green amps (enviromentally friendly)

[Alfang]

My main amp is a Tech21 60 watt 4x10 combo, and I love it.  It's got a wide sweat spot, in other words it doesn't need to be blasting loud to sound good.  Those guys did their homework and found a way to make a solid state amp sound as close to tubes as you can get.

As far as superior in design.... Solid state is far more complex, and I would say thusly superior design.  Tube amps are simple in design.  I'm not arguing the better sound of one over the other, just sayin.........Tubes probably better loud.

I do have a modeling amp and it sucks, all the sounds are .....I don't know, forced, hollow, distant, sterile? I don't know

 

[Jusatele]

Environmental issues are hard, trying to do something for the environment is even harder as you get it from all sides.
Problem is, most schemes are not all that well thought out. What would be the carbon foot print of all the prep work to get the used material in shape to use it again, Just to clean it uses up resources of water and pollutes streams with soap residues. The entire separate, file, transport , dismantle and reuse 20 percent is very wasteful. Unfortunately recycle has to be done in bulk before it works, separating for specialty industries adds to the waste of the system, it is an all or nothing process of glass this way, metals that way,plastics this way,rubber that way, et al.
Plus we are at a point in this world were we ship off our trash to underdeveloped nations to have them specialty recycle and the environmental damage of the waste we do not need to see because it is in their backyard not ours. With current populations, nations struggling to develop, and the fact that we say we want to help but continue to consume resources so fast we keep looking for poor nations to let us rape forest of exotic woods and dump our waste we have created a cycle that will only break when there is no more.
Then there are the programs that do not work that are government mandated and illegal to not do. I can name a few stupid laws. 1. the death of the incandescent bulb , we now have to use compact florescent, by Law.  So we took a item that cost pennies to make, was a simple process and used very little material and forced its replacement with an item that has mercury in it, cost dollars to make because of the materials used and the complexity, Needs to be recycled not thrown away because of the foot total product has ceramics,mercury and electronics in it, not to mention sells for 3 times the price. And they tell us we have to do it so save energy. I ask what is the energy cost to produce it over the old ones? 2. the so called green belt in my city, they want to save it, OK 100 years ago there was a huge and thriving citrus industry here, seas of orange trees as far as you could see. But because of land is cheap we sold off thousands of acres to build housing tracts. The city soon realized that they had only a very narrow strip that was once a sea so the enacted laws about how the land could be used, how many acres per building so that the strip of citrus could be saved from development, So guys started to turn the water off and have the trees die, then the city came in and said if it was citrus land they had to maintain so many citrus trees per acre. The area has turned into a upper class area for mini ranches, 5  acre plots, big houses and the allotted amount of citrus trees, all watered and maintained. but never harvested. What they have done is created an area for the rich that is beautiful but consumes vast quantities of water.
I cannot understand such laws, I do understand one thing. Want to do something positive for the future of the earth? Do not have children. We need a significant drop in population to make it healthy again.

 

[Patrick from Davis]

Lets not forget that the processes for making integrated circuits that are required for software based modeling amps is not a very clean process.  The early pioneers of the manufacturing used lots of really nasty acids to etch things, and produced some horrid chemical byproducts in the process including PCB's, or the family of compounds that dioxin is part of.  Nineteen of the twenty-nine superfund sites in the Silicone Valley were from high tech firms that contaminated the area.

While no one can think of everything, I think that being mindful of trying to not waste/pollute is the first step, and that individuals with that approach can indeed help.
Patrick

 

[Superlizard]

If everyone stuck to playing air guitar, Mother Earth wouldn't have to suffer so much.

 

[bagman67]

If everyone stuck to playing air guitar, Mother Earth wouldn't have to suffer so much.

And neither would my ears.  Can you imagine the pristine silence of a [Air] Guitar Center on a Saturday afternoon?

 

[Cagey]

If everyone stuck to playing air guitar, Mother Earth wouldn't have to suffer so much.

That's true. But, it's no reason to ignore technology.

For instance, everything that lives, eats. Everything that eats, poops. Would it be better if we didn't have wastewater or sewage treatment plants? Depends on which tree-hugger you talk to. Some of them would rather we all die as a result of our being alive so that the planet would remain clear of shit, never considering that vast amount of shit that exists doesn't even come from humans.

Many things are that way. Some people get all worked up over mercury, lead, gold, arsenic, and other base metals.  They never consider that you can't "make" any of those things. They're base elements. They were there long before humans, and will continue to be there whether humans are here or not. Are they poisonous? Of course. So, you take due and timely notice thereof, and govern yourself accordingly.

The squeaky wheel always gets the grease, so a small number of radicals who make enough noise will always get attention before it's realized that appeasing them has far-reaching negative implications for a much, much larger majority who wasn't suffering in the first place. But, who can stand the incessant squeaking?

 

[Superlizard]

That's true. But, