Solid state valves revisited

JayGee

ThePrettyDamned said:

When I say valves are bad for the environment, it's not just the pure green effect immediately, but they're larger and use a lot of materials that go to waste when they blow.

Is there anything in a valve which isn't recyclable? Surely they're just glass and metal - easy to seperate and easy to re-use, certainly far easier than recycling the components of a solid state amp and requires a lot less Hydrogen Flouride (and similiar nastiness) in its production...

Richardj

I have wavered for quite a while now as to whether or not move on my very nice Koch amp. It sounds superb but I have a constant worry about the valves failing.  I don't have a reliable amp tech anywhere near and the factory tested ones are real expensive.  My Pro Junior sounds nearly as nice and is pretty much plug and play valve wise.  I would be very tempted by the solid state 'valves', if they replaced the power valves, to just take away a little of that concern.

Parker

In terms of being environmentally friendly, I think this could be a bad choice of hobby! Exotic tone woods being felled, thousands of guitars racking up air and sea miles to reach our shores and not to mention the gallons of hairspray used by poodle rockers....

johnnyurq

It is no coincidence that the hole in the ozone's recovery happened when hair rock abated. 

SS valve replacements if they sounded good would be a no brainer.

ICBM

ThePrettyDamned said:

monquixote;118899" said:

This video lets you do a blind test of sound difference. 



I actually picked out both of the retrovalves on clean sounds, but not on OD sounds. That's not to say they sounded worse, just different. 

I got them all wrong - I thought 1 was the lower gain solid state thing. 

This is a neat test that proves, if you replace one valve, it makes little (but noticeable) difference. I preferred, clean, the Amber one to all others. 

I had a chance to listen to the demo this morning.

I thought there were big differences. I got all of them straight away except that I couldn't positively identify which was the EH vs the Tung-Sol. (These were easily my favourite sounds.) The JJ is quite distinctive too (I don't like them).

Sadly, the Retrovalves just don't sound as good - they sound flat, muffled and lacking in sparkle or clarity. The overdriven sounds sound like a Tube Screamer - middy and muddy. (In my opinion.) I *did* like the lead sound with the Amber Retrovalve - but that's the only sort of sound I like a TS for as well.

And that's just one valve… if you fitted the whole amp with them it could only be worse.

So perhaps I have been entirely wrong!

ecc83

One or two points if I may?

On the "green" issue. No contest. Even if the manufacture of solid state components and valves was comparably "dirty" you can make 100times at least more sstate stuff than valve for the same amount of "shit". 

Then there is energy consumption. One ECC83 heater consumes some 1.9watts of electricity. A TL072 about 150mW. Therefore for ONE pre amp valve you can have over 12 chips! And that's just heater power, each double triode will pull an additional watt or thereabouts from the HT. ...And we do not even want to THINK about how wasteful power stages are!

I agree that transistors/modellers are not quite "there" yet but the best of them have fooled a lot of people! The clipping issue has been addressed and improved. Check out a certain new range of pedals!

The point about "collateral damage" in valve amps is well taken and it CAN be designed out to a very large degree and does not have to cost a fortune.

Dave.

martinw

ecc83 said:

One or two points if I may?

On the "green" issue. No contest. Even if the manufacture of solid state components and valves was comparably "dirty" you can make 100times at least more sstate stuff than valve for the same amount of "shit". 

Then there is energy consumption. One ECC83 heater consumes some 1.9watts of electricity. A TL072 about 150mW. Therefore for ONE pre amp valve you can have over 12 chips! And that's just heater power, each double triode will pull an additional watt or thereabouts from the HT. ...And we do not even want to THINK about how wasteful power stages are!

I don't agree with the first part, but in any case, that's not important. The scale of what we're discussing here means we're not talking about any significant difference to the preservation or otherwise of the earth's natural resources. Should we, for instance, consider banning owners of American muscle cars from running their cars because they can only do 8mpg?

My 20W valve amp probably uses, what a total of 50-60W being generous. For maybe 7-8 hours a week. Yes, inefficient, but do the maths. I'm a guitarist and amp builder, but the actual running of amps makes f-all difference to my energy bill, let alone that of the planet!

I'm sure the process of making valves is a lot greener now than it was in your day anyway. More efficiency, less waste,  more recycling, less effluent etc. All good for profits and compliance. But as I said, who cares? Compare it with the manufacturing of mobile phones; Samsung had sold over 100 MILLION of the SII and SIII ALONE!  by January 2013. Apple sold 9 Million of the iPhone 5 in ONE weekend. Lets get things in perspective!

Good to see Blackstar getting a mention too.

martinw

ICBM said:

 

So perhaps I have been entirely wrong!

Cheer up, doesn't happen often!

Nice to see someone with strongly held, well thought-out opinions modify their view in the face of evidence. I'm not sure I could be so gracious!

I want to see what's inside these things anyway. What is it they think they are doing that hasn't been done before? Bearing in mind most of it has. Maybe they ignore the HT, run a TL072 off the heaters?

Perhaps we should chip in to buy one and strip it down?

monquixote

I linked to the patents so you should be able to work out what they are claiming is novel about them although one is a patent for having a light that goes on when it's powered which is pretty much the definition of spurious in my book.

ThePrettyDamned

I do agree the best sounds in that video are from the real valves. Didn't like the jj at all (hence why I assumed it was a solid state!).

I think a more worthwhile test would be replacing each section entirely. It might be that it sounds different, but good. Might be that it sounds really bad. I hope it's the first one, and I liked the sound of the Amber one for the clean, lead and crunch sounds. But I still preferred the eh and tung sol valve.

If the sound 'degrades' (that is, sounds worse) with more of them, it's a real shame.

