Why a guitar amp cost $500 bucks but a Tree audio mixer 22k?
- Thread starter LToro
- Start date
You are not, IMHO, comparing like with like to any fair degree.
To begin with a really good 50Wish watt guitar combo will be a lot more than $500, more $1400+. I chose 50W as an example because it is a useful yardstick. You can play almost all pubs and clubs with a decent 50watter.
The Tree Audio mixer is a very niche market product. Valve hybrid and, although it looks impeccably built from the website and I am sure is of superb quality, it is nonetheless a "boutique" product. Lusted after by many perhaps but owned by few and a luxury not many commercial studios could justify (to the beancounter!) for just 8 channels and very limited facilities.
If you look at mixer products from the likes of Allen and Heath and Soundcraft the dollars start to match up a bit with quality guitar amplifiers.
Dave.
Bobbsy
Boring Old Git
The Tree is VERY much a boutique product for a very limited market--dare I say a market with more money than sense.
Even if you jump above the likes of Soundcraft or Allen and Heath (which are good, workmanlike professional consoles) and into the Rolls Royce products like Midas, Cadac or Rupert Neve, the cost-per-channel is nothing like the Tree product.
Even if you jump above the likes of Soundcraft or Allen and Heath (which are good, workmanlike professional consoles) and into the Rolls Royce products like Midas, Cadac or Rupert Neve, the cost-per-channel is nothing like the Tree product.
Farview
Well-known member
Lets add a little more perspective.
Guitar amps are not full range amplifies with anything resembling a flat frequency response. Guitar amps are not high fidelity things
No one buys a mixer because it distorts well.
It's apples and oranges.
Quality tube mic preamps cost as much as a lot of guitar amps do. Now, multiply that by the 8 channels, add 8 tube limiters and 8 EQ sections. Then add two tube powered aux busses and a tube master section. Figure any one of those pieces would be $1000 minimum if you bought it separately. Oh, and the power supply has to pump out 220 volts to run the tubes instead of the 17-24 volts that a solid state console would use.
Everything about implementing high fidelity tube equipment is really expensive. Add to that the small number of people who really want it, and you have a recipe for an expensive piece of gear.
Guitar amps are not full range amplifies with anything resembling a flat frequency response. Guitar amps are not high fidelity things
No one buys a mixer because it distorts well.
It's apples and oranges.
Quality tube mic preamps cost as much as a lot of guitar amps do. Now, multiply that by the 8 channels, add 8 tube limiters and 8 EQ sections. Then add two tube powered aux busses and a tube master section. Figure any one of those pieces would be $1000 minimum if you bought it separately. Oh, and the power supply has to pump out 220 volts to run the tubes instead of the 17-24 volts that a solid state console would use.
Everything about implementing high fidelity tube equipment is really expensive. Add to that the small number of people who really want it, and you have a recipe for an expensive piece of gear.
Morning Jay,
there is another gem to be abstracted from your "perspective"...Noobs, Do Not Buy Cheap Valve Gear!
As Jay points out EVERYTHING to do with high end valve audio is expensive*. The professionals buy valve preamps for a specific reason and I am sure, do not stuff everything though them! Most of the time they use mixer channels or top end AI pres. The noob really does not need a valve mic amp and certainly not a $100 one! Then, valves fail, both catastrophically and gradually over time. Without the test gear and the knowhow you have no idea how the performance of a valve pre has changed over a year or two. Past a certain "mincrap" point, solid state gear just does not shift specc' for decades, possibly centuries!
*One area would be power supply regulation which I am sure is used in the Tree. Even most very high end "domestic" valve hi-fi uses unregulated supplies and lets the performance wander where it will at the whim of the utility company. This is not good enough in a piece of professional gear where gains and levels must be stable day in, day out.
Regulating the supplies in a solid state mixer is relatively trivial..NOT so for valve supplies!
Dave.
there is another gem to be abstracted from your "perspective"...Noobs, Do Not Buy Cheap Valve Gear!
As Jay points out EVERYTHING to do with high end valve audio is expensive*. The professionals buy valve preamps for a specific reason and I am sure, do not stuff everything though them! Most of the time they use mixer channels or top end AI pres. The noob really does not need a valve mic amp and certainly not a $100 one! Then, valves fail, both catastrophically and gradually over time. Without the test gear and the knowhow you have no idea how the performance of a valve pre has changed over a year or two. Past a certain "mincrap" point, solid state gear just does not shift specc' for decades, possibly centuries!
*One area would be power supply regulation which I am sure is used in the Tree. Even most very high end "domestic" valve hi-fi uses unregulated supplies and lets the performance wander where it will at the whim of the utility company. This is not good enough in a piece of professional gear where gains and levels must be stable day in, day out.
Regulating the supplies in a solid state mixer is relatively trivial..NOT so for valve supplies!
Dave.
Farview
Well-known member
Jusy adding to the point...
Your guitar amp doesn't sound the same from one day to the next. That is unacceptable in studio equipment.
I remember shopping for a Marshall, a jcm800 at the time, and every amp I plugged into sounded different. they were all brand new, same model and all 100 watters, but I still had to plug into at least 15 of them before I found one with the sound I was after. Don't get me wrong, they all sounded like marshalls, but none of them sounded exactly the same. It would be useless to have a mixer where all the channels were slightly different sounding.
There are dozens of reasons why tube guitar amps are reasonably cheap compared to tube hifi gear and tube studio gear.
Your guitar amp doesn't sound the same from one day to the next. That is unacceptable in studio equipment.
I remember shopping for a Marshall, a jcm800 at the time, and every amp I plugged into sounded different. they were all brand new, same model and all 100 watters, but I still had to plug into at least 15 of them before I found one with the sound I was after. Don't get me wrong, they all sounded like marshalls, but none of them sounded exactly the same. It would be useless to have a mixer where all the channels were slightly different sounding.
There are dozens of reasons why tube guitar amps are reasonably cheap compared to tube hifi gear and tube studio gear.
BroKen_H
Re-member
It's like comparing a Ford 4cylinder engine to a 8 liter Veryon W16. They have similar parts (cylinders, heads, valves), they perform the same basic function (push your vehicle down the road), but they are NOT the same kind of engine.
Just as $1.99 a lb B/S chicken breast on a grille tastes good, but coq au vin from a great French restaurant will blow your taste buds away! Both chicken, not the same.
Just as $1.99 a lb B/S chicken breast on a grille tastes good, but coq au vin from a great French restaurant will blow your taste buds away! Both chicken, not the same.