Maybe this guy is onto something !

[daz]

The man said **he** believed in double blind testing. I believe in the Tooth Fairy, motherhood and apple pie. None of these have the slightest thing to do with you or the placebo effect.

LOL ! Ok....

[Wilder Amplification]

What about multi-solid core? Could this make the difference he's looking for?

[m-fine]

can you face the thought that 80% of the mojo might come from the musician, 10% from the guitar, 5% from the speaker, and all of the tubes, capacitors and transformers maybe contribute 5%?

If you change the last part to 4% comes from the circuit (mostly pre-amp/tone stack) and 1% comes from "all of the tubes, capacitors and transformers" (and number of strands in the wire), you might be closer to the truth.

I don't know about you, but I find it a LOT easier to change a capacitor than to actually learn how to play well, so it makes sense to ignore the first 95% of tone and focus on the amp components.

[uvacom]

Daz, it sounds like you go to a lot of time, effort, and monetary expense to swap out different components including transformers, etc.

May I suggest you invest in a decent mic and an audio interface for your computer so that you may record these "night and day" differences for us to hear so that we may directly observe these qualitative differences?

I think that would sidestep a lot of the frustration as we could hear for ourselves, and hopefully suggestions like double-blind testing would never enter the equation because as you have said many times, the differences are night and day. Also, it would help because an "alive" sound/feel might mean something different to you than it does to me. So can words like "bright" even - when some people talk about brightness they mean a resonant peak somewhere in the high-frequency spectrum, while others might mean an increased bandwidth extending further into the high-frequency spectrum.

Give us a window into your world of tone!

[tedmich]

If you change the last part to 4% comes from the circuit (mostly pre-amp/tone stack) and 1% comes from "all of the tubes, capacitors and transformers" (and number of strands in the wire), you might be closer to the truth.

I don't know about you, but I find it a LOT easier to change a capacitor than to actually learn how to play well, so it makes sense to ignore the first 95% of tone and focus on the amp components.

Bingo! If audiophiles really wanted musical realism they'd learn the penny whistle and save $$ on unneeded equipment!

[antiunderscores]

Im not anywhere near experienced as most of the people on this thread but I just have some questions to ask you daz. I dont have an opinion on this, I think it is plausible, after all I never thought of caps changing the sound when i first started tinkering, in the same way I've never thought of wire changing the sound.

First of all, by the sounds of it you have one small low wattage amp with a 6v6 and one higher wattage amp with numerous EL34's, is this true or am I reading too much in between the lines?
Because surely the push-pull operation will have quite an impact on sound, and also if the 6v6 is a quieter amp you would be able to drive it harder and get a little power amp distortion which Im sure everyone here agrees, can sound quite nice indeed. Even if you have the EL34 preamp into a another power amp, if that power amp is push-pull or doesn't break up as easy it wont sound like the power amp with a single 6v6 (e.g a champ).

Ultimately I would like it if you connected the EL34 preamp to the 6v6 power amp. Or visa versa. Or even test both the preamps through a third 'independent' power amp. If there is a noticeable difference THEN we go through all the tolerances of preamp components and ensure power filtering is the same, the voltage drain from the power amp is the same, etc.

This wouldn't be the easiest thing, and wouldn't have the purest sound, but I think it would shine some light. I'm not sure if the wire plays a role in the sound, but I think the power amp has more to do with it.

As for the musician making up 90% of the sound I agree with what your saying, but not entirely. 90% (just a rough number) of musicians cant get the most out of their equipment, but for those who can they can get a good sound out of nearly any amp//instrument and then the equipment starts to play a bigger role on the sound.
For instance, if I'm playing bass on an amp with harsh treble I can get a good sound, but i cant 'dig in' and cant really slap as it becomes ear piercing. So obviously the amp IS playing a bigger role in the sound than 10% as it limits the musicians ability to achieve a RANGE of good sounds in difference situations. Obviously there is more to it and you could talk about it for days. Anyway thats WAY off topic, just wanted to give a different opinion on it.

[Dagan8]

My 2 cents:

If the difference is so big that it is absolutely not a placebo then I would seriously doubt that the wire is the issue

[Dave H]

daz, the two amps have different power tubes operating at different voltages so it’s to be expected that they would sound/feel different. It doesn’t have to be audibly distorted to hear the difference between 6V6s and EL34s. I can hear it at bedroom volume.

6V6s sound light on the low/mid frequencies to me when compared with EL34s. I noticed in your other thread that you’d tried boosting the treble to brighten up the EL34 amp. This isn’t always what’s needed. It’s like removing the top sheet when you’d really be better off removing the blanket. Rather than boosting the treble try reducing the bass of the EL34 amp. A guitar amp doesn’t need a lot of low bass. It just adds to the mud and can make it sound like there’s a lack of treble. I’d try reducing the first coupling cap in the preamp to 4n7,2n2 or 1n if it’s feeding into a 500k or 1M resistor, then fine tune it from there. The AC30 Top Boost preamp uses 500p into 500k and it works well.

Dave H.

[Wilder Amplification]

I don't know about you, but I find it a LOT easier to change a capacitor than to actually learn how to play well

LMAO now that's funny shit right there.

[Mark Hammer]

The place where all such threads should start discussion is an outlining of the listening circumstances and criteria whereby some counter-intuitive outcome can be demonstrated and accepted as true and dependable.

So, for instance, is it possible that the critical factor was the amp and not the wire, vs the wire and not the amp? Okay, that would require at least two versions of each type of amp. If the solid and stranded sounded consistently different (or at least at significantly better than chance levels), independent of amp type, then we're onto something. If we lack that data, then we're still left wondering.

Then there is something I've rambled on abuot at length in the context of pedals. people will get "issue X" and "issues Y and Z" of a particular pedal, hear differences between those individual copies, and attribute heard differences to whatever they can see as different (e.g., a transistor number, a chip lot). Are tests done using multiple copies of each issue to assure that any heard differences consistently occur in multiple exemplars of a particular issue? Generally not.

So what we are faced with is a sort of epistemological challenge: what sort of evidence do we need to have to know that some effect exists, and is it technically possible to assemble that evidence?

I do not wish to roll my eyes at anyone, or insult them. But what I will say is that it is all too common for people in a lot of different areas, both within music gear, and well beyond it, to be struck by something they see/hear, not work out the criteria for valid evidence in much detail, and draw inferences prematurely. It's not about who is brilliant and who might be full of crap. It's about people investing their faith and effort productively, versus rushing into inferences and throwing their faith into something which could be a waste of their precious time.

I like to use the case of astrological signs as an illustration of such processes and how they can go astray...on both sides.

Can the stars, and especially patterns visible to the human eye in two dimensional form, but comprised of astral elements that could exist at drastically different distances from earth, affect us and determine our personal traits? All physics, neurobiology, and common sense suggests not. But here is the thing. There ARE consistent patterns in the sky over the year. We also know that there are seasonal variations in the hormonal environment encountered by developing fetuses, in response to things like changing daylength. We also know that certain sorts of post-natal events during that initial 12-18 months can have strong influence on things like temperament, when they occur at particular points in development, though this is mediated by a whole whack of other things. So, is it possible there could be weak date-of-birth seasonal influences on what we call "personality" for some very basic, entirely plausible, and consistent with what else we know, biological reasons? Sure. Of course those folks who posited a relationship between astrological sign and personal traits so many eons back knew absolutely bupkes about hormones, intrauterine environment, critical periods in neural development, and so on. What they DID know was what they could observe with some consistency: the stars and seasonal changes in their appearance, and patterns of individual difference. Their error was not in suggesting that loose seasonal patterns of personal characteristics might exist, but in attributing it to the only things they were able to measure at the time: people and constellations.

So, can people observe/hear things that are unusual and worthy of their attention? Sure. Can people THINK they observe/hear things that are errors or artifacts, illusions or non-existent? Yes. If they DO observe something dependable enough to be "real", does it necessarily happen for the reasons they think it does? No. The extra labour involved is not so much to validate whether they did or didn't observe what they thought they observed (although the human mind is an all-day sucker), but rather to determine WHY they observed what they thought they did.

[tedmich]

LMAO now that's funny shit right there.

Humans do what is easiest; its our immutable heritage. Good stuff (sometimes) happens to those who go the other way.

Greg Howe (on advice from Billy Sheehan) begins practice with things he can't (or can barely) play. You'll never get better if you don't try what doesn't (currently) work, but you have to be ok sounding baaad.

[Wilder Amplification]

Humans do what is easiest

Funny thing is...so does electricity.

Here's a soundcilp of a '72 Super Lead I modded into a high gain channel switcher. Can anyone tell me what type of wire I used in it?

http://www.wilderamplification.com/s...s/Eruption.mp3

[Steve Conner]

Barbed wire! \m/

[Wilder Amplification]

Barbed wire! \m/

Damn how'd you guess?

[J M Fahey]

1-i was asking about a huge tonal difference and whether solid core wire could be responsible.

¿Huge? .... nope, not because of the wire type.
There are 1000 *other* differences that account for those different sounds.
In fact, I believe you, don't even need a sound sample to prove it, it's just that the amps are *very* different, period.
The *least* important factor is the type of wire.
Just trying to go follow your theory:
1)I agree that the wire dressing, or layout, can and will modify sound because of random capacitive or even inductive coupling, specially on a very poorly built amplifier, but a wire that follows a certain path will have the same such coupling no matter the strand, the material (copper/aluminum/silver) or even the thickness .
2) I agree that if you have , say, a long piece of (stranded) unshielded wire that carries a weak signal from end to end of the chassis (poor design by the way) and it moves when you carry it, then the sound might, for example, be different from rehearsal room to stage.
It would happen in an unpredictable way, and is not what's being discussed here.
You are not saying that you move the amp and the sound changes .
3) As you see, and was said before, we are all trying to find a reason for what you hear, although most or all of us find that other factors are decisive, but no that one, definitely not to such degree.