Re: Tubes! They do a ____ good!

["Jesse Ray Lucas" <jlucas@neoprimitive.net>]

>  companies who push this modeler or that
> emulator screaming that they"sound" just like tubes-well, maybe they do
once
> in a while, but they NEVER feel like tubes when yer playin...

You're right.  Carting in a 90 lb., 300-watt, vintage Ampeg SVT-II to a gig
sure is a different feeling from carrying in a 13 lb., 400-watt Eden
Traveler head.

I'm on the tube path now, but I'm seriously considering moving back to 
solid
state for space/weight/maintainability reasons.  I'm no slouch, but the 
idea
of carrying in an amp slung over my shoulder is enticing.  I have heard
several guys come through town on tour using those Traveler heads and they
sound great for the size venues I'm playing in right now.

When I bought my SVT I had a four hour discussion with a 25 year veteran 
amp
tech about tube amps and learned a lot of interesting things.

1.  Tubes are only made in two places in the world right now:  China, and
Russia.  The chemicals/processes involved in making tubes are too
toxic/dangerous to be done here.  Places like "Groovetubes" are a
repackager/reseller.  They buy the Russian and Chinese tubes, test them, 
and
stamp their logo on them.

2.  Chinese tubes are the worst.  Russians are better, but still not as 
good
as almost any of the tubes made here in the U.S. before we switched
everything to solid state.

3.  The best tubes are GE (General Electric) tubes, which you can still
find, but they go for a premium because they are a finite resource as they
have been out of production for years.

4.  To replace all the glass in my SVT -- which, ideally, you're supposed 
to
do once a year -- would cost me upwards of $300.  Albeit, the SVT is a
particularly tubey amp -- 12 preamp tubes (12AX7s, 12AU7s), and six power
tubes (6550s).

5.  I read several very technical discussions of tube vs. solid state on 
the
web that boiled it down to: solid state and tube amps are basically the 
same
until you begin to push them into overdrive.  Tube saturation and solid
state farting are two totally different things.  Seeing as I'm usually 
going
for a clean sound, and not usually turned up past 3 on the SVT, I'm 
starting
to wonder about the necessity of it.

6.  Some reviews seemed to say that you would get all the benefit from
having a tube amp, by simply putting one 12AX7 in the preamp of your
amplification system.  Others claimed that 12AX7s are a joke as far as
adding "tube warmth."

This is what this amp tech told me, and what I found by reading on the web.
He seemed to be pretty knowledgeable regarding such topics as he was
constantly working on amps.  But I'm sure, like anyone, he was filtering 
his
knowledge through his own personal biases and preferences about tubes, and
ideas about "good" guitar tone.

One day, when Linux gets a good audio distribution and commercial software
support we will just drag our rack-mounted computers (by then, they will be
in 1U chassis or smaller) out to gigs with us, plug our basses into them,
and run through the Echoplex Digital Pro plugin, into the SVT-II plugin,
into the Ampeg 8x10 plugin, and into the board.  It's coming, I tell you.
Mark my words.

-J