Tube VS. Solidstate

[Jesse Leite]

I notice that tube amps are once again becoming revered by guitarists. After owning a couple solidstate amps, I was blown away by the warmth, clarity, and power I got with my 30watt Peavey tube amp even compared to my old 100watt solidstate amps. I know that technically, tubes "color" your sound because of impurities and artifacts that tubes add to the sound. Solidstate is a more transparent sound. However, tube amps are always more pleasing to my ears. They have more "soul" so to speak. One of my guitar teachers said it had to do with overtones and harmonics. Solidstate amps produce more odd-ordered harmonics, whereas tube amps produce more even-ordered harmonics; which is supposed to be more pleasing to the ear. I don't understand the exact physics behind this, but to MY ears, I have to say that I generally like tube amps better.

NOW to pedal steel... I have heard my friend's (Bent Romnes') Peavey Nashville amp. It's an awesome sounding amp no doubt. However, after browsing the forums for a while here, I've been wondering why most steel players seem to favour solidstate. Are there tube guys out there too? If so, what are some popular tube amps used in the pedal steel world?

I could see amps like the Fender Bassman with 15" drivers sounding pretty nice. Never tried one with a pedal steel though. I myself have a Peavey Delta Blues amp, a 30watt amp with two 10" speakers. It has a lot of mids because of the smaller drivers, so I find that I have to roll back a bit on the mids to emphasize the highs a bit. I do really like my amp though, and I think it sounds great with my BMI pedal steel. I think the real spring reverb sounds great on pedal steel too. Just my opinion though.

Anyway, I hope I don't start any battles here I am just curious on the subject. Thanks!

[Cliff Kane]

Hi Jesse,
yes, tube amps are very popular as well. The solid state amps tend to be more powerful with more clean headroom, hence they are popular with pedal steel players who want lots of clean volume. But tube amps are very popular. My main amp is a Fender Twin Reverb amp, and I also have a 200w solid state Peavey Session 400 that sounds great. I think there are some SS amps with soul, particularly the ones that have FET transistors like the old Sessions and Evans amps. Ken Fox has designed a very nice tube amp for steel guitar. Most of the great old recordings of steel guitar were done with tube amps. Lloyd Green come to mind. Btw, where abouts in Ontario are you?

[Gary Chiappetta]

Jessie,

I often play with two amps. A Twin Reverb and a Peavey NV112 (used to use the Session 400). Back in the late 1970s I discovered that a blend of the two gives a really excellent and full bodied sound. It really creates a rich full sound with my single coil Emmons pickup. The extra work is not a problem with me, and for small venue gigs or practice I tend to use the NV112.

I really love the hybrid sound. Also, I have been using stereo effects with that setup to give extra "depth."

[Dave Mudgett]

I don't think tube amps ever went out of vogue with most guitar players - not in my circle, anyway.

But for clean pedal steel, some of these mondo-clean-power solid-state pedal steel amps really do sound great. I have an old 70s Peavey LTD 400, a late 80s Peavey Nashville 400, and more recent Nashville 112 and 1000 amps, and set up correctly with the right guitar, pickup, and player, they sound great. Go down to Broadway in Nashville and have your pick of fine players getting great sounds straight into any one of these amps.

Of course, a nice old Twin Reverb is great too, as are any of the high-power blackface or silverface Fender amps. Don't forget the speaker matters too - I prefer a speaker with some clean headroom like an EVM or JBL. But there are a lot of ways to make things work.

Overall, I think it's important to think about the whole setup - player, picks, strings, bar, pickup, steel guitar, volume pedal, effects, amp, and speaker plus room acoustics. Everything matters, nothing is in isolation, and it's one big feedback loop from sound produced back to the ears, brain, hands, feet, and knees. As far as 'soul' is concerned, I think it's mostly in the player.

My opinion, of course.

[Jay Jessup]

My favorite amp to play through at home and low volume situations is my 74 Fender Vibrolux with a 10 and a 12 in it. Not a mountain of clean headroom if the band starts to get loud though!

[Johnny Thomasson]

I have an original '65 Twin with a 15" JBL, an early Session 400 and a late Nashville 400, both with 15" Black Widows. I like them all for different reasons. With my '74 Pro II, the Twin gives me a vintage tone that's really outstanding. It's strange, but to me, the tone of the Session 400 seems to closer to that of a tube amp than it does a solid state amp. To my ear, anyway.

The NV400 has the typical solid state tone, which ain't bad either. I use it mostly for fiddle work now, and rotate the Twin and the Session for steel, depending on what mood I'm in. For Tele, it's the Twin every time.

