Quilter toneblock vs. Milkman The Amp vs. tube amp

[Steve Lipsey]

Quilter Toneblock vs. Milkman The Amp vs. tube amp - the tone, The Tone, THE TONE...

Well, in my search for lighter amps I'm coming up against simply not being able to abide the sterility of a solid-state amp (I don't know how to describe the actual physics of it, maybe harmonics?).

Some call it "clean", but even to my aging ears it just doesn't cut it......I know that is the classic steel tone of yesteryear (except for those willing to haul a Twin Reverb)...and respect those who are happy with it.

My Milkman Pedal Steel Mini (newish version with Soursound transformer that significantly raises the power) into a Missing Link Audio Hybrid JBL D-120 is pretty heavenly and doesn't weigh a ton....but I'm curious about how some of the super knowledgable folks out there (e.g. Dave Grafe) have gone with a Quilter Toneblock...although some of them do front-end it with a Steel Guitar Black Box to warm it up...

I use a Milkman The Amp at band practice, tried it through the Hybrid D-120, and even with the total tube preamp it just sometimes sounds sterile.

So....are you Quilter folks just willing to compromise on tone, or are you quite happy with the solid state thing? Or...Is the Quilter actually that much better than anything else at doing tube-like warm tone?

Thanks for your help with my quandary...

[Douglas Schuch]

In the past 10 years I have owned a Silverface Fender Bassman 135, a GK MB200, a Stereo Steel, a Milkman "The Amp", a Quilter TB 202, and now a Sesh 400 preamp/Jay Ganz power amp. Each is or has been loudly touted as great steel amps. I actually owned all but the last two at the same time for a while, which allowed me easy A/B testing. Here are my thoughts on each:

Fender Bassman 135 - in theory, this should have been a great steel amp. It wasn't. It was an old one, and not in the best of condition, so maybe it was just wore out. Heavy and bad tone? I gave it away.

Gallien Kruger MB 200 - I was just learning to play, so worked fine. But once I bought the Stereo Steel, I realized it was not at all the tone I wanted.

Stereo Steel - sounded great from the moment I plugged it in. I had a hard time getting a "bad" tone out of it. If I had not moved to a country that has 220V electrical (and very inconsistent at that, ranging from 170-220 in actual output) I would still be using it, I suspect.

Milkman was ordered as a small, light amp that could run on anything 100-250V when I was preparing to return to the Philippines when I retired. It was a nice amp, but I preferred the Stereo Steel's tone. I just never got that classic pedal steel tone from the Milkman.

Quilter - bought once in the PH, hoping for a replacement for the Quilter - small, light weight, runs on any voltage between 100 - 250. And BAM! There was that steel guitar tone, and with higher output. So I sold the Milkman to a guitar player.

Sesh 400/Straight Ahead Power Amp - I bought this because I was getting noise issues with my Quilter - but later figured out the noise issue came from putting my Korg Chromatic Tuner near my pedal board or amp. And this problem only arose when I switched from a Hilton volume pedal to a Goodrich passive volume pedal. Something about the pedal was allowing interference. So maybe I didn't really need it - but I love this rig. Again - BAM! That classic steel tone from the moment I powered it up. You can then tweak a lot to fine-tune it, but it's not hard finding the tone. And LOTS of power for gigs, yet easy to carry. So it's my main rig now.

I can plug into either the Sesh/SA, the Quilter, or the Stereo Steel, adjust the EQ until I like it, and then record it - and they all three sound the same. I've done this for sound samples for my friend Harry in Norway. Again, if I were in the US, I'd buy a clean used Stereo Steel and be happy. But here I have to lug around a very heavy transformer, and hope I remember to use it! I've blown the fuse once, and risk blowing the power amp section. So I don't use it much. I tried to sell it before leaving the US, but I was going to have to sell it so cheap, there just wasn't much point.

So my answer is, I use SS because I get the tone I want. I like clean tone. I generally don't want any distortion in my signal. When I do, it's easy to add via a pedal.

