Amazing discovery...

[Jazzer2020]

I wasn't sure what to title this thread really. Was thinking about tube vs. solid state etc.

 

Actually I was thinking of making a post about these two different breeds of amps for the past couple of days.

I wanted to discuss what were the exact reasons that they sound AND play/feel differently.

 

Then today just a couple of hours ago I was playing my Gibson ES-135 through my Roland Cube 40-XL.

Of all my guitars, this one gets the best jazz sound from this amp.

Not as good as my tube amps, but I try to save them, and for a quick session will usually plug into this amp.

 

So I was just about to wrap up a 30 minutes practice session sitting in my usual seat, that faces the amp, maybe 8 feet away.

I stand up, put on my guitar strap and play for a few minutes longer.

Almost ready to wrap up, I walk over to the amp.

 

I'm now standing one or two feet to the side of the amp, about 1/2 foot in front. We are both facing the same direction.

 

Amazingly, I not only started to hear a very tube-like sound, but ALSO felt it as well in my fingers.

I moved a foot or two away from this position and that tube-like sound/feel went away!

 

I had never experienced that before with my solid state amps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1001gear]

Sense undetected. Please try again.

[Jazzer2020]

Just tried again, 24+ hours later and I can still feel it. The amp is to my left, probably my better ear.

Try changing position to use your other ear to see if it has an effect.

[1001gear]

Just getting funny. What exactly are you hearing?

[DeepEnd]

Well, the character of an amp's sound (mainly high frequency response) changes depending on where you are with respect to the axis of the speaker. I have a Cube 80XL so I know we're talking about a closed back cab. That means no reflections off the wall from the back of the amp, just whatever's coming from the front plus coloration from any room resonances. It's possible you found a "sweet spot" where the amp sounds "right." Keep us posted on your continuing experiments.

[Jazzer2020]

Well' date=' the character of an amp's sound (mainly high frequency response) changes depending on where you are with respect to the axis of the speaker. I have a Cube 80XL so I know we're talking about a closed back cab. That means no reflections off the wall from the back of the amp, just whatever's coming from the front plus coloration from any room resonances. It's possible you found a "sweet spot" where the amp sounds "right." Keep us posted on your continuing experiments.[/quote']

 

Yes the room the amp is in can have a big effect on its sound.

It's in a fairly big room right now that adjoins to a hallway. So lots of open space to drain the sound.

I will continue to experiment and will let you know how things go...

 

[Jazzer2020]

Well it's three days running, so this is not a one-off occurrence, whatever is happening.

It may be a combination of factors, I don't know yet.

 

I have just been testing with one guitar (of my more than dozen guitars).

As I said at the beginning, it's the sweetest sounding of all my jazz boxes (with this amp), and comes the closest to a warm tube-like sound 'out of the box'.

 

So as you said, I may have found the ultimate sweet-spot location in the room.

But then, I don't think it's just a coincidence that it happens to be just a couple of feet away from the amp,

and a few inches in front of it (to the side).

 

It's also one thing to get the 'tube-sound', but quite another to ALSO get the 'tube-feeling' in the fingers!

 

Anyway. I will try out some of my other guitars in the days and weeks going forward.

Some of the ones (P90's) that really never sounded good with the amp.

More updates later...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1001gear]

Post example.

[DeepEnd]

Post example.

Even if the OP placed a mike in the exact position his head is in when he hears the phenomenon, I don't know if it would be audible in a recording. Among other things, it's probably a matter of both ears working together and that's not something a mike can pick up.

[Mikeo]

I wasn't sure what to title this thread really. Was thinking about tube vs. solid state etc.

 

Actually I was thinking of making a post about these two different breeds of amps for the past couple of days.

I wanted to discuss what were the exact reasons that they sound AND play/feel differently.

 

Then today just a couple of hours ago I was playing my Gibson ES-135 through my Roland Cube 40-XL.

Of all my guitars, this one gets the best jazz sound from this amp.

Not as good as my tube amps, but I try to save them, and for a quick session will usually plug into this amp.

 

So I was just about to wrap up a 30 minutes practice session sitting in my usual seat, that faces the amp, maybe 8 feet away.

I stand up, put on my guitar strap and play for a few minutes longer.

Almost ready to wrap up, I walk over to the amp.

 

I'm now standing one or two feet to the side of the amp, about 1/2 foot in front. We are both facing the same direction.

 

Amazingly, I not only started to hear a very tube-like sound, but ALSO felt it as well in my fingers.

I moved a foot or two away from this position and that tube-like sound/feel went away!

 

I had never experienced that before with my solid state amps.

 

 

 

 

I have a Gibson ES 135.

 

Mine has the Classic 57's in, but it also came with P100. Looks of folks took out the P100 and put in P90's.

 

The necks are a touch chubby old skool.

Nice guitar all in all. They were priced to move there in the day.

I'm not sure if my ES 335 is older or not.

 

 

Mine is in classic black, but I did like the the cherry one too. I have too many Gibson's in sunburst already.

 

I should really get a better photo than his one.

 

I'm not a fan of the Roland stuff, but I have an ac 33. The practice amp I use quite a bit is a Yamaha THRc classic.