[Clete Ritta]

I was using a Fender Twin for triple duty on steel, mandolin and guitar. I ran the PSG into the Vibrato channel and add reverb. The mandolin and guitar thru stompboxes into the Normal channel. It works, but there were some drawbacks.

I just got my NV 1000 back from Peavey (thank you Mike Brown), and it sounds great again. I'll be using this live now, since all the insert points work again. I like using the post eq patch for my guitar pedals and the XLR out to mains. Now the stompboxes work on everything going into the Peavey.
I know the NV1000 doesnt have that tube sound like the Twin, but using a little drive from a Fulltone OCD to warm it up, and an old MXR Distortion+ for fuzz works well for guitar, and having delay, drive and chorus on the PSG is too good to pass up.
Dont get me wrong I love tube amps and I may bring em out for bigger shows, but this works real well for me now.

Clete

[Jack Stoner]

Which type of amp - tube or solid state is more personal preference than anything else. Legitimate cases can be made for both.

In my case I use solid state Peavey amps for pedal steel guitar (a NV1000 and 112).

One personal issue with using solid state is not having to be concerned about tube replacement. I'm a former amp tech so working on equipment and changing tubes is no big deal - just I don't have to deal with that in a solid state amp. When I started playing the only thing we had was tube amps - transistors were not invented so I have had a lot of experience with tubes. Until I got a Peavey Session 500, I played through a Fender Twin Reverb (AB768 chassis).

[David Mason]

If you play a lot of complicated chords, the upper harmonics of each altered note will interact with each other. It can be pleasing, or not. I personally don't hear much difference between a dead-clean, powerful tube amp and some properly-EQ'd SS amps, but when you start to introduce overdrive they can both have differing bad events. A large percentage of the tone god guitarists like Eric Johnson, Steve Morse, Carlos Santana et alia are using at least two different amps, on all the time, because you just can't "have it all" simultaneously. Clean jazz chords and howling leads are mutually exclusive.

Both the equalization going into the preamp stages and coming out of it are important to getting a decent overdriven tone.... Speaker choice is a huge element in equalization, and a lot of people don't even consider it to be "EQ"!

I should add, I'm currently using a SWR SM500 bass amp head into two Peavey 12" cabs as a "triple-threat" amp, and it does everything I want. I have to stomp on lots of stuff though... "Good tone" to me is mostly subtractive, and starting off with 250w X 2 allows for a lot of subtraction. Rowr.

[Ken Fox]

I used to use a 1965 Deluxe (non-reverb) and a Session 400 with an RV-5. There is something about the mix of them that I really liked.

Right now I am using the new steel amp I am building and am completely happy with it as a stand-alone amp. It is my prototype, serial #0001.

The new ones will have the ability to add a 4 ohm extension cabinet. Should be great.

If you want to hear the new tube amp go here:

http://foxvintageamps.com/classic_green_003.htm

[Brad Sarno]

I notice that tube amps are once again becoming revered by guitarists.

Well I gotta say that tube amps never stopped being revered by guitarists. It's been pretty hard to find a non-tube amp on stage with a guitar player ever since I was born. With steel players, there does seem to be a revival. I see a lot more guys cleaning up their old Twins and getting them out there and remembering what great steel guitar tone is all about. All the great recordings of the great steel guitar works thru history were made almost entirely thru tube amps. Except for just a few, tubes have ruled the tone world even for steel. The transistor thing has come out of the practicality of having lots of clean power and at a reasonable weight and also low maintenance. I've always felt it was a trade-off for utility over tone. There are some nice and clean sounding transistor amps, many were the discrete designs from the '70s such as the early Peavey steel amps, the early Evans, Webb, Sho-Bud...

But when it comes to the golden era of beautiful sounding steel guitar tone, vintage Buddy, most all Lloyd Green, classic Jimmy Day, Brumley, Jerry Byrd, Hughey, and the many other wonderful legends of the instrument, it was nearly entirely done with tubes.

And it's not just as simple as the even vs. odd ordered harmonics in the distortion, there's also a dynamic factor relating to how pick attack transients are treated and smoothed and sweetened by tubes. I'm a die hard tube amp guy (and I love this discussion/argument), but I've grown to thoroughly enjoy a hybrid setup with tubes mixed with transistor power amps. I never could play an entirely transistor setup. And I gotta admit, Buddy sure has some gorgeous sounding tones thru his all-transistor Peavey amps from back in the '70s. I guess when you have the "touch", you can make nearly anything sound good. I need all the help I can get.

Brad

[Ben Jones]

for some reason SS works fine for Bass and Steel , but sounds wretched on guitar.

my favorite steel tone is a slightly gritty tube amp. Lloyd Green on some recordings. But alot of those SS steel tones are fantastic too.

fender tube amps are very popular steel amplifiers. The Twin, The Showman, Supers, even deluxe reverbs, Pros, Ultralinear bassmans, i was surpised to find people playing tweed bassmans for steel. Brumley!

for me the reason for going with an SS Steel amp was weight and not wanting to gig vintage tube amps. I went with an Evans and am very happy with it. I have a showman at home and I almost never plug my steel into it because the evans has a nice sweet compressed tone that i dig on steel. on the other hand, I never plug a guitar into the evams with all those wonderful tube amps sitting right there in my studio.

[Geoff Cline]

for some reason SS works fine for Bass and Steel , but sounds wretched on guitar.

Until this week, I would have agreed with you Ben, but I just got a Pearce G2R combo with matching extension cabinet(NOS and dead mint) and it sounds AMAZING with my electric guitar(s) and PSG. It is 2 channel switching amp with built in Alessis effects (reverbs & delays). I was skeptical but I'm blown away.

I've been a tube guy my whole life and still am...but I'm an SS guy now too. Never would have imagined this myself but I'm looking forward to my gig tomorrow night with no pedal board and a relatively light combo that sounds great.

[T. C. Furlong]

I played a Pearce transistor amp for steel for years and I agree that it is a step above most transistor amps. For the past several years, I have really been loving the combination of a tube preamp (thanks Brad Sarno) with a high power audiophile grade class D amplifier. It's lower maintenance and much lighter than an all tube solution. It also sounds great to my ear. I have also been playing two preamps simultaneously, one solid state and one tube and that is really nice when you adjust to balance the richness of the tubes and the firmness of the solid state. Each preamp feeds a separate powered speaker. I also think that tubes is not better or worse as a general rule. It just what some players like. A great player will adjust his technique to get fabulous tone out of whatever they are plugged into.

I must also say that I plug into my Standel 50L15 or my Blackface Pro Reverb and it sure sounds like what those amps were made to do in their day. I'd even go as far as to say that it's a more retro sound than with a preamp/powered-speaker combination. In some playing settings, the retro sound would not be the best choice. In other settings, you just can't beat it. It's about having the right tool for the job.
TC

[Leslie Ehrlich]

But for clean pedal steel...

Clean pedal steel? What's that?

[Danny Hall]

Like Ken, I'm a builder and a player and have been for a very long time. One thing I have never tried building is a tube pre into a solid state power amp. I think in principle it should work ok for steel, but I would never play a Tele or Strat into one.

Like Ken also, I will begin experimenting with some things this summer for possible production. I gotta say though that in watching Ebay lately I'm seeing Showman and Super Showman going for $600ish. Any decent tech, such as Ken Fox or myself can add a buffered effects loop for any kind of reverb/delay/od/fuzz/whatever. I think that's really the way to go. Put it all in a rack or road case and I think you've got everything you need.

I was talking with Bob Hoffnar the other day about the merits of the Fane speakers. Bob runs a pair of 12". I'm not sure which model. I have on hand a 15" cabinet with an Altec 418 in it. I also like to run 4/eminence legend 10". My other favorite is the Celestion 12-65 12". Tall headroom can be MUCH a function of the right speaker. The old JBL D130 of course, but don't ignore the Altec 417 and 418 Alnico speakers. Not to be confused with the 417H which is a ceramic. You won't get that pure headroom. Whatever the amp is putting out is what you will hear. You will also get more harmonic content with multiple speakers than with singles.

Everything good is hard on the back. I'm itching to try some Neo's

I have a close friend (fellow amp builder/tech) who is the North American Fane distributor. I'll try to get some details on their offerings. Bob was pretty hot on the set he's running with his twin.

Danny

[Roger Kelly]

Here is some interesting reading on Tubes VS Solid State.

http://www.milbert.com/tstxt.htm

[Per Berner]

Well, there is at least ONE solid state amp that works very well with electric guitar – the Roland JC-120 with the Pioneer speakers. Indestructible build quality and sounds great with a twangy Telecaster. Even the built-in distortion (a very mild spice indeed) sounds good. And it weighs about half compared to a JBL-equipped Twin.

[Brad Sarno]

Here is some interesting reading on Tubes VS Solid State.

http://www.milbert.com/tstxt.htm

Wow, great article. 1972. Great stuff about the harmonics and nice subjective adjectives when describing the various harmonic distortion characteristics. Thanks for sharing.

Brad

[Roger Kelly]

Brad, Glad you found the article informative as I did.
I have known for years that a Tube Amplifier always seemed louder to my ears, for a given amp.Vol. setting while playing my guitar.

I seem to have to turn the volume settings up to get the same loudness from my Transistor 200-300 watt amps.

I have also noticed that 60 Watt Fender Tube Amps are as loud to my ears, as my 200 watt Steel King or 300 watt NV1000. I think this article gives a very good explanation why.

[Brad Sarno]

Not only does he help explain why we can get more loudness out of a tube amp of equal power due to the ability to musically clip, but he offers much more detail about the harmonic content of the distortion. People often say "transistors create odd ordered harmonics when they distort and tubes create even ordered harmonics when they distort". That's an oversimplification. There's actually quite a bit of odd harmonics in various tube distortions. It's more about the proportions of even and odd and which ones. He goes on to explain why clipped transistors sound bad and irritating to the ear, as well as why tubes sound fuller and warmer, even when not audibly distorting due to the high 2nd harmonic content.

Brad

[John Billings]

Was the Pearce amp FET by any chance? The only solid state amp I've liked for anything was the old Lab L-9. Rich-sounding, and very "tubey!" Sold it when I bought a Vegas. Was in tone hell for years with that thing! They're great amps I suppose, but just not for me. I'm back in tone heaven with my Twin.
Had a call to Neon Cactus for a session. I knew the engineer was a rocker, so I took along the Lloyd Green Little Darlin' cd. I said, "See? Clean." He looked at me and said, "JB, that's not really clean." He was right!

[J Fletcher]

Wonder what amp Lloyd Green used on the Little Darlin' stuff. On the back of the "Hit Sounds" LP, there's a pic with Lloyd,a Sho~Bud, and a solid state Standel...Jerry

[Brad Sarno]

Here's Lloyd's reply regarding those sessions and the amps he used:


Hi Brad,
The photo on the back of my Little Darlin' album, "The Hit Sounds" does
indeed show me playing through a Standel transistor amp, but it is
misleading.
That photo was shot by the late Hubert Long during the first recording ever
at Bradley's Barn in 1965. I had borrowed the Standel from Jerry Reed, the
singer, songwriter. He owned 5 of those amps, all of which blew out within
the first two weeks he had them. The one you see in my photo lasted all of
one song before it blew!
A few months later when I recorded my first instrumental album for Little
Darlin', Aubrey Mayhew, the owner and producer, asked if we could use that
photo for the back. Hubert Long agreed.....in exchange for 10 of my albums.
I actually recorded all three of my Little Darlin' albums at RCA "B" and
always used my 1965 Black-face Fender Deluxe/w a 12" D-120F JBL speaker. I
didn't switch to a Fender Twin until 1968, when we recorded the Charley
Pride "Live at Panther Hall" album.
But I never recorded with that ill-fated Standel transistor except for the
very first tune ever cut in Bradley's Barn.
The original sound of the Little Darlin' records was quite trebly, to say
the least, but by the time Mayhew mixed and compressed them, adding tons of
treble and reverb, my steel sounded like daggers. He called this his "Mayhew
Machine" mix and he mixed them for radio play, not for buyers turntables, so
the sound would literally jump out at you when they were played by the DJs
of the period. The original recording sound was more akin to early Lynn
Anderson and Charley Pride records which we cut in the same studio with the
same engineer, Al Pachucki.
In retrospect today I find the sound unpalatable but at that time I didn't
mind since nothing else on the radio had a steel guitar that sounded like
that. It got the desired attention and increased my session work, along with
the Paycheck and Warner Mack recordings , tremendously.
But, of course, I found my tone and sound much more acceptable on most of
the other records I was cutting in the 1960s. But I will reiterate, the
Little Darlin' sound was unique then, and now. It stands alone and when
today's scholars and journalists are writing about that era they invariably
want to discuss the Little Darlin' records and sound, not the Chet Atkins,
Owen Bradley or Paul Cohen material, at least with me.

Regards,
Lloyd Green

[Danny Hall]

That's great reading from Lloyd. On the Standel solid state amp; the music store that my band bought all of our stuff from asked us to demo one of those two twelve Standel amps. They were supposed to be 120 watts as I recall. I was playing rhythm on a Bandmaster and our lead took the Standel. After the first song, he unplugged and walked over to me and plugged himself into MY amp!. I spent the rest of the gig on the Standel not even being able to hear myself.

We took the Standel back and bought a twin for him. I continued with the Bandmaster for years. Those were all blackface days. Leo had just sold out and nobody new how important that would turn out to be.