There is PCB and then there is PCB

[R.G.]

It woudl seem that only the largest companies woudl be able to afford PCB given the design and technical issues of producing the boards.

As Steve correctly noted, not really. PCB design for high performance is a game for specialists; however, there are a lot of those specialists in the world.

I do all my own PCB design, and have for decades. I think my first one was in about 1972. I can do a PCB design for something like a tube amp in about an afternoon. A company farming out a PCB design could get it done for a thousand dollars easily. That seems like a lot, but it's so close to zero compared to the other things to be done to get an amp design started that to a first approximation, it's free.

In manufacturing things, you have to always balance the cost of parts and the cost of labor. For a person, recreation-time labor is free, so a single person with a hobby almost always maximizes labor and minimizes parts cost. For a company, parts are hugely less expensive due to volume buying, and buying labor is a continuous misery given the care and feeding people need and the incessant meddling of governments in labor. A manufacturer will minimize labor. This is why the manufacturing world is racing to the bottom on labor costs. Factories in China are racing to build "offshore" factories in much lower-wage Vietnam, and thinking about setting up shop in Africa.

It is important that whomever lays out the PCB knows what signal does what electronically, as has been said. The electronics designer and PCB layout guy need to be the same guy if possible, and need to talk for about an hour a day at minimum during the layout process.

And the third guy, the mechanical engineer that's designing the box and chassis needs to have about an hour a day with the PCB guy and the electronics guy. If you can make these three people the same guy, design and layout is fast and effective. But it's not impossible or terribly expensive in the scheme of things to hire them done. And it's not all that much more expensive to do it well if you know what to do .

[Jared Purdy]

I would cautiously, but optomistically assume (dangerous here), that companies like Mesa, Freyette, Fuchs, Bogner, Bugera and Egnater all work the way you describe above. I can't imaging that any of them woudl be farming the process out to the lowest common denomenator mass produced cloners in China? No?

[Steve Conner]

Well, Bugera are Behringer's guitar amp brand. They are most definitely farmed out to China and made of cheap parts, like all the other Behringer stuff.

All of the other companies, you should be able to find out where they manufacture. I wouldn't be surprised if the Bogner Alchemist was made in China. The boutique names all seem to be getting import lines nowadays to complement their more expensive models.

[Jared Purdy]

Right, I forgot about the Behringer/Bognera connection. I'm not fan either way. They could be PTP, if they had the same tone, it wouldn't matter. Tke Mesa and Freyette for example, they claim to be "Hand Made in the USA". What does that mean exactly? Are the PCB's inside of them made in the USA too?

[Steve Conner]

"Hand Made in the USA". What does that mean exactly? Are the PCB's inside of them made in the USA too?

Short answer, probably not.

Long answer, probably not and it doesn't matter. The Chinese board factories make the boards out of the same stuff, using the same machinery, as American or British ones do.

Even if you got the boards made at home, the components you put into them all come from China, Russia, Taiwan, the Philippines and so on.

Probably the weakest components in any tube amp are the tubes, they are more likely to give trouble than the PCB or any components mounted on it. And for tubes you only have a choice of Russian, Chinese or Serbian or wherever the JJ factory is again. They probably do their best, but tubes are a fundamentally unreliable technology.

It really doesn't matter where the parts come from as long as the manufacturer has good quality control and an ounce of pride in his brand.

[Jared Purdy]

Okay, so speaking of hand made PCB tube amps, whats you take on Cornford Steve? I just heqard about them, and they boast right on the site that they are hand made, hand wired PCB amps.

[Enzo]

Hand made, hand wired. Two opportunities for an amp to be inconsistent in quality.

[R.G.]

Machines can do the same thing every time, with a high degree of accuracy if they're well adjusted and well maintained.

Humans - all humans, not just the ones in the USA - can do things slowly, with a large variation in results based on education and skill. Very well trained, experienced, interested, motivated, well rested and refreshed humans can do things well almost every time, even in the face of highly varying conditions.

In actual fact, every manufacturer prizes consistency above excellence. Excellence is for athletic contests. Consistency is what keeps you in business. Having the best amp in the world only means something if you can make the exact same "best" first time, every time. Otherwise, having the best amp in the world (or a signature model, or an amp used by -> insert guitar god here <- means that logically you should NOT buy an amp from the guy; he's already hit his high point, not likely to hit it again.

Human hands make things inconsistently. The ability to make good stuff out of random inputs by varying technique also means that lesser skilled hands will have high variation. Hand made varies. A lot.

When machines started making things back in the Industrial Revolution, a few centuries ago, there was a vicious backlash from people who **wanted** to slave over a hand loom, smelter, hammer, etc. for twelve or more hours a day. Go read up on "Luddite" and "Ned Ludd" if you want some history.

