Audio Myth Buster Thread

[miroslav]

The cool thing is that there are quite a few other style amps that sound great...yet sound nothing like any Fender or Marshall, which have their own great iconic sounds.

 

[RFR]

If you're gonna play guitar or record guitar, get lots of amps. Different ones, different flavors of sound. I have more amps than guitars.

I'll pick up a new amp thinking I'll offload another. Ha! It never happens.

I ain't complainin'

Bunches of good stuff out there.

 

[Farview]

The Mesa's like the Road King are set up to cobble together bits and pieces of everything. Switching between 6L6 and EL34 tubes changes the tone. Switching between solid state and tube rectifier changes the tone. It has several channels that are just preamps set up in slightly different configurations, One is more or less fender based, one is marshall based, etc...

It gets more interesting when you run all 6 power tubes, since they aren't all the same.

Just changing where the tone circuitry is in the signal chain completely changes the personality of the amp and how it distorts. Even if you don't change the frequency of the tone controls...

 

[Greg_L]

I guarantee that it was not Leo Fender who first figured it out.

Jim Marshall didn't actually build Marshalls either. The point is that they all basically came from the early Fender Bassman designs, which came from basic vacuum tube amplifier circuitry, and here we are.

 

[antichef]

antichef - Self noise in preamps comes in two different forms. Some have most of their noise basically before the gain so that - like you said - the noise stays proportional to the signal and gets turned up with everything else as gain is added. Others though have a sort of noise floor that must come "after" the gain, so that the noise level is fixed, and adding gain tends to bring the signal up without increasing the preamp noise. Some of course have a bit of both. With the first type you usually can just leave them all the way down and add gain ITB. With the second you're better off turning it up in analog. You need to figure out which category your specific preamps fit into.

I suppose it makes sense to me that the noise generating circuitry could come before or after the amplification stage in a preamp (or both, I suppose, but ideally neither) - I guess the preamps I have tend to make [more] noise first, then amplify. Thanks.

 

[ecc83]

I suppose it makes sense to me that the noise generating circuitry could come before or after the amplification stage in a preamp (or both, I suppose, but ideally neither) - I guess the preamps I have tend to make [more] noise first, then amplify. Thanks.

The basic principle to building a low noise audio SYSTEM is to put as much gain as is practicable in the first stage but there will always be a trade off between best noise performance and best headroom.

Many of the older guitar amp designs are not as quiet as they could be but like the "wrongness" of the 4x12 speaker, we love 'em anyway!
In the modern era with -100dB noise floors being easily within the grasp of the home recordists, low self noise in amps becomes an issue...For SOME people!

The "tone" (for want of a better word!) of an amp is very complex, you don't just cascade one valve into another, amplitude and filter networks are often used to change what is distorted, by how much and at what frequencies and distortion before a filter will sound differently from distortion after a filter. LOT! Of midnight oil, fags, tea and Bad Words involved in getting it "right" and even then only a small % of peeps will agree with the results!

Dave.

 

[antichef]

LOT! Of midnight oil, fags, tea and Bad Words involved in getting it "right"

Wow - lots of that going on in my neighborhood. I bet things will be better for me soon.

 

[Goldilox]

2) A strat, Tele or Les Paul. (Or some variation of those)

I've heard enough 335s, Rickenbackers and archtops sounding awesome to consider them more than 'exceptions' ' Chuck Berry; Cream era Clapton (y'know, when he was good); B.B. King; Chet Atkins; Brian Setzer; The Beatles; The Byrds; Pete Townsend - it could be a long list!

 

[ashcat_lt]

I've heard enough 335s, Rickenbackers and archtops sounding awesome to consider them more than 'exceptions' ' Chuck Berry; Cream era Clapton (y'know, when he was good); B.B. King; Chet Atkins; Brian Setzer; The Beatles; The Byrds; Pete Townsend - it could be a long list!

I've heard a bunch of Teiscos, Kays, and Harmonys that sounded pretty damn cool too. If you can't take the guitar you've got, plug it into the amp you've got, and get something useable out of it, then something is broken - guitar, amp, or (mor often than not) guitarist.

 

[Farview]

Depending on the context, of course. A tiesco into a Roland 120 isn't going to work in your death metal band...

 

[ashcat_lt]

Depending on the context, of course. A tiesco into a Roland 120 isn't going to work in your death metal band...

Not without something in between, probably. Course the pointed thing with EMGs crushing a Mesa or 5150 isn't going to work for your Cocteau Twins cover band.

The biggest myth in audio is that there is only one way to do it, only one way to get good tone, in fact that "good tone" is a singular term. The folks that we actually admire are usually the ones who ignored all that orthodoxy and did what they had to do to get the sound they needed to express what they were trying to express.