What amps do you think sound brittle?

[Cornholio Farquarth III]

?? ??

[WRGKMC]

Brit-tle: hard but liable to break or shatter easily or Brit-tle: A small amp from Britain?

 

I don't normally associate sound with being Brittle but I'd have to say many budget solid state amps would go from clean to a nasty breakup in sound with no smooth saturation in between. Its one reason why guitarists hated solid state instead of tubes because the breakup was not smooth or harmonic like tubes produce. Early ceramic speakers in comparison to alnico also had this problem.

[1001gear]

The first Sovtek 50s that made it to the west in the 80s were horrible.

[ae5]

marshall jcm900's

 

solid state amps

[WRGKMC]

marshall jcm900's solid state amps

 

The 900's are tube amps that use ECC83 and 5881 tubes . They do use diodes for the lead channel to get the clipping sound. Diodes are solid state but that doesn't mean they are bad. Most people use drive pedals with clipping diodes to get their drive anyway so there's really no difference having those diodes in the amp to get overdriven sound. Plus you don't have to turn it way up just to get a little breakup like most tube amps require. If you like that drive then its one less pedal you have to buy and haul around.

 

If you stick with the clean channel its all tube and really not that much different then a Plexi. Its Marshall tone of course which is edgy, but no one would think of that being brittle.

 

The Marshall Valvestate amps are all solid state but with two big benefits. They have a preamp tube and they use Mosfets These two items give them the most tube like sounding SS amps made and about as far from sounding Brittle as you can get.

 

Fender on the other hand with its Cyber Twin sounds very sterile to me. You can dial up allot of tones but out in the audience it sounds like a dam tooth pick in your ears.

[DeepEnd]

I associate "brittle" with emphasized treble so pretty much any amp can sound "brittle" under the right circumstances. However, the speakers make a much larger contribution to what you hear than the amp so a speaker with a prominent high end peak would probably sound "brittle" with most amps.

[ae5]

I didn't mean jcm900's were solid state, i meant jcm900's sound brittle comma solid state amps sound brittle. I've never heard a jcm900 that sounded like a plexi, or even a jcm800 (also decent). even as much as i'm not a fan of jcm2000's they're still way better than the 900's which in my opinion were marshalls low point. in terms of tube amps the jcm900 sounds very brittle to me and just lacks any pleasing characteristic.

 

 

The 900's are tube amps that use ECC83 and 5881 tubes . They do use diodes for the lead channel to get the clipping sound. Diodes are solid state but that doesn't mean they are bad. Most people use drive pedals with clipping diodes to get their drive anyway so there's really no difference having those diodes in the amp to get overdriven sound. Plus you don't have to turn it way up just to get a little breakup like most tube amps require. If you like that drive then its one less pedal you have to buy and haul around.

 

If you stick with the clean channel its all tube and really not that much different then a Plexi. Its Marshall tone of course which is edgy, but no one would think of that being brittle.

 

The Marshall Valvestate amps are all solid state but with two big benefits. They have a preamp tube and they use Mosfets These two items give them the most tube like sounding SS amps made and about as far from sounding Brittle as you can get.

 

Fender on the other hand with its Cyber Twin sounds very sterile to me. You can dial up allot of tones but out in the audience it sounds like a dam tooth pick in your ears.

 

[WRGKMC]

I didn't mean jcm900's were solid state' date=' i meant jcm900's sound brittle comma solid state amps sound brittle. I've never heard a jcm900 that sounded like a plexi, or even a jcm800 (also decent). even as much as i'm not a fan of jcm2000's they're still way better than the 900's which in my opinion were marshalls low point. in terms of tube amps the jcm900 sounds very brittle to me and just lacks any pleasing characteristic. [/quote']

 

I understand you now. Much of how a head sounds will depend on the speakers you use.

 

I associate brittle with the way it breaks up when cranked. Not necessarily how much treble they produce.

Old Transistor amps would sound OK clean but when you pushed them to break up they'd have this nasty avalanche effect.

Best way to describe it might be a blown voice coil in a speaker but that still may not be the same. Its not the effect you'd have

with transistor circuits designed to develop overdrive. Its a nasty breakup that's non musical and unharmonic.

 

It happens very quickly as you'd turn up too. You'd be clean up to a point and as you hit a certain level the sound would just crack going from completely clean to inaudible distortion.

 

You don't hear this effect much any more on SS amps because they spend decades working around those flaws and copying what a tube does getting a harmonic breakup. Most amps that did have that brittle breakup were never designed to be pushed that way and they were the origin of the whole Tube Vs. Solid state controversy. The first real amp I owned was in that category. It was an old Moserite guitar amp with a 15" speaker. It would sound great for cleans but you could turn it all the way up and never get the kind of drive you'd get from a tube amp. It did have the Moserite fuzzrite built into it however which made up for its lack of tube drive.