This was the origin of the "hand-made" mythos. "Hand made" means just that: some person, however well trained and experienced, made it instead of it being completely automated. Advertisers **want** you to think that "hand made" implies "carefully hand crafted by a master of the chosen art, a veritable one-of-a-kind work of art". What they don't want you to think is "hacked together by the cheapest labor we could find", which is more likely to be the truth than not.

"Made in the USA" is another bit of deceptive jingoism. It is unlikely to about six decimal places that any electronic device you can buy was entirely made in the USA. It is extremely likely that what it really means is "assembled in the USA out of parts imported from somewhere else where we could get the cheapest parts and materials". I acknowledge that it may be possible to find a volume maker of resistors, capacitors, etc. inside the USA, but I would be very surprised to find those parts in any amp you can actually buy.

What "Made in the USA" really means is "Please pay the higher price for my stuff because I'm either really or pretending to be patriotic." This is sad, but true. It may always have meant that.

[mooreamps]

What "Made in the USA" really means is "Please pay the higher price for my stuff because I'm either really or pretending to be patriotic." This is sad, but true. It may always have meant that.

Then I would take issue with that.. I don't need to pretend to be patriotic, not with three rows of ribbons on my US Navy Dress Blue Uniform, including Expeditionary for being in country in a combat zone during time of war.. Also, cost of living in the US is higher, especially living here in the Silicon Valley.. If people want my expertise, they will pay me for it...

-regards
-g

[MWJB]

@ Jared "The Fender RI's get a lot of that bad rapping. It's not that they are "bad" sounding, but they don't sound like an original, and combine that with some questionable design matters to cheapen the cost, and you've got people calling them "crap". And the list goes on." The originals don't sound like originals any more ;-) Seriously some originals are great sounding, but they have had critical parts replaced/refurbed. Fender has listened to public demand & upgraded certain features on the 59 Bassman.

Fender RIs are, for the larger part, not crap. As Steve said, the components mounted on the PCB are more likely to cause you problems. The RIs typically have flying wires to tube sockets, preventing the boards from suffering heat damage. In my experience, the components that give the most trouble on Fenders are the 1W flameproof resistors used as plate load, B+ rail & screen grid applications, these do fail from time to time, but they don't know that they live on a PCB. The PRRI, as we seem to have discovered from one of your previous threads, has oscillation issues due to poor layout, but the 59 Bassman, 65 Twin, Super Reverb, 63 Vibroverb, 65 Deluxe are very reliable, great performing amps.

The problem is that most of the guys trying to compare hand wired amps with RIs are not comparing like for like, a good example is the 59 Bassman - nobody makes an identical hand wired amp! Early on, I bought into the hand wired myth only to discover that if you use good speakers, good tubes, biased appropriately in a RI, it actually compares very favourably with many hand wired amps. The high end bassman reproductions are often worth the money (many hand wired amps available today do not meet this "high end" criteria), don't get me wrong...RIs that are getting on for 20yrs old are sometimes showing irritating, intermittent issues, poor access to components & labour intensive cap jobs often mean that it's just as cheap to buy a good used model, rather than have a handwired board installed. Even if you choose the latter option, transformers are adequate, you can decide whether to upgrade to more esoteric units (often made from differing materials than the originals). The high end, hand wired amp will still be running fine in 60yrs, if serviced appropriately 3 or 4 times over that period. It's just a case of deciding whether you spend $1K every 10 yrs or so ($100/year doesn't seem unreasonable for an amp if you are gigging professionally), or $3K for an amp you hand down to your children/granchildren.

The pro tube series (inc the blues deluxe/deville "RI"s - though these were never vintage amps) are different animals, made to a lower cost and can be less reliable. Still good value for money over their anticipated life span.

[Jared Purdy]

Luddites, an interesting creed. I am quite familiar with them and the philosophy. I was a sociology/political economy major for my B.A. and my Masters, so I studied that period of the industrial revolution. However, I don't go around smashing things!!

I have no problem paying for high quality American or Canadian made products. Our standard of living is high, very high, and if we want to maintain it, we need to be willing to pay each other (that means not someone else!) what they ask - or go somewhere else. Hand made is a good thing, I think. I'm not down on PCB, at least right now. I have a Mesa Lonestar Special, a veritable rat's nest (an organized rat's nest, but a rat's nest none the less) of circuitry and components. The tone from that amp is sublime (IMHO). I bought it knowing that it had PCB, and a bit of hand wiring in it, and when I bought it, I had (have?) a prejudice against PCB because I have this tendency to associate PCB with Chinese made junk that breaks after 6 months (hence the unlimited number of stores wanting to sell us "extended warranties"). But, I looked at the reputation, the fact that it said "Made in the USA" meant something to me (if it had said "Made Canada", that would have been even better ), and the fact that it also says "hand made" - though that presented a bit of a conumdrum for me (PCB), and upon listening to it, my fears were put to rest. So, having this rather expensive, supposedly "boutique" amp with a mixture of PCB and hand wiring has caused me to do some digging to try to better understand amps with PCB.

[Jared Purdy]

It's really too bad about that PRRI, cause I otherwise I really like the amp. I sold mine in December after I A/B'd it to a Headstrong Lil' King, a hand made, PTP clone of the 65 BFPR. Gorgeous sound from that amp, fully dimed. And man is it loud. I'm either going to replace it with that or a Vintage Sounds PR clone.

Yes, the Bassman is a great amp, and it gets consistently good reviews, and I don't hear a lot of negative coments on the DRRI either. However, I was recently trying to decide on a vintage Fender 65 DR, original trannies, reverb, Jensen speaker, etc. It had a cap job, and the cord was replaced with a 3 prong, and of course new tubes. That amp was the most amazing sounding amp that I am yet to hear. Luckily, the store also had a Carr Viceroy (no slouch of a PTP hand made boutique amp) and a Fender DRRI, so I A/B'd both. The DRRI sounded tiny, thin and shrill compared to the 65 BFDR , and the Carr was not far behind, and I don't think that shrill or tiny are words commonly used to describe Carr amps, but it could not stack up to the DR. So what is the common denomenator? There isn't one here. One amp is a $1200 PCB based re-issue of a classic, and the other is a $2900 hand made top o' notch PTP variation of the same theme, yet it also fell short (to my ears at least). I guess, what all of you have been saying is true: you can't judge an amp simply for having PCB in it, any more that you can judge a hand made PTP amp, simply because it is hand made.

[R.G.]

Luddites, an interesting creed. I am quite familiar with them and the philosophy. I was a sociology/political economy major for my B.A. and my Masters, so I studied that period of the industrial revolution. However, I don't go around smashing things!!

I do love it when I run into people that have some understanding of history. You wouldn't believe the number of people who don't understand the term "Luddite".

I have no problem paying for high quality American or Canadian made products. Our standard of living is high, very high, and if we want to maintain it, we need to be willing to pay each other (that means not someone else!) what they ask - or go somewhere else. Hand made is a good thing, I think.

Bear with me for a moment while I parse that a little. It contains some interesting turns of phrase.

"I have no problem paying for high quality American or Canadian made products."
For me, I have no problem paying a fair price for the quality I get in return. There are times when I will stand for nothing less than the best I can get. There are times when I just want something that works for a reasonable time, and times when my needs can be satisfied by the cheapest alternative. For instance, when I'm buying fill dirt (I've had to do this!) I can take rocks and rubble because I only need geologically stable mass. I don't need the finest composted garden soil. I have had houses built to my specifications because at the time I needed some very specific things, and a generic house would not do it. I paid extra to get exactly what I wanted.

What I do have a problem with is someone trying to sell me something as the very, very best when (a) I may not need or want the very best and/or (b) trying to convince me on spurious grounds that what they have is better somehow, with no real proof of the claim.

But notice that someone - actually a lot of someones - has given you the idea that the terms "high quality" and "American or Canadian made" are naturally supposed to go together. I have a different perspective. I was a design engineer in the late 70s and 80s when the Japanese penchant for quality in manufacturing nearly submerged American (and Canadian, and European) manufacturing by providing things that worked first time, and for a long time. Remember Toyota? I was forced to sit through a large number of lectures on how to do the high quality the Japanese did. From the post-WWII time when "Made in Japan" meant "junk", the Japanese had really gotten their act together. Fact is, American manufacturing had declined into providing the least possible value for the highest possible dollar.

Enter the Chinese. The Chinese are businessmen. They will sell you whatever you're willing to buy if you pay the price. If what you demand is the cheapest result, no matter what junk you get, they'll sell you that. If you demand good, or incredible quality, they will sell you that too. The Chinese started where the Japanese did, with almost no industrial base, and are rapidly pounding up the modern manufacturing curve. The reason you've been trained to say "junk" when you hear the word "Chinese" is that American (and probably Canadian) businessmen have been making their own personal fortunes buying goods cheaply made in China (at the businessman's demand, not the Chinese) and underselling their American and Canadian competition who are paying higher labor costs.

Actually, the SAME groups of businessmen are working both ends of the market. They supply the cheapest possible whatever to "value-conscious buyers" and blather on about "high quality American (or Canadian)" made stuff to people willing to spend more money.

To me, I've been so conditioned that someone saying "high quality American made" is trying to sell me a bill of goods, I immediately think "oh, yeah? Prove that "high quality" claim first." Chinese (or Vietnamese, or Thai, or Congolese) is not necessarily low quality. People are to a large degree people. HUMANs will sell you cheap junk if you let them. And they'll blather on about "high quality" if it'll get you to buy.

