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When do you predict tubes will be obsolete??

RaceU4her

By RaceU4her
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Spizzledude Newbie

Spizzledude

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Feel free to add your name and tube amp comments to the bottom of this list:

 

 

 

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."

 

--Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

 

 

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

 

--Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

 

 

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with

the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that

won't last out the year."

 

--The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

 

 

"But what ... is it good for?"

 

--Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968,

commenting on the microchip.

 

 

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."

 

--Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment

Corp., 1977

 

 

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as

a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."

 

--Western Union internal memo, 1876.

 

 

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay

for a message sent to nobody in particular?"

 

--David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment

in the radio in the 1920s.

 

 

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better

than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible."

 

--A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's

paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service.

(Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

 

 

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"

 

--H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

 

 

"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not

Gary Cooper."

 

--Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in

"Gone With The Wind."

 

 

"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say

America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make."

 

--Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies.

 

 

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."

 

--Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

 

 

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."

 

--Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

 

 

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment.

The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this."

 

--Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for

3-M "Post-It" notepads.

 

 

"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even

built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or

we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come

work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard,

and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college

yet.'"

 

--Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and

H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.

 

 

"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction

and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react.

He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."

 

--1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary

rocket work.

 

 

"You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of

your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You just have

to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of

weight training."

 

--Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem

by inventing Nautilus.

 

 

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil?

You're crazy."

 

--Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill

for oil in 1859.

 

 

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."

 

--Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

 

 

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."

 

--Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure

de Guerre.

 

 

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction".

 

--Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

 

 

"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the

intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon".

 

--Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-

Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.

 

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."

 

--Bill Gates, 1981

 

 

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."

 

--Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

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SteinbergerHack Grand Master

SteinbergerHack

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Modellers will become the standard when they accomplish two things:

1) Get close enough to the sound, feel, and response of tube amps that the majority of pro players can't tell the difference. Not there yet, but getting closer all the time.

2) Create new sounds that AREN'T based on the tones of the great tube amps.

Today, modeller manufacturers seem to spend all of their design effort copying Marshall, Fender, Soldano, Bogner, JC-120, etc. If they ever get to the point that one of them creates a new, distinctive sound of it's own that players like as much as they like today's boutique tube tones.......:eek: Now, that's not been common with other SS amps (excepting the JC-120), but ya never know......

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gdwill2u Newbie

gdwill2u

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Your poll is biased, you left out never, which would have been my vote.

People still pay hundreds of thousands for a Stradivarius violin and other "old" instruments.

Pure tube driven guitar sound will never go away until and unless digital sounds can truly reproduce a tubes character, sustain and warmth. For the modern "metal" I agree, tubes are not needed, in fact just get a Line 6 and you're good to go.

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Trextomb Newbie

Trextomb

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It wont ever make them obsolete...but in the next 10-15 years i'll bet there will be a tonnn less tube amps out there...as people are getting less picky about tone and just want something thats easier to manage. I'll be honest..i played a line 6 flextone III and it was one of the coolest amps ive ever played...and ive demoed a good amount of amps. However, i do like tubes...but im not as crazy as the people that would buy a 4000 dollar head..thats just not needed.

10-15 years for less tube amps being made.

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Welladjusted Newbie

Welladjusted

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Tubes have been technically obsolete for a long time now, guitarists just prefer them. Solid state amps have caught up tone wise though. The feel and dynamic response is still a little different, but it's not as though solid state can't keep up tonally. Those days are long gone IMO

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Cränky Bästärd Newbie

Cränky Bästärd

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its guna be a looong time.


yes digital crap is getting better, but we're also learning more about tube development, and yearly, tubes get closer and closer to their NOS counterparts. I cant wait until the day that current day tubes sound better than NOS.

 

 

In which fairyland tube store do you buy your new tubes? Do they come with a bridge?

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SLfreak Newbie

SLfreak

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It's a difficult thing to speculate about. People always talk about this. I have a few problems here, first of all, the idea that a digital or solid state device needs to "model" a vacuum tube device - utter crap. Why not be different and introduce an amplifier that uses premium solid state components to achieve its own sounds? There is leaps and bounds to be made in terms of digital and solid state technology, but the industry needs to move away from first of all making their digi/SS amps mimic tube amp sounds and secondly, stop positioning their digi/ss stuff as low end and tube stuff as high end - the product lines can exist side-by-side instead of top-and-bottom.

 

Will tubes become obsolete? Probably not for a very long time. Maybe if tube production was banned worldwide for whatever reason, but certainly not because of digi/SS product on the market. I don't think I'll live long enough to find out - where there's a will there's a way.

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Philo Beddoe Newbie

Philo Beddoe

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Never.


take cars for example, for years there's been 4 cylinder cars capable of smoking 8 cylinder cars, but have V8's lost popularity/panache/desirability? No. People will always want a V8. Or V12 if they got the $$.


just for the sake of being able to say "It's a tube amp".

 

 

Hmmm?? Which 4 cylinder is capable of smoking a V8. The fastest accelerating cars in the world are top fuel dragsters and they have V8's in them. As for the original question I think Line 6 answered that when they started making the Spider Valve.

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duodecim Newbie

duodecim

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sure tube amps will probally always be around, but when do you predict digital will catch up and surpass toobs in the market place?

 

 

5 years. But it will take longer for the market to accept that, i.e. when younger generations will spend more than the older ones. I think lots of teens are pretty happy with their Line6 crap, and if it's what you've grown up with, there's little to no reason to switch

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