty" SS amp. Similarly, specialized EQ was never a goal; however, experiments with a graphic EQ pedal showed that a notch at 800 Hz and a custom speaker emulation filter took a lot of "nasty" out of my guitar amp, for reasons I still don't fully understand.
So if it had been up to me, I would have picked a different title for this thread. Perhaps "Can We Make An SS Guitar Amp That Doesn't Sound Nasty?"
To be honest, I'm also a bit leery of the general topic of SS guitar amps. Generally, I loathe the way most of them sound. This thread is about to make an SS amp that somehow avoids the nasty sounds that come out of most affordable SS amps.
But if you have ideas on how to make a "not-nasty" solid-state guitar amp, I would love to read about them, whether on a new thread, or on this one. Entirely up to you!
-Gnobuddy
totally agreed
I am practicing the guitar now for more than 50 years, preferably the electric, but sometimes the acoustic as well.
At the age of ten I got interested in electrical stuff, magnetism, radios etc, with fifteen I got my first guitar. And built my first and last tube amp around 1xEL84 and 1xEF42. Since then I am addicted to that f*ing instrument, playing in some band most of the time of my life. While many guitar players are religious about tube amps I very early "converted" to silicon technology: starting with bipolar 2N3055, hitachi latFETs, finally class-d. I Never liked that bulky stuff that much but looked for smarter, lightweight solutions.
Anything that can be discussed about tube amps has been discussed endlessly, there is nothing new on the planet.
It is time for some discussion about SS-guitar amps.
Emulating tubes wasn't my primary goal, though it seemed like one possible route to a "not nasty" SS amp. Similarly, specialized EQ was never a goal; however, experiments with a graphic EQ pedal showed that a notch at 800 Hz and a custom speaker emulation filter took a lot of "nasty" out of my guitar amp, for reasons I still don't fully understand.
So if it had been up to me, I would have picked a different title for this thread. Perhaps "Can We Make An SS Guitar Amp That Doesn't Sound Nasty?"
To be honest, I'm also a bit leery of the general topic of SS guitar amps. Generally, I loathe the way most of them sound. This thread is about to make an SS amp that somehow avoids the nasty sounds that come out of most affordable SS amps.
But if you have ideas on how to make a "not-nasty" solid-state guitar amp, I would love to read about them, whether on a new thread, or on this one. Entirely up to you!
-Gnobuddy
totally agreed
I am practicing the guitar now for more than 50 years, preferably the electric, but sometimes the acoustic as well.
At the age of ten I got interested in electrical stuff, magnetism, radios etc, with fifteen I got my first guitar. And built my first and last tube amp around 1xEL84 and 1xEF42. Since then I am addicted to that f*ing instrument, playing in some band most of the time of my life. While many guitar players are religious about tube amps I very early "converted" to silicon technology: starting with bipolar 2N3055, hitachi latFETs, finally class-d. I Never liked that bulky stuff that much but looked for smarter, lightweight solutions.
Anything that can be discussed about tube amps has been discussed endlessly, there is nothing new on the planet.
It is time for some discussion about SS-guitar amps.
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