I should mention I also play blues harmonica. I've got a VHT 6-watt tube amp (similar to a Princeton circuit/setup), and owned a 40-watt Harp Train tube amp for a while. I can get an almost identical tone from my Quilter by using a Jr. Barnyard pedal in front of it. So I sold the Harp Train to a friend when I needed some dental work.

My understanding of tube amps is they only give their distinctive tube sound when you are pushing them to where they are starting to break up. If that's the tone you like, by all means, a tube amp will give it to you. I suspect you could get basically the same thing via a Jr. Barnyard or similar pedal, but for steel I like it clean.

In my experience, if you don't A/B test, your "observations" mean almost nothing. Ideally, you use an A/B pedal, so you can instantly change between rigs. Then, even better, get someone else to push the button on the pedal that switches - so you don't know which amp is playing. People tend to hear what they expect to hear. A blind test is better. If you do that and still love the tube amp more, by all means, use it. We all hear differently, and also seek different tones. Jim Lill's video on where the tone comes from in an amp is classic on people hearing what they thing they hear - almost like "this amp has hints of licorice and blackberry" or something: https://youtu.be/wcBEOcPtlYk?si=I13NtxiIcM7zPE8Y

[Rick Contino]

Steve:

Have you tried a quilter head? I play through a “aviator mach 3” head and love the tone. The only thing I find lacking is that special umph you get from a tube power amp.

I especially love all the modeling options and channel switching capabilities of the mach 3 head. Havent tried a “the amp” but have played through tube amps a lot. The tube amps lack the modeling options that are fun. If I had my druthers, I would send my mach 3 head into a tube, power amp and really be in town heaven!

[Steve Lipsey]

Folks-
Thanks for your replies, good info...but my actual question isn't how to get the "classic tone" which mostly is solid state...it is how to get that warm, rich tube tone that you get even when not pushing the power amp stage....solid state amps have a sterile quality that irks me...so...does the Quilter, (or other solid state amp)somehow actually eliminate that sterility?
It definitely comes form the power stage (or maybe preamp also), or the Milkman The Amp wouldn't have it...

[Dave Meis]

I use a Black Box ahead of my SS amps, and a Freeloader ahead of my tube amps. It's subtle, but I like what it does. I think Quilter does a good job of reducing the 'sterility' of SS with the ToneBlock circuitry and the addition of the BB works for me.

[Rick Contino]

Seems plenty warm and tubey tonewise to me. Curious to know what the experts think.

[Lee Rider]

I'm pretty happy with my Sarno Tonic preamp into a Ganz amp into an Altec 418B. Been down many rabbit holes searching for the right tone....

[Larry Dering]

For me the Quilter doesn't cut it. I have tried all sorts of equalizer and speaker cabinets but the highs are too brash and several different pedal steels make no difference. The Fender Tonemaster Twin was just OK, I still have it and 2 Tube Twins. I tried a Telonics TCA 500 and it's OK but not the tone I wanted. Best sound for me is a Sarno Tube Revelation preamp, Lexicon mpx1 processor and Stewart power amp into 2 12 inch cabinets equipped with TT speakers. I recently bought a Tonex pedal and plan on getting Joe Roger's presets into a powered speaker cabinet.

[Jameson Koweek]

I have found with my Milkman The Amp 100 that I am happiest with my tone when my treble and bass are turned up. You might want to start with your volume somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 way up, and then crank your treble and bass to the maximum amount and adjust them by subtracting.

I will add that it seems to sound best when it sees a 4ohm 15” speaker.

[Steve Lipsey]

I did use a Black Box when I briefly had an MB-200...it helped a lot, but didn't get me far enough away from solid-state-land...I don't use one with the Milkman the Amp, because it already has a tube preamp designed to do pretty much what the Black Box does...
On my Milkman tube amps, I pretty much run the Low/mid/high tones straight up...Milkman amps don't need a mid cut (Tim Marcus once explained why to me)...every tone is good, it just is about what you prefer...I change based on speaker in use and room acoustics...
I do the same on the The Amp....straight up seems pretty balanced...but I will try the subtractive method and see what happens...
People on this thread mostly are talking about what they "like", but I'm still waiting for someone to explicitly say they can hear the sterile solid state sound and that a Quilter (or other solid state setup) doesn't have it and can be warm and full...
It is a similar thing to the piezo "quack" that comes from piezo bridge pickups on acoustic guitars/dobros (listen for it, you will hear it)...on dobros, the Jerry Douglas Aura pedal completely eliminates the quack and sounds like a pure acoustic tone...

[Jameson Koweek]

I can say that I had a quilter tone block and the milkman at the same time and sold the quilter. It definitely had a tube-like quality and a wonderful sound for a telecaster, but I could never find a way to get the steel sound I was after with it. Maybe it has something to do with humbucker (BL712 in my desert rose) vs. the single coils.
That being said, there are some players that get a remarkable tone out of them but alas I wasn’t one.

[Marco Schouten]

A few years ago I was testing amps at a friends place, comparing my Quilter Steelaire and Evans SE200 with his Peavey Nashville an his Fender Twin Reverb with the orange JBL speakers. Part of the experimment was trying to dial in the Quilter to make it sound the same as the Twin Reverb. It came close but not 100 %. Then we let the Quilter play through those JBL speakers and our jaws fell to the floor. There it was!
I think that a Quilter Toneblock through the right speker will sound as a tube amp. I envision a Toneblock with a cabinet with the new Milkman speaker would be fantastic.

[Dave Grafe]

Quilter 202 through a JBL K130 suits me well enough that I sold my Webb and shaved 20 lbs of the load. BUT before you spend your money check out Quilter's SuperBlock US, only 30w of speaker power but a solid line out to feed a remote power amp, and yes the "65" tone stack setting matches my 64 Vibroverb perfectly.

[Bob Hoffnar]

One of the differences,to my ear, between SS, digital, hybrid and tube on a fundamental level is in the attack. When you pick you get a different visceral and sonic response from every system. All have there place. One amp that hasn't been mentioned yet that was used to originally create the classic sound (along with old Fenders) would be Standel. There new hybrid amp that the current Standel builds is fantastic. I personally carry around my tube amps for the most part these days.

[Steve Lipsey]

Dave-
Yeah, that Superblock is interesting..but it isn't powerful enough to run standalone, and trying to manage sending it to the PA (levels would be hard) or having to drag a power amp also....are discouraging. Probably as you found out, so you now use the 202...

BUT...can the 202 duplicate the '65 Superblock tone with the right EQ?

[Dave Grafe]

Dave-
Yeah, that Superblock is interesting..but it isn't powerful enough to run standalone, and trying to manage sending it to the PA (levels would be hard) or having to drag a power amp also....are discouraging. Probably as you found out, so you now use the 202...

BUT...can the 202 duplicate the '65 Superblock tone with the right EQ?

Very very close, at the moment I use the 202 with the K130 for stage use and the SBUS/TT12 for practice and recording, I dial them both up the same:

202 EQ @ "VINT" and SBUS EQ @ "65"
I dial them both up just like I would a BF Twin Reverb:
Treble @ 3-4
Mids @ 6-7
Lows @ 6-8

"NORM" CAB SIM option on both

Limiter @ 4 on both units, preserving headroom without dulling the attack edge

On the 202 I run the Input gain very hot and adjust master/power between to suite the space, usually 25 watts in small settings and a bit less than 100 watts on stage.

On the Superblock I run the Master wide open and the input gain like I would a BF Fender amp, i.e. 3-4, as it begins to clip earlier than the 202. Just like an older Fender circuit, only with the SBUS you can choose "59" Tweed, "61" Brownface, or "65" Blackface tone stacks and two speaker emulation models.

I have used the Superblock Line Out to drive the effects return on both the Webb and Quilter 202 with excellent results provided I started with the Master wide open for full line level with modest input settings.

So yeah...

[Steve Lipsey]

OK, thanks to all of you...It is a purely personal decision, and I decided that being as tubey as possible is important to me, so I'll stick with the Milkman "The Amp"- the Fender Bassman-ish tube front end wins the day...and I'll keep carrying the Pedal Steel Mini around for longer than I actually want to before switching 100% to The Amp, because I prefer that "angels singing" tone to anything else...