 

I had a bunch of others after that, mainly because you could buy them cheap used. Acoustic, http://images.guitarcenter.com/products/full/Acoustic/635483091314232431.jpg Kustom, http://www.musicgoround.com/ProductImages/0345837_0.jpeg?width=189&height=190&mode=cropStandell,http://s1147.photobucket.com/user/tabdog2/media/Standel.jpeg.html Gibson, http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/OTEyWDEyMTY=/z/RWkAAOSwcnpTn3on/$_35.JPG Univox, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Univox_U45B_amplifier.jpg Harmony http://www.bazaar-world.com/guitar-amp-7545-VINTAGE-HARMONY-H510-W-JENSEN-GUITAR-AMPLIFIER-S

 

I could probably dig up hundreds I've worked on as an amp tec that meet the same criteria. it really wasn't until the later 70's/80's when SS amps really began to compete with the tube amps for driven tones. I remember Lab Series was a big hit. Some of the First few Crate amps sounded killer. Many still sounded very SS however. There were a few ahead of their time who got it right but the who drive thing still sounded like a fuzz pedal built into the amps. In the last 10~15 years they have really nailed many of the tube drive tones where its impossible to hear a difference in a blind A/B test. The other part is how the strings feel when you're getting those notes. They actually feel like you're playing through a tube amp with the string touch. Before that you had usable tones but the guitar strings felt lifeless.

[Old Fart Rocker]

I tried a H&K Tri tip ot tri amp something or other. IDK, I thought it pretty much sucked. Sounded like a can of bees swarming. I also did some recording with a JCM 900. Not sure which version. It sounded pretty good while I was playing it, but just didn't come out very good on the recording. I ended up going back and rerecording some tracks because it sounded way too thin.

[Vince Marrone]

I find that all amps can sound brittle or lifeless if they are not turned up to the 'sweet spot' of each amp. I tend to choose amps that can be turned up to the volume level they start to sing at for a particular size venue or band volume. You can have the best amp in the world, but if it likes to be turned to 5 and the situation only allows you to turn it to 3, well the tone is brittle or lifeless. Volume brings on the overtones!

[Cornholio Farquarth III]

Anything with EL84s. Very brittle. Like tin city.

[TheForkWigger]

and awful whistly feedback all the time

[Cornholio Farquarth III]

Yes, experienced that too.

[Cornholio Farquarth III]

Old Music Man amps. Very tinny sounding. Nothing warm about them.

[AJ6stringsting]

For me, the Peavey Bandits.

I had to use one while my Carvin X-100B, that replaced a JCM 800, was being shipped from the Carvin factory.

The Bandit was very sterile and lifeless. The distorted tone had no dynamics and the clean tones were flat to my ears.

When the X-100B finally came ( in 1986 ).

I gladly gave the amp back to my friend and my X-100B sounded so good, that once my Marshall JCM 800 came back from the repair shop, it stayed at home in a road case.

Crate, the Randall RG 80, and Carvin SX 100 were not bad amps.

Solid State amps have come along quite well.

Many of the new SS amps are scaring the "Tube Culture" in the guitar world.

[Kardula]

There was a dean markley desktop type amp that sounded awful, it was from about 8 years ago. Most solid state amps sound brittle to me but some have come a really long way. Marshall TSL series didn't sound brittle but they did sound thin.

[Mr.Grumpy]

Old Music Man amps. Very tinny sounding. Nothing warm about them.

 

Yep, I put a passive volume pedal (tone suck city!) last in my effects chain, so it balances out. I get compliments on my tone whenever I play.

[Axisplayer]

I have a hard time responding to this thread. My first thought is that a poor workman blames his tools. I have heard so many people, on what most folks would consider substandard equipment, just flat out rip it and sound great. The only question is if the gear you have suits you. I owned a LAB 5 and loved it. I owned a Vox Berkley II and loved it. On many of the Marshall forums, you will find the old MOSFET series amps are considered the best sounding SS ever made, and they are increasing in value. I bought one, and with advice from here and a few dollars, it is now one of my favorite amps (and I have owned some very high dollar boutique amps for comparison.) I currently own a JCM900 4100 among other amps. Johan Segeborn ("Dr. Marshall") on Youtube has probably played more Marshall amps than anyone that doesn't live in Bletchley, literally hundreds of them, including having had 15 original vintage Plexis at the same time in one room. He has no problem getting a 900 to sound stellar. Also, Billy Gibbons can afford anything he wants to use, and he has used a lot of JCM900 DRs, as does Dusty Hill. It ain't what you got, its what you can do with it. Horses for courses.

[1001gear]

Riveras. Always liked the cleans especially with Andersons but if you had no touch, talk about harsh.