However, I think in the video he kept the settings the same. It might be possible that equing the amp can fix it a little, or completely. I know I had to change my eq settings when I replaced my valves in my old laney.

vasselmeyer

To my ears they were very similar, certainly on the overdriven sounds although I had a very marginal preference for the retro amber sound. On the clean sounds I liked the EH and the Tung Sol the best. In a band at full tilt I guess they would be indistinguishable.

ThePrettyDamned

vasselmeyer;119673" said:

To my ears they were very similar, certainly on the overdriven sounds although I had a very marginal preference for the retro amber sound. On the clean sounds I liked the EH and the Tung Sol the best. In a band at full tilt I guess they would be indistinguishable.

That's a point. What if, at band volume, it became more obvious?

dindude

I got the amber and the JJ mixed up, the EHX and Tung stood out as the best sound, but it was closer than I thought, although as others have said, one tube swap doesn't give great induction.

martinw

monquixote said:

I linked to the patents so you should be able to work out what they are claiming is novel about them although one is a patent for having a light that goes on when it's powered which is pretty much the definition of spurious in my book.

Quite right, you did. I had a look (until my eyes glazed over) but most of it is pretty vague. Probably deliberately so. It leaves as much as possible for them to claim as the invention, whilst at the same time not pinning them down to anything, and giving as little as possible away to competitors. Typical patent speak.

A lot of it is about interfacing the 'VTRD' to the amp's power supplies and signals, which is nice, but doesn't answer the question as to what's doing the amplifying. There doesn't seem to be anything new there, unless I missed it.

So, you buy one or two of these, stick them in your valve amp...yay, it still sounds valvey. They've done it! Yet we know that you can put some SS devices in a valve/hybrid amp and it doesn't make the amp sound like a SS amp, so maybe not.

OK, so you kit out a valve amp with a full array of these 'VTRDs', will it still sound valvey? The cynic in me says 'no', but following ICBMs example, I'm remaining open minded.

All the nice buffering, interfacing, packaging and marketing aside, have they come up with a new way of amplifying a guitar signal that sounds the same as the way a valve does it, or not? If they have, why not just licence that to an existing SS amp maker and live off the royalties?

ICBM

martinw said:

Cheer up, doesn't happen often!

Nice to see someone with strongly held, well thought-out opinions modify their view in the face of evidence. I'm not sure I could be so gracious!

Ha - in this case the evidence is so clear it would be stupid to try to deny it even I was was like that . It was instantly obvious to me which the two solid-state 'tubes' were - it would have been nice to have someone here with me so I could prove this, but I literally watched the video saying to myself "JJ… solid state… valve… solid state… valve" even on the very first pass with the clean sounds - it was that clear.

But - and this is not meant as a get-out! - I'm still not convinced that what we're hearing is a solid-state device operating in a valve-type circuit... or even a simple cascaded-transistor-type arrangement - I think it's a full solid-state *circuit* operating in a valve circuit. This isn't splitting hairs - to me, the sound of what's on that demo is so 'Tube Screamer-like' that it wouldn't surprise me if some of the same technology is being used.

martinw said:

I want to see what's inside these things anyway. What is it they think they are doing that hasn't been done before? Bearing in mind most of it has. Maybe they ignore the HT, run a TL072 off the heaters?

Considering that they specify a filament current draw, they are probably running something from that. I doubt it's the whole thing because I don't think it could provide enough voltage swing to simulate the output from a valve, but I wouldn't be surprised to find an input stage using an IC, at least.

martinw said:

Perhaps we should chip in to buy one and strip it down?

Now there's an idea…

ThePrettyDamned

What if it's gooped?

I might be persuaded to put a few quid in the pot. They are not cheap, so I'd be disappointed if it's little more than a common chip and a light bulb... Though I'm no electronics wiz, I'd like to know what it is they're selling! It'll also be nice to hear other opinions on it.

So if you do want to go ahead, I'll chip a bit in.

ecc83

martinw said:

ecc83 said:

One or two points if I may?

On the "green" issue. No contest. Even if the manufacture of solid state components and valves was comparably "dirty" you can make 100times at least more sstate stuff than valve for the same amount of "shit". 

Then there is energy consumption. One ECC83 heater consumes some 1.9watts of electricity. A TL072 about 150mW. Therefore for ONE pre amp valve you can have over 12 chips! And that's just heater power, each double triode will pull an additional watt or thereabouts from the HT. ...And we do not even want to THINK about how wasteful power stages are!

I don't agree with the first part, but in any case, that's not important. The scale of what we're discussing here means we're not talking about any significant difference to the preservation or otherwise of the earth's natural resources. Should we, for instance, consider banning owners of American muscle cars from running their cars because they can only do 8mpg?

My 20W valve amp probably uses, what a total of 50-60W being generous. For maybe 7-8 hours a week. Yes, inefficient, but do the maths. I'm a guitarist and amp builder, but the actual running of amps makes f-all difference to my energy bill, let alone that of the planet!

I'm sure the process of making valves is a lot greener now than it was in your day anyway. More efficiency, less waste,  more recycling, less effluent etc. All good for profits and compliance. But as I said, who cares? Compare it with the manufacturing of mobile phones; Samsung had sold over 100 MILLION of the SII and SIII ALONE!  by January 2013. Apple sold 9 Million of the iPhone 5 in ONE weekend. Lets get things in perspective!

Good to see Blackstar getting a mention too.

I quite agree! The music industry as a whole makes an insignificant dent in the global warming picture but the point was made and I put my 2pen'oth in!

The very best thing that could happen is that 5 or 6 really dirty volcanoes go off and the world stops flying for a month. We meanwhile stay home and play.

And "I" didn't mention the B word! Thanks anyway.

Dave.