Torment Leaves Scars
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Bagman67 said:
I can't recall what it was called, but someone told me if I did this, I'd need some sort of device that would prevent damage from happening.
Blackstar amps
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I can't recall what it was called, but someone told me if I did this, I'd need some sort of device that would prevent damage from happening.
Patrick from Davis
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Naw, that will just get you the mythical power tube distortion. Much smoother sound, if you can withstand the thermonuclear sonic blast. Think the solo sound of the Sultans of swing. Preamp clipping sounds like a distortion box (well more like that). This is of course for tube amps, clipping a solid state power amp will trash your amp and speakers. It will age the power tubes a bit more running them at full bore, but I don't find myself "at 11" all that often, so I generally don't mind doing it. But, it shouldn't really harm the amp. Harm only happens if things fail and shorts or breaks happen.
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Cagey
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It's difficult to get power amp distortion without over-driving it with the preamp. When you crank the master, all you're doing is opening the door between the preamp and power amp. If nothing's coming in, nothing happens. And of course, all points in between. So, you can crank your master to 11, but if the preamp is at 1, it's gonna be pretty clean. Probably as clean as it can get.
Power amp distortion is largely over-hyped. It's difficult to get unless you really crank everything. At that point, with a tube amp, you get some odd-order harmonic distortion at some point, which continues until you get into clipping distortion. That's sometimes desirable in tube amps, depending on the sound you want. In solid state amps, you never want clipping distortion - it's awful. It's why many of the older SS amps have such a bad reputation. Even-order harmonics and hard clipping. To call it "harsh" is an understatement. It's an ice pick in the ear.
A lot of what's called power amp distortion is actually power supply sag. There's an inverse relationship between voltage and current in a constricted circuit, so if you try to draw more current than is available, the voltage drops. That changes how the tube behaves. It's not linear any more. This is also frequency dependant, as lower frequencies require more power than higher ones do (more area under the curve). All that variation is why it has traditionally been somewhere between difficult and impossible to model tubes with solid state devices, which are highly linear. The natural compression that occurs with tubes is almost infinitely variable. It's also delicious, sonically, which is why tube amps are still popular. These days, there are tricks you can do with solid state stuff, but it requires a lot of expensive processing power.
It's a balancing act.
In any event, as long as you stay withing design parameters, none of it "hurts" the amp. It just changes the way it sounds. Sometimes you want it louder or softer, sometimes you want it more or less distorted. If anything gets hurt, it's usually the speakers. They can only dissipate so much heat, and if you exceed that, you'll either warp or open the voice coils. Either way, it's trashed.
Power amp distortion is largely over-hyped. It's difficult to get unless you really crank everything. At that point, with a tube amp, you get some odd-order harmonic distortion at some point, which continues until you get into clipping distortion. That's sometimes desirable in tube amps, depending on the sound you want. In solid state amps, you never want clipping distortion - it's awful. It's why many of the older SS amps have such a bad reputation. Even-order harmonics and hard clipping. To call it "harsh" is an understatement. It's an ice pick in the ear.
A lot of what's called power amp distortion is actually power supply sag. There's an inverse relationship between voltage and current in a constricted circuit, so if you try to draw more current than is available, the voltage drops. That changes how the tube behaves. It's not linear any more. This is also frequency dependant, as lower frequencies require more power than higher ones do (more area under the curve). All that variation is why it has traditionally been somewhere between difficult and impossible to model tubes with solid state devices, which are highly linear. The natural compression that occurs with tubes is almost infinitely variable. It's also delicious, sonically, which is why tube amps are still popular. These days, there are tricks you can do with solid state stuff, but it requires a lot of expensive processing power.
It's a balancing act.
In any event, as long as you stay withing design parameters, none of it "hurts" the amp. It just changes the way it sounds. Sometimes you want it louder or softer, sometimes you want it more or less distorted. If anything gets hurt, it's usually the speakers. They can only dissipate so much heat, and if you exceed that, you'll either warp or open the voice coils. Either way, it's trashed.
