Members mbengs1 Posted April 22, 2015 Members Share Posted April 22, 2015 I prefer tube amps because its warmer and has more tone. but are there any solid state amps that sound as good as tube amps? whats the solution to a bad sounding solid state amp? tube amp modeling? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members 1001gear Posted April 22, 2015 Members Share Posted April 22, 2015 Lot of SS amps are good enough. Marshall makes a terrific Marshall clone as does Fender for Fender. Tech 21 can cover the territory as can the new modeling stuff. Like anything else though, a difference to you is still a difference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted April 22, 2015 Members Share Posted April 22, 2015 The best sounding amp I have ever had, at that includes quite a few Fender Tube amps, is the Yamaha DG80. It's a modelling preamp with a solid state power amp. It does not pretend to be any specific tube amp but responds like you would expect a high quality tube amp to. It has all of the advantages of a tube amp but with zero maintenance and without the problems associated with the fragility of tubes. The Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus is a very nice sounding SS amp but, with what else is available these days, it is no longer worth the lug. I recently picked up a Fender Mustang IV which sounds surprisingly good for the price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mbengs1 Posted April 22, 2015 Author Members Share Posted April 22, 2015 i think i should have searched for topics like this one. sorry if this is redundunt or useless thread:cool12: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Pine Apple Slim Posted April 22, 2015 Members Share Posted April 22, 2015 Do you mean new? I havnt played everything but Roland Cubes are pretty darn good. Personally I'd look for an older Peavey Bandit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted April 22, 2015 Members Share Posted April 22, 2015 Quality is subjective but if you're looking for some basic items that can help you choose, take a look at what it uses for output transistors. If it has FET's or Mosfets, they can give you tones closest to tubes. Fets actually work similar to tubes in the way they function amplifying sound and produce similar response curves. If course you wont have an output transformer so that inductive sag/compression/saturation will have to be achieved in other ways. One of the more interesting designs was used by Sunn back in the 70's in their Concert Lead heads. They used a multi tapped coil between the FET's to produce a transformer like sag to the sound which removes most of the harshness you get from standard type output transistors. It one of the most tube like SS amps I've owned. Marshall Valvestate sound very tube like and they add a preamp tube to the preamp for some tube drive. Vox Valvetronic also use mosfets with some really cool and unique circuitry to mimic tube tones. These are many generations ahead of the old power transistor straight to the speakers which produced an nasty unharmonic overtone when driven into saturation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 Do you mean new? I havnt played everything but Roland Cubes are pretty darn good. Personally I'd look for an older Peavey Bandit. I had a Bandit in the early 80s. It was a good amp. Solid and reliable, and plenty of power... but it sounded okay to me at best. Not bad at all, but not really inspiring, if you know what I mean. I sold it and bought a Boogie instead. I think the best sounding solid state amp I've ever owned was probably my old Lab Series L5. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 While I can't vouch for this from personal experience, a lot of people on the Effects forum used to rave about the old Vox Pathfinder 15R... I think there may be a few modification threads about that amp floating around somewhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted April 22, 2015 Members Share Posted April 22, 2015 Quality is subjective but if you're looking for some basic items that can help you choose, take a look at what it uses for output transistors. If it has FET's or Mosfets, they can give you tones closest to tubes. Fets actually work similar to tubes in the way they function amplifying sound and produce similar response curves. If course you wont have an output transformer so that inductive sag/compression/saturation will have to be achieved in other ways. One of the more interesting designs was used by Sunn back in the 70's in their Concert Lead heads. They used a multi tapped coil between the FET's to produce a transformer like sag to the sound which removes most of the harshness you get from standard type output transistors. It one of the most tube like SS amps I've owned. Marshall Valvestate sound very tube like and they add a preamp tube to the preamp for some tube drive. Vox Valvetronic also use mosfets with some really cool and unique circuitry to mimic tube tones. These are many generations ahead of the old power transistor straight to the speakers which produced an nasty unharmonic overtone when driven into saturation. Do the Marshall Valvestste amps actually put high voltage on the tubes or just use them as diodes for a smoother form of clipping? I had a Fender Montreaux for a while that used MOSFET transistors for the overdrive. It was a 100 Watt amp and I put an EVM-12 in it. It sounded quite good and, although is was loud and usable as a gigging amp, it did not have the girth of a Twin Reverb. The Yamaha DG series that I alluded to in an earlier post emulates the power amp 'sag' in the digital preamp and the output stage is just clean solid state power (which Yamaha does quite well). The Master Volume on the DG is also part of the digital preamp and then there are independent Output Level controls for the power amp and the speaker emulated balanced line out. It is capable of Boogie type high gain preamp saturation or full blown Marshall type power amp overdrive at any volume. It's a great recording amp because the volume can be turned down to nothing with the Output Level control and the signal can still be available at the line out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DeepEnd Posted April 22, 2015 Members Share Posted April 22, 2015 Ultimately, the solution to a bad sounding SS amp is to buy another amp. Which amps have you tried so far? Fender? Peavey? Line 6? Offhand, I'd suggest a Vox "Valvetronix," a SS modeling amp with a 12AX7 tube in the preamp stage. Genz Benz used to make TubeWorks amps that were made the same way. They're cheap if you can find one used. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted April 22, 2015 Members Share Posted April 22, 2015 I think its a starved voltage tube circuit for clipping. The filament does light up like mas normal tube but Its not running a at 250v or more where you'd get decent tube tones. I don't think the tube is used for clean tones. I did some experimentation swapping tubes and it seems to only affect the driven tones. The drive is typical Marshall drive tone but its kind of a one trick pony. I prefer to use the clean channel with pedals The amp does sound like a plexi run clean and sounds great with pedals doing the drive thing. I've also run pedals in the effects loop and used the drive channels of course. I like the bypass knob which lets you run effects in series or parallel and you can adjust the amount of effect vs using the effects mix knobs. This lets you run the effects wide open and you can mix in as much as you need. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted April 22, 2015 Members Share Posted April 22, 2015 Good speakers can make a huge difference too. Many low end combos have equally low end speakers that make the amp sound just that much worse. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DeepEnd Posted April 23, 2015 Members Share Posted April 23, 2015 ^ True, which is why knowing what amps the OP has tried will help. If he's only tried crappy amps, that can be a big part of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BlackBelt Posted April 23, 2015 Members Share Posted April 23, 2015 It depends on the tone you are looking for, but for rock/hard rock/red dirt road styles of music I really like the old Marshall 3210 Mosfet solid state 100 watt amps. When I play live I use a tube amp (Marshall DSL100H), but for rehearsals I use the old Marshall 3210. The great thing is that they are usually relatively inexpensive ($175-250). The downside is that since they are kind of old, usually the power filter capacitors need to be changed. It's not expensive to do, but it really makes these older amps a lot quieter. Marshall made these amps back in the mid 80's to the early 90s to compete with the JCM800 and they really pretty much dialed in that classic tone as much as possible with a solid state amp. For the money, they are hard to beat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Temple of Light Posted April 23, 2015 Members Share Posted April 23, 2015 The Raven amps that G.C introduced recently had extraordinarily good clean tones and a rather convincing grit for a dirty channel. Probably a bit darker in tone than say, a Roland, or for some tastes, but I quite like it... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DeepEnd Posted April 23, 2015 Members Share Posted April 23, 2015 ^ Raven amps have been sold at Guitar Center for several years so I'm surprised they're recent additions at Musician's Friend. I haven't seen many positive reviews in the past so they may be improving. I'd steer away from a used one though, it could be one of the lemons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bieke Posted April 23, 2015 Members Share Posted April 23, 2015 or vintageLabSeries L5 is niceor a Standel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted April 23, 2015 Members Share Posted April 23, 2015 For me its more of a touch response thing then its is tone response. If I'm using pedals I get most of my tones from the pedals and the amp is simply run clean like a power amp. Tubes have compression that add touch response to the strings. When driven they have a different response curve that feels more natural to your right hand pick attack so when you play lightly you can get clean tones and when you dig in you can achieve maximum saturation. Doing this via solid state is more difficult, and surprisingly, fewer and fewer guitarists even know the difference first hand because they haven't used tube amps or the ones that they've used have gain staging that copies transistorized amps or stomp boxes. Of course using boxes to get specific tones is all that matters in the end, but that comfortable sweet spot of a Driven tube and speaker is very cool. Its like driving a muscle car and feeling that power to spare under the hood. A SS amp gets you from point A to B but half the fun is how it feels getting there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members AJ6stringsting Posted April 24, 2015 Members Share Posted April 24, 2015 I had a Carvin SX-300 with three channels , one channel was set for a Classic rock / Blues sound, the second was for Heavy Metal and the third had a great clean sound. I regret getting rid of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted April 24, 2015 Members Share Posted April 24, 2015 ^ Carvin makes some good stuff. My buddy who was a higher end professional in this area toured using one of their powered PA heads for many years and always sounded great. I bought a couple of their 15" speakers a long while back and they still sound great in my PA cabs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 Good speakers can make a huge difference too. Many low end combos have equally low end speakers that make the amp sound just that much worse. So true! Speakers can make a big difference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted April 28, 2015 Members Share Posted April 28, 2015 I really need to get my vintage Altecs reconed. I blew them when I had an Peavey go DC and pump 120V through them frying the cones. I've yet to find better sounding speakers and I've owned plenty. Older JBL's can sound pretty good too but they don't have the same flavor. The Altecs with the white aluminum Frames. I think they are model 418 or 419B I had these 15's for bass and they sounded killer with my Ampeg V4B They look just like the 12's I had for guitar. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Altec-Lansing-418B-15-Loud-Speaker-from-VOT-/301604489580?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item463907496c Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mikeo Posted April 29, 2015 Members Share Posted April 29, 2015 http://www.quilterlabs.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members AJ6stringsting Posted May 3, 2015 Members Share Posted May 3, 2015 They also make great pickups too.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Temple of Light Posted May 4, 2015 Members Share Posted May 4, 2015 G.C., correct, who also owns MF....one in the same nowadays, another consolidation in the world of sound and renoun... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.