 

I once did a gig in Boston with that lil Yamaha amp. I looked at the gig, and there was no need to schlep a PRRI a 1/4 mile from the car to the stage. It's the first time ever I programmed the tones in and used them. I have to tweak out the volume levels on stage, but that was it. Mine came with a Travel bag. I might even have used the batteries.

 

 

 

 

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[WRGKMC]

Ever visited this site? Its a bit dated but its got allot of details on Tube vs solid state, plus things like proper effects order.

 

http://www.egodeath.com/index.html

 

Not sure what you think you're hearing through that cube, but its not tube tone. It may be a good substitute. Many manufacturers do excellent jobs mimicking Tube tone and dynamics but even the best out there can only approximate the effect. Any competent guitarist should be able to hear and feel the differences.

 

That's not to say all tube amps sound good either. Both the circuit and tube choices have to be good to produce good results. Instead you could say the circuit variances with Tube circuits are restricted. Tubes reached a peak back in the 50's 60's and then the technology was abandoned. They quit designing new tubes because it was no longer profitable. You only have a half dozen or so companies manufacturing classic tubes. No R&D is being done any more.

 

The reason SS dynamics can never match tube dynamics is at the heart of their designs involving the voltages and the amount of gain staging the devices produce.

 

In tubes you're using a relatively low voltage gate to control a huge amount of change. A tube amp can produce much higher wattages with fewer steps compared to transistors. Since the steps are larger the changes in dynamics are that much greater. Small changes in how hard you pick produce big changes in actual volume.

 

Also, the type of harmonics tubes produce is musical compared to SS. When you drive tubes hard, the distortion comes on gradually and its compression "blooms" into distortion. SS has a much shorter and sharper edge as it distorts. This gives it more of an "All or None" edge which makes it far more difficult to go from Clean to Driven by pick strength alone like you can do with a tube amp. You're much more likely to ride a volume knob to do this which is fine if you have the technique down, its simply doesn't reproduce the musical "Emotion" you get as a result of playing more aggressively. The standard in electric guitar is play soft and you get a clean tone, dig in and it breaks up. Slam the strings and you get full drive.

 

In short SS typically takes Sine waves and flattens them into square waves immediately and the sound is not pleasant. The reason it happens so quickly is because the signals SS preamps create are small. The slopes between silence and full amplification don't give you a whole lot of room to gradually clip a wave, and the devices used to clip the waves tend to operate more like a scalpel instead of the blunt gradual change tubes produce.

 

SS has been getting better at this all the time of course. Compare any vintage Transistor amp to many of the newer modeling amps and the differences can be like night and day.

 

The part that affects the ears is the harmonics which is what fills out the sound and adds warmth.

 

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All amplifiers will have sympathetic distortion related to the original signal. Tubes have mostly even-order harmonics second, fourth, and sixth. Solid-state devices have more odd-order harmonics, third, fifth 7th etc. Just like musical notes, when you combine different pitches, some pairs sound dissonant and grate on your ears. Others are harmonic and sound wonderful together. Its the even-order harmonics that will provide "positive" embellishments of the original signal, making it sound fuller.

 

 

 

 

 

[1001gear]

Even if the OP placed a mike in the exact position his head is in when he hears the phenomenon, I don't know if it would be audible in a recording. Among other things, it's probably a matter of both ears working together and that's not something a mike can pick up.

 

He could post the sound in question as produced by an actual tube amp. I'm curious as to what he considers "tube tone" For instance, maybe he means that buttery sound? ( That's a notch somewhere between 600 and 800 depending on the filters. ) At any rate I suspect the OP hears a familiar timbre and the reactive properties are already there as most SS guitar circuitry tries to reproduce them.

[Jazzer2020]

Thanks for the technical explanations WRG.

 

Nice guitar Mikeo!

My ES-135 is early 2000's vintage and sunburst.

It had 2 humbuckers but I removed the bridge PU and put in a wood plug.

 

I may get around to recording the guitar in two different positions to see if we can hear the difference that way.

 

Actually I was thinking of a way to take advantage of what I was hearing.

It does me little practical good to stand next to the amp at the 'sweet position' in a live gig, if all the patrons

are hearing the regular ho-hum sound coming straight ahead from the speaker.

 

There are two ways that I can think of to take advantage of it:

1. For live gigs, position a mic where I am hearing it, and feed it into the PA system.

2. For recordings, position a mic where I am hearing it and feed that sound into my audio interface.

 

 

 

 

[DeepEnd]

. . . Actually I was thinking of a way to take advantage of what I was hearing.

It does me little practical good to stand next to the amp at the 'sweet position' in a live gig, if all the patrons

are hearing the regular ho-hum sound coming straight ahead from the speaker.

 

There are two ways that I can think of to take advantage of it:

1. For live gigs, position a mic where I am hearing it, and feed it into the PA system.

2. For recordings, position a mic where I am hearing it and feed that sound into my audio interface.

It might be enough to simply mike the amp off axis, then again it might not. Experimentation will tell. In any case, I hope you're able to take advantage of your discovery. Anything that helps make better music is a good idea.