[Dr. Tweedbucket]

Anything with EL84s. Very brittle. Like tin city.

So like an AC30 is brittle..... hmmmm ok :whisper:

[Cornholio Farquarth III]

Peavey Bandit

[WRGKMC]

I have a hard time responding to this thread. My first thought is that a poor workman blames his tools. I have heard so many people' date=' on what most folks would consider substandard equipment, just flat out rip it and sound great. The only question is if the gear you have suits you. I owned a LAB 5 and loved it. I owned a Vox Berkley II and loved it. On many of the Marshall forums, you will find the old MOSFET series amps are considered the best sounding SS ever made, and they are increasing in value. I bought one, and with advice from here and a few dollars, it is now one of my favorite amps (and I have owned some very high dollar boutique amps for comparison.) I currently own a JCM900 4100 among other amps. Johan Segeborn ("Dr. Marshall") on Youtube has probably played more Marshall amps than anyone that doesn't live in Bletchley, literally hundreds of them, including having had 15 original vintage Plexis at the same time in one room. He has no problem getting a 900 to sound stellar. Also, Billy Gibbons can afford anything he wants to use, and he has used a lot of JCM900 DRs, as does Dusty Hill. It ain't what you got, its what you can do with it. Horses for courses.

 

 

The Mosfet's work similar to tubes. Most SS amps that have them sound pretty good. I own a Valvestate 100 and they add a preamp tube for some front end tube tone as well. I also own two of the small 15W that have no tubes and they still sound decent. Nice string touch for a SS amp.

 

Sunn used a combination of FET's and transformers in their power amp to get rick tube like tone. My 1976 Concert Lead Head sounds fantastic, rich and warm sounding.

 

Peavey's, especially the older Black Faced ones used standard silicone transistors and though they were loud and clean were what I consider to be sterile sounding. They have the typical ice pick tones that gave SS early amps their bad reputation. The other ones I though were super sterile were the orange faced Randall's. The first Yamaha amps were in the same boat too, but there were even worse amps back in the late 70's.

 

I grew up playing through tube amps, and still own my first decent tube amp so I have it to compare to other amps I own. They've come a long way working around many of the issues SS amps had. some of the modeling stuff is incredible. I think the one big issue is many young guitarists never get the chance to use a decent tube amps, or at least not long enough to acclimate its use.

 

Tube amps, (without a bunch of pedals in front of it which are all solid state) are pretty much a one trick pony. You set the EQ to match your pickups then you only have the volume to change from dry to saturated tones of varying degrees. The clean tones tend to be rick and compressed and the drive tones tend to be highly musical and the string touch natural with a 1:1 dynamic response. The guitarist's drive tones are highly limited so he's forced to work on his playing skills to get his tones instead of using technology. In the end he becomes a much better player because he has to use his playing skills to get the tones he wants.

 

SS gives you so many tonal and drive options in comparison. It can become an issue for a player to develop his own unique tone because he's spending so much time trying out different sounds he never sticks with one long enough to really make it uniquely his own. Both the amps and the pedals used can have so many variations the player forfeits having one signature tone like a Clapton, Hendrix or Winter in order to be many different artists depending on which way the wind is blowing.

 

I'm guilty of this myself when recording. I never know what sound I'll end up using because I have too many choices. Playing live however I always seem to drop back to using my standard tones and drives. I simply don't have time to be messing with so many options and my focus is on pleasing the audience, not screwing with my sound. Its not only better for my playing when I do that its better fro the rest of the band because they need to have an expected and reliable sound coming from you in order for them to play their parts.

 

I played with another guitarist in a studio band for 10 years who constantly changed his sound during a song. He's tweak his volume, gains, during a take and when it came to mixing it was a friggin nightmare. I was always having to splice his tracks up and even up the sound and allot of great songs were ruined by his fiddle flocking. In a live situation a good sound man should be in control of your volume levels. If you spend the night countermanding his settings by re-tweaking your stage sound you can give him a really bad night if you don't work with him on what's right for the audience. That's where the magic of a good simple tube amp comes in. You'd be much less likely to be tweaking your sound all over the place and simply play your parts and let the sound guy bump you up during solo's. You can do it with SS too, you just have to find a good sound and stick with it.

[Cornholio Farquarth III]

I have a Valvestate VS65R. I really love the tones on that amp. My only regret was not getting the 100 watt version with the built in chorus. That chorus was so lush and very dimensional.

[Etienne Rambert]

re necro:

 

Marshall CFX 15 sounded brittle with my P90's. It sounded golden with humbuckers.

[mbengs1]

brittle? I think any amp with vintage in their description sounds brittle like crate vintage club or the marshall valvestate. But I think it's in the way you pick. just pick notes solid-ly and it will sound less brittle.