I'm looking at getting a new amp in the next couple of years...Vox, Blackstar, Victory maybe. I've never owned a valve amp, but have played through many over the years and there's no denying that they sound great cranked up. And this has got me to thinking - surely putting a circuit based dirt box in front of it slightly misses the point. Boosters, I get... Modulation I get. But if part of the appeal of a valve amp is 'that sound' why put an artificial sound in the chain?
Thoughts, please... Am I missing something? Or am I just misunderstanding how 'sound' works?
Comments
I will go further and say that I often prefer drive tones that I get from pedals, but it's taken a long search to find the pedals that best suit my rig!
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I'm getting good results using a Soul Food into my HRD at the moment
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
The down side is that having the preamp and power amp on that edge of the world tonal nirvana often means the rest of the band has to mix to your volume because you might be limited to fairly loud. But it is heaven to play that way when the chance presents itself.
People use overdrives for clean sounds. Guitar + pedal + amp then turn down the guitar volume you shouldn't lose the top end you do with guitar + amp.
* From memory if you listen to something like The House is Rockin you can hear when the Tube Screamer comes on just to lift his tone for the solo. It's a quite a subtle use, the amp is still doing the hard work.
If it's the Dual Reverb model, it's essentially a hybrid amp with a couple of pedal circuits in the front end. (TS type on the rhythm channel, DS-1 type on the lead channel.) If it's the High-Gain model it still uses diode clipping, although it's mostly valve gain. If it's the SLX there are only three solid-state gain stages (FX loop send and return, master volume switching), none of which really affect the tone.
None of this means they sound bad though - I actually prefer the sound of them to the following DSL series which *are* all-valve, at least in the direct signal path.
If it sounds good, it is good.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
My amp at the minute is a Jubilee which I suppose basically has pedal-style diode clipping in the front end and it sounds great. I even boost that further with another overdrive which again I think works well. I sometimes wonder if I'd be just as happy with a loud clean SS amp and decent drive pedals but that feels a bit wrong! Then again I don't seem to like pedal distortion into a clean amp so I'd have to have an "edge of breakup" always on type pedal.