"Our standard of living is high, very high, and if we want to maintain it, we need to be willing to pay each other (that means not someone else!) what they ask - or go somewhere else."
The implication is that if we are willing to trade each other high prices for high quality, we can all stay rich. That works as long as there is no barrier to lower priced goods from elsewhere. For this to work, you must never let in a ship, plane or truck from another country. Otherwise, the guy in Argentina where growing cattle is cheap will find a way to sell his good-quality but cheaper-to-grow cows at your higher prices. You'll have to make your own transistors for $15 each when they cost $0.05 in Thailand. You'll have to live without stainless steel if your country doesn't happen to have accessible deposits of chromium, nickel, and vanadium. And give up on having fresh vegetables and fruits at the grocery store.

People forget that economics is above the law. There simply cannot be laws which forbid or ignore economics for long. The economic realities can be held at bay by laws for a time, but like squeezing a water balloon, the money bulges out somewhere else. Entire countries have literally ceased to exist trying to ignore or tame economics. The USSR comes to mind.

There simply cannot be any long term difference in price for two identical, equal quality items unless there is some barrier between them. The barrier can be distance, legal, mountains, oceans, education of the work force, availability of materials, but there must be a barrier or they will cost the same. We've just spent a few centuries tearing down barriers.

I have this tendency to associate PCB with Chinese made junk that breaks after 6 months (hence the unlimited number of stores wanting to sell us "extended warranties").

... that some American or Canadian importer worked frantically to get at the cheapest possible price...

But, I looked at the reputation, the fact that it said "Made in the USA" meant something to me (if it had said "Made Canada", that would have been even better ),

You were conditioned to respond that way.

and upon listening to it, my fears were put to rest.

This last is the only thing other than reliability - the expectation that if it pleases you, it will continue to do so - that means anything in this.

[GregS]

The pro tube series (inc the blues deluxe/deville "RI"s - though these were never vintage amps) are different animals, made to a lower cost and can be less reliable. Still good value for money over their anticipated life span.

The original Blues Deluxes and Devilles from the early to mid-90's (made in USA) are not reliable either. I know this first hand as I own one and know a number of others that have them as well. With time and use they develop problems: there are power resistors in the power supply that get extremely hot and eventually desolder thermselves causing the famous random channel switching/sound dropout problem. This is partly a design problem and also partly a problem of non-substantial solder joints which is the main nemesis of this amp. Also the plastic jacks that are directly connected to the PCB go bad and intermittent with time. I don't believe these problems are limited to Fenders but are typical of tube amps under $1000. If playing alone at home at moderate volumes these problems might not present themselves for a some time as there is less physical stress on everything. However, playing and rehearsing in a loud band requires a lot louder operation. The amp is subjected to much more intense vibrations both from itself and other intruments such as the bass.

I use my own home built amps and can be confident that no solder joint will ever fail on them no matter what abuse they're subjected to. Although in theory a PCB amp can be built this substsantially as well, reality is that the cheap tube amps are not. For a properly done, robust PCB amp it will cost you.

I bought it knowing that it had PCB, and a bit of hand wiring in it, and when I bought it, I had (have?) a prejudice against PCB because I have this tendency to associate PCB with Chinese made junk that breaks after 6 months (hence the unlimited number of stores wanting to sell us "extended warranties").

The extended warranty thing is a scam that's been around for a long time before everything was made in China. This is a very profittable thing for stores as they get relatively few claims after the standard warranty. If something's defective the problem will usually reveal itself within the standard warranty time.

[RudeBoy]

There are things that make one PCB better than another. There is an assortment of certifications that a PCB manufacturer can get regarding their processes. A board from these houses costs more. One thing that would be guaranteed for example is the integrity of plated holes and their connect to inner layers. Thicknesses are guaranteed (copper and prepreg layers), board flatness. Many physical characteristics are specified. The boards are cut open and measured to verify.

Day job we use boards of up to ten layers, maybe more with a mix of RF, analog and digital. We can get quick turnaround boards in a week maybe but a certified board takes a while and is quite expensive. Within the last year manufacturing switched PCB vendors from a US source to China. These are certified boards but we have recently been getting a number of failures in the field in these boards where inner traces are opening up. The claim is that it is due to high temperature during board assembly. There are a number of hand soldered parts, RF devices and the like. The boards from the old vendor didn't fail however.

There is big difference in PCB quality, and it tells in the cost. For quick prototyping I have used BatchPCB (China) for two layer boards with solder mask and silk screen. It is pretty reasonable at $2.50 per inch for two-layer, $8.00 for four layer. However IME the plated through holes should not be trusted and must be filled. It is one ounce copper but I think they only provide 1/16 inch board thickness so I have been reluctant to try them for a tube design. Maybe it would be okay, dunno.