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Cagey said:
So when I have the Master Volume on around 3.5 and the Channel Volume cranked all the way up, I'm getting preamp distortion, but if it were vice-versa, I'd be getting power tube distortion?
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Unless the master is cranked into the upper ranges, there's no appreciable distortion created in the power amp section. It depends on the amp, but usually you have to get above 6 or 7 on a scale of 1-10. Some amps are purposefully designed in such a way that they won't do it at all. They just get louder as you crank 'em up. Some of the old Ampegs were that way, for instance, and most solid state amps are that way.
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It also depends a lot on the tubes used. 6550's are really hard to get to distort, and metal heads like them because of this. EL34's and EL84's tend to be easier to get to distort, giving them a warmer, more fuzz tone in comparison to the 6550 (or 6L6's for that matter) Cagey is correct that the pre amp does tend to break up as well, but when looking at modern amps, the dirty channels are designed to break up by cascading preamp signals, making the amp clip and distort at lower volume outputs. Take a Fender Hotrod deluxe, on the clean channel they used to not have the master volume knob in the signal path. It is a 40 watt amp, and if you keep cranking the gain, or have an attenuator, it will get to that Sultans of Swing solo tone. It is not like the dirty channel so much because that is a number of preamp tubes cascading into each other, this is just a bunch of signal going to the output tubes. You can get really techno weenie about all of this, truth be told, it depends on the circuit. But, as a rule of thumb, the preamp gain will sound much buzzier, like modern metal, and power tube gain will be much smoother than that, but at insane volumes unless you take measures like attenuation or a 0.5 to 5 watt amp.
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bagman67
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I dunno about the Blackstar, never having played through one, but I picked up a Vox AC4TV that I am really very happy with. It has a built in attenuator so you can play it at 1/4 watt, 1 watt, or 4 watts, and get very different sonic characteristics at each wattage. I also picked up a closed-back 1x12 cab for it and that really beefs up the low end compared to the quite serviceable built-in 10" speaker.
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Patrick from Davis said:
I like the real sludgy, deep, "loose" sound, kinda like Pantera. Dimebag Darrell did use a solid state for most of his career, though.
I like a loose sound with a lot of "thrum" behind it, not so much a tight, "scratchy" sound.
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Bagman67 said:
I've played through a few Vox tube amps and they've sounded great.
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Mayfly said:
Haha! That's great!
arty07:
DangerousR6
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That's sofa king hilarious.... :headbang1:Mayfly said:
justinianus
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I own a Blackstar HT-5 (without the reverb) and an HT-60, and they both rock. You can definately do metal with an HT-5, with the controls set at about 12 o'çlock you get a really nice in between mesa and marshall sound, you really don't need much more gain than 3/4. Metal players seem to believe the sound of their favourite bands needs as much gain as possible, but that just makes things muddy, where as a lot of bands get their big sound on records by dubbing two mid-gain tracks. I would suggest getting a 2x12 cab with a Celestion Greenback and a Vintage 30, or something comparable, that really beefs up your sound and makes the Blackstars suitable for all styles. I ocasionally use a Blackstar HT-Dual to give the gain of the amps a small boost (the least amount of gain on the pedal as possible on channel 2), but it's more to give more focus on the mid range, I really dig their sound.
I had no idea this thread existed, but I've been looking into getting either a Vox AC4C1 or a Blackstar HT-5R. I test drove both of them yesterday, and still can't decide. They're both great, but so, soo different. I'd like to get both, but the husband says no.
stratamania
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The Blackstar HT5R has two channels whereas the Vox AC4C1 has one. If i was to choose between them I would go for the Blackstar. I do actually have an HT5R and if you wanted to get Vox like tones at some point you could get a AC type pedal to use with the Blackstar clean channel. There is a Wampler Ace 30 or a Carl Martin AC tone, I think there may be one by Joyo also.
stratamania
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Plug Sue into the Blackstar, and rock out, seems like a plan :icon_thumright:
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