Component Quality

[jrfrond]

I think there's alotta hype created by the end users of these "cork sniffer' aftermarket parts. The ol' "Hey I just paid big bucks for this "******"....so it has to sound great" deal. I'll take a pass on the audio voodoo thanks....just like I pass on Bose and Monster Cable, Kimber Kable, etc. CAn I sell you some clear nail polish that you can paint *everyhting* including pc boards and have magical results? Don't laugh....someone's out there soing just that....

I agree 1000%!!!

I've worked in both the consumer and audiophile industries as well. THEY are not the only ones who are gullable, trust me. Musicians are, and so are many of the techs who serve them.

Concerning the end user, I find that the amount of cash they are willing to part with for "magic" parts is inversely proportional to the depth of their talent pool.

I want to talk about transformers for a second: after all is said and done, and everything I have tried, I have NO problem with the Thordarsen replacement transformers that New Sensor sells, and have never had a customer complain once about their sound after a transformer replacement, and some of them are name clients. Remember, this IS New York City.

About caps and resistors: I usually recap amps with Xicon caps of the same type, unless requested otherwise to do so. Again, no complaints and NO reliability problems. In vintage stuff, I stick with carbon comp resistors where they were used, but again, Xicon replacements have worked beautifully and are affordable.

So, why switch or use pricer components? Because trends or internet (mis)information tells you so??? Uh-uh! I've been doing this for 30+ years, and I don't fall for that crap. If a customer WANTS it and wants to pay the inflated prices, OK, then so be it. As the saying goes, "a fool and his money are soon parted".

I am not saying that the "cork sniffers" (I like that!) are wrong. It just isn't the way I do things.

[JHow]

...I then handed him the caps he thought he wanted installed and told him to leave the amp alone...

Did he thank you for the education, and come back later for real service, or did he go elsewhere and get the caps installed? That is, did this help you establish a better customer relationship, or not?

[stokes]

Did he thank you for the education, and come back later for real service, or did he go elsewhere and get the caps installed? That is, did this help you establish a better customer relationship, or not?

He was very appreciative.He has been a client of mine for a long time.At first I started to tell him how I didnt think it a good idea to devalue such a vintage amp,he explained he didnt care about value and collectability etc,he just wanted the amp to sound its best,so I decided to go with my experiment.

[trem]

I am probably forgetting that most players do not work on their amps, and have no idea what the guts look like. So if a player hears about what great quality parts are being used by a lot of these (for lack of a better word) "boutique" builders, he would have no idea that everybody is using basically all the same stuff.

[jrfrond]

I'd like to add that using the same parts doesn't mean that everyone is building the same amp. It's kind of like that show on Food Network "Iron Chef", where everyone gets the same ingredients to turn out a different dish. The actual DESIGN is more important than the components themselves. Even if you try to clone a vintage amp, you will eventually find that new components does not an old amp make. In addition, how do you know how that (for example) 5E3 Deluxe sounded when it was new? The design and ultimate tweaking is really what separates the men from the boys, NOT magical components. There are some excellent-sounding production-line amps being made with mediocre (at best) components. If the "cork-sniffer" theory worked, then these amps shouldn't sound or feel good at all.

It's all really 99% BS.

[Ronsonic]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned here is that the OP is comparing boutique amp parts to the stuff he as a hobbyist is using. There isn't much difference. Both the hobbyist and the boutique builder are buying in smallish quantities and are investing so much labor that parts costs are relatively trivial. So they're buying relatively high-grade stuff from the houses that stock our values and types, and getting better parts than the crap that fills most of the consumer grade electromusical junk on the market.

[jrfrond]

BTW- when our beloved vintage amps were being built, THOSE components were affordable, run-of-the-mill stuff. Now, they are the Holy Grail. My, how times change, huh?

[Enzo]

20% resistors all over the old Fenders comes to mind.

[tedmich]

The wide variation in old amp component values, combined with a high level of “drift” over the decades, creates STOCHASTIC COMPLEXITY (Tm) in the circuits. The harmonic content is actually enhanced, similar to how pickup makers see a better tone in so-called “scatter wound” units, as opposed to the cold, accurate mechanical wound units. Because of this, old amps actually sound better than when new, and this justifies their 10-100 fold price increase. The best tone resides in units made 30+ years ago, ideally after a 3 Beer lunch on a Friday obviously.

[jrfrond]

STOCHASTIC COMPLEXITY (Tm)

Whose trademark is THAT???

