Why tube amp sound better than solid state?

[walkman]

Had a Sansamp GT2 for a little while , but sold it , as I didn't really like its sound. Perhaps it would have been better to use it straight to a PA of for recording rather than as an effects pedal / over drive for my silverface fender twin reverb.

Also had a Boss GP 20 Amp factory cosm unit. Kept that for awhile too never really used it much more of a one or two trick pony doing twin reverb or champ sort of sounds quite well and vintage marshal but not really.

Bought and sold a Pod and have held on to a digitech rp150, though its not really very tube like. Built a fetzer and would think that anything else by runoffgroove should sound pretty good too.

[J M Fahey]

Yes, Sansamp GT2 is *not* an effects pedal.
It is to be used straight for recording or into a good, flat, powerful PA system.
And thereīs some basic Physics everybody forgets: you must be able to supply the "muscle" to back what you are trying to emulate.
Example: you are playing with a "real" Plexi or a Dual Rectifier: you have real 100W RMS of overdriven tube power driving 4 x 101 dB efficient Celestion speakers, with the perfect voicing for guitar.
Bone crushing sound.
Now you plug into your Sansamp GT2, choose one of those modes, ...... and plug it into a 15W SS amp with a 94dB efficient 10" speaker into a shoebox sized , open backed cabinet .... and claim : "this crummy pedal is sh*t"
Think again what you are doing.
Oh, "I plugged it into a 120W 2x12" Crate combo" !! (2 x 12" , 96dB speakers, open back, less than 1/2the 4 x 12" size).
Same thing, still not enough, by a long shot.
I have tried my emulators, would have been the same with a Sansamp, a Pod, a good pedalboard, successfully side by side along Plexis, JCM, DSL, DR, etc. BUT driving a 300W SS power amp (the one I normally use for Bass) into a 4x12".
Why 300W? Why not just 100?
For once, I already have them, but the most important motive is that the SS amp must NEVER clip, so it can faithfully reproduce the emulated waveform.
So you need a lot of power and a lot of speaker for a good result.
If you donīt, itīs not the emulatorīs fault.

Or, record straight into the board, where speakers and power amp are not needed.

Two friends of mine, (Gustavo Santaolalla and Aníbal Kerpel, Google them) with two Oscars and several Grammys under their belts, regularly visit Argentina (and the rest of Latin America) searching for new bands for recording deals.
Tight schedule, they must record half a dozen bands in a week to carry the samples to LA for Universal Records bosses to choose.
They canīt waste time at the recording studio.
What do they use? : a POD. Excellent results.
Later, if a band is chosen and signed, they record the definitive tracks with whatever is necessary , but demo tracks already sound *very* good.

[Alan0354]

Ewww... Chuck is an opamp lover!

The most advanced "analog modelling" work I know of in the public domain is this:
Main page

The various "Fetzer Valve" based circuits at runoffgroove.com are also worth studying.
Articles and Schematics

I have my own "12AX7 simulator" based on a LND150 MOSFET, and I've heard some surprisingly positive emails from people who just tried subbing it for a tube in random locations.
LND150 tube emulator attempt.

It was inspired by KMG's work and also the "Trioderizer"
The Trioderizer - a solid state triode

KMG's circuit is more accurate, but it needs several supply rails. I sacrificed some accuracy for simplicity, on the grounds that it might be more likely to catch on if it could be tried out easily by dropping into an existing amp.

I also have a transformer-driven transistor power stage which sounds somewhat tubey, and you doubtless all have seen before.

Thanks for the links, that's very helpful.

[olddawg]

Yupper... Op amps and diodes in the Bandit 65. Pre TransTube tech. I guess I'm dating myself with this one. I used to run mine with the post gain up high, 7 to 10, and then use the pre gain as the volume control. I didn't use the "saturation" circuit on the amp (always on 0) or the "normal" channel (how anti rock n roll would it have been for a fourteen year old to use a channel called "normal"). With the post gain around seven and the pre gain up a little the amp did get a very acceptible grit. After that it was up to my '84 RAT pedal.

I love my old Rat pedal. Damn thing is good in front of anything.

[Chuck H]

The version made from '84 to '88 sounded so good that an old rusty original will cost you $300. ProCo just reissued that model in limited number with all period correct contruction and parts. You can get one of those for only $200.

Many have built clones and copies. Even the RAT 2 isn't close enough to call close enough. I'm not one for mojo, but nothing sounds like a mid 80's RAT. Probably worth mentioning that they were an unnoticed favorite of recording artists too.

[walkman]

well I managed to pickup a GT2 from the bay at a good price , soon after reading your post J M , so I will see if it suits me better now.....

[anthillrich]

the original question was "why tube amps sound better than solid state?"
my question is ......do they sound better?

[nashvillebill]

the original question was "why tube amps sound better than solid state?"
my question is ......do they sound better?

There are some very good sounding tube amps. There are also some poor sounding tube amps.
There are some very good sounding solid state amps. There are also some poor sounding solid state amps.

There are some tube amps that sound great clean, but not so great on heavy metal distortion. There are also some solid state amps that sound great clean, but not so great on heavy metal distortion.

So, how can we make the generalization that "tubes sound better"????

[teemuk]

The enchanting lights do it. Their enchanting magic tricks people into thinking that the amplifier actually sounds better than an amplifier without enchanting lights, while in reality the two may actually just sound different, which just means the issue of which one sounds best becomes entirely subjective and musical context –related. Also, if you tell people the enchanting lights are there only for show (even if they aren’t) or are actually enhanced by inferior solid-state enchanting lights (e.g. LEDs) the magical enchanting effect is dispelled and to the, now-educated, spectator the amplifier begins to sound as bad, sometimes even worse, as an amp without enchanting lights.

Ironically, I fear this explanation makes as much sense in practice as the typical ones you hear about even, odd or high/low order harmonics or about phenomenons like soft vs. hard clipping.

[Steve Conner]

I guess I agree, but I'd like to put a slightly more positive spin on it.

Have you heard of synesthesia? It's when sense impressions bleed over into different senses. To give a mundane example, when you talk about the taste of food, you really mean its smell, because the taste buds on your tongue are quite basic and can only detect five flavours.

And when talking subjectively about sound, we go all synesthetic all the time. Bright, dark, wet, dry, warm, fat, piercing, greasy, thin, sterile, these are all terms that have been co-opted from other senses than hearing.

So to get to my point, why shouldn't my experience of a guitar and amp be synesthetic too? If I have an old tube amp, and I'm trying to decide how much I like it, why shouldn't the way that it looks or even smells be taken into account in the value judgment?

Of course this is unscientific. A guitar amp is a machine for making noise, so it should be evaluated on the basis of the noise it makes. And as Teemu and others point out, solid-state circuits can compete fine on that basis.

But if I design an amp and try to sell it, are my customers going to be scientists? OK, so I put a blind testing booth in my store, but will they use it?

Bottom line, if an amp is going to perform in the real world, it probably has to look good, and the "enchanting lights" of firebottles certainly help with that.

[Chuck H]

I really think that the two main reasons for the "tubes sound better" generalization are:

1) They do. Tubes are more graceful in the way they morph to abrupt contitions and even generate more complex details in their specific response characteristics while doing so. To do this with transistors it must be simulated with peripheral circuits in what usually ends up a blunt/coarse caricature. This is mainly relevant to the clipping charateristics of either device. So...

The agument that tubes and transistors are simply "different" in this regard is weak. Sure there are distortion pedals that generate great clipping. And sometimes that is a sound you want. A different sound. Not better or worse per se, but not as elegant in general. And I'll even agree that once the compression and clipping level gets to a certain point the differences between each device become less important. But the nuances are something that the player can feel and presents in how the instrument and amplifier respond to each other. Maybe we're just used to tubes and are trained to think they sound better. But I do actually think it's more than that. For me it's like the difference between orange juice and orange drink. One isn't inhearently better. But it also is. And we know which one.

2)We do adhere to what we know. The best artists use tube amps. The best recordings are done with tube amps. We are trained to like them. We work hard here at the forum to get the best possible sound from them. So they must be better. Otherwise we're all wasting out time here. How could we live with ourselves??? In other words, we want them to be better so badly that we subconsciously refuse any other possibility.

I think it's been well established that transistor devices are better for a number of tasks. Bass guitar, keyboard, PA, re amping, etc. That tubes remain the choice for guitar amps then is very telling. It's not as if transistor guitar amps haven't been offered. Is it really just that we want to hang on to old nostalgias then? Or is there actually something more? I do think so.

[Steve Conner]

In other words, we want them to be better so badly that we subconsciously refuse any other possibility.

Well, even thinking that thought is toying with the lid on the pandora's box.

I think the issue is that it's far, far easier to design a good sounding tube amp. When used in their respective textbook/application note circuits, tubes naturally sound good, but transistors don't sound like anything, because they get feedback wrapped round them to stabilize their funky parameters that vary all over the place with temperature and with every batch. And that feedback tends to suppress whatever distortion harmonics they generate in themselves, and turn the clipping behaviour into a dull sounding square wave.

If you want transistors to sound like something, then you have to work at it and get inventive. Here we have a great resource of all the stuff people have tried.

I find it an interesting observation that people liked the sound of circuits like the Fuzz Face and Thomas Vox power amps, that used a minimum of feedback and so brought out the transistors' own characteristics. Of course they paid for this with dreadful temperature sensitivity. I've seen boutique FF clones with a knob to compensate for room temperature!

[Chuck H]

I think the issue is that it's far, far easier to design a good sounding tube amp.

Because in order to make a transistors sound good, we need to make them sound more like tubes... Hmmm.

I find it an interesting observation that people liked the sound of circuits like the Fuzz Face and Thomas Vox power amps, that used a minimum of feedback and so brought out the transistors' own characteristics.

Excellent point. I think I read something recently about a new but currently expensive experimental transistor design that didn't require as much feedback and thermal protection. The article did mention that the device seems to behave more like a valve. Eluding to the notion that a more organic and less critical circuit that allows an amplifying devices natural behavior to shine through is what we like for guitar amps. Be it an actual valve or some other device that doesn't need to be babysat in the circuit. Sorry I can't remeber the specifics though I think it was a link offered in a thread here on the forum. I remember thinking that if the technology could be made affordable it could damage the tube guitar amp biz.

[teemuk]

2)We do adhere to what we know. The best artists use tube amps. The best recordings are done with tube amps. We are trained to like them.

This is what we have learned to think. In practice, those points aren't entirely true.

Best artists use both tube and solid-state amps. The best recording are done with both tube and solid-state amps. We are trained to like certain types of guitar tones but in practice we can't really tell whether they come from tube amps or not, we are just trained to think that everything which sounds good must be a tube amp.

The list of big name artists who prefer or used to prefer transistor amps, and the list of classic guitar records where instead of tube amps you'll be hearing transistor amp sound is shockingly long once you begin to look into it. B.B. King, Albert King, Billy Gibbons, Rory Gallagher, Allam Holdsworth, Vivian Campbell, Tom Scholz, John Fogerty, Don Dokken, George Lynch, Jan Akkerman, Jerry Garcia, both guitarist of Iron Maiden, Ty Tabor, Darrell Abbot, David Gilmour, Brian May, Keith Richards, Ronnie Montrose, Alex Lifeson, Brian Setzer, Alex Skolnick, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, The Ventures, Tom Petty, Willie Nelson, Yngwie Malmsteen, etc. All have reputed history of using transistor amplifiers periodically during their careers. Wait... weren't all the pros supposed to use only tube gear.

Guess not.

The whole preference over tube tones is kinda like asking what amps did Jimi Hendrix use. At this point everyone will answer "Marshall" while in reality he also used Fender amps, Sunn amps, Sound City amps, Orange amps, WEM cabs, various different combinations of them, and a motherload of different semiconductor -based effect pedals. Ofcourse we realize this once we think about it more than just one second.

[Steve Conner]

See, that proves Chuck's point because they all have dreadful tone! Except maybe Brian May and McCartney. B.B. King gives transistors a bad name.