OK, let's forget about ad copy hyperbole for a minute. As resistors age, they go UP in value, and caps go DOWN in value, as well as developing ESR. Soooo.....using the standard Fender configuration as a reference, if the plate resistors drift to 120K and cathode resistors drift to 2.5K, your stage gain goes up. Combined with caps drifting down, the net effect being limiting of low-frequency response, you wind up with an amp that has narrower power-bandwidth for increased midrange response and increased sensitivity. That equals a "hot" amp! In addition, Alnico magnets demagnetize, reducing speaker efficiency, meaning that the amp needs to be cranked more to achieve a certain volume level, so it is going to be pushed into saturation easier.

Hmmmm..... doesn't sound like magic to me, just like simple component aging. Anyone else?

Yes, there ARE other factors involved, like aging of the transformers, component construction (new vs. modern) and P-P vs. PCB. This is why it is almost impossible to perfectly clone a vintage amp.

[Steve Conner]

STOCHASTIC COMPLEXITY (Tm)

I like this new buzzword! I guess it can also apply to bum notes in guitar solos, or jazz, which is basically the same thing.

To me, the stereotypical "vintage" tone is a knackered old amp that hums loudly, smells of burning, and sputters out about one-tenth of its rated power. Some people love this and if you fixed it for them, they'd be scared out of their wits.

I agree with Ronsonic's analysis, we can build amps in a way that would spell instant commercial suicide for the likes of Marshall or Peavey. If you have the electronics know-how to build your own guitar amp, then your time is probably worth enough to society that the parts cost of the amp is lost in the noise, except maybe the speaker, cabinet and transformers.

But look at it another way, and it's Catch-22: If you don't know how to build an amp, then it makes economic sense to build an amp. If you do know how to build one, then it's more cost-effective to buy one instead, because in the time it took you to build it, you could earn enough to buy three Peavey Classic 30s.

Something for our experienced members to ponder: where's the economic sense in being on this forum, helping people who don't know how to build amps but are determined to build them anyway? My previous boss once caught me doing this, and he was pissed: "You're giving these guys free technical support, and you're doing it on our time!"

[R.G.]

... The best tone resides in units made 30+ years ago, ideally after a 3 Beer lunch on a Friday obviously.

Uh, I find I get better tone after a plate of nachos and two margaritas. Tone enhancement by beer is good, but the pros prefer margaritas.

[Enzo]

No margaritas for me, my dad always told me, "Never drink anything you can;t see through."

Aging aside, those old amps with their tolerances wide enough to drive a truck through had tremendous variation between units. AFter all, a "good" 100k plate resistor could be anywhere from 80k to 120k. And those electrolytics with a -20/+80% tolerance were an adventure waiting to happen. Part variations might tend to average out, but in practice some amps sounded better than others because of it. So when Bob and Ed buy identical new Fender Deluxes on the same day, Bob might wind up with a "better" one.

[Chuck H]

As a friend of mine would say:

"If you put an infinite number of monkeys in a room with an infinite number of guitars, one of them will play Proud Mary."
(John Tristao, current singer for CCR)

In other words, with 20% tolerance components and so many amps built many very happy accidents are likely, many unhappy ones too. I, for one, have heard many accounts by owners of old Fender amps like "Mine just seems to sound especially good." or "Mine just never sounded right." Having played through some of these amps I can testify that any two same model vintage Fender amps CAN sound very different for better or worse.

It might be nice, as homebrewers with access to 1% tolerance parts, to reverse engineer one of those 'especially good' sounding vintage amps, but who would let you? To learn every tolerance would require some teardown and I don't know a proud owner that would subject their amp to that.

Chuck

[jrfrond]

As a friend of mine would say:

"If you put an infinite number of monkeys in a room with an infinite number of guitars, one of them will play Proud Mary."
(John Tristao, current singer for CCR)

In other words, with 20% tolerance components and so many amps built many very happy accidents are likely, many unhappy ones too. I, for one, have heard many accounts by owners of old Fender amps like "Mine just seems to sound especially good." or "Mine just never sounded right." Having played through some of these amps I can testify that any two same model vintage Fender amps CAN sound very different for better or worse.

It might be nice, as homebrewers with access to 1% tolerance parts, to reverse engineer one of those 'especially good' sounding vintage amps, but who would let you? To learn every tolerance would require some teardown and I don't know a proud owner that would subject their amp to that.

Chuck

Who's to say that the amps that are IN-tolerance are the best-sounding ones? I don't know that you could ever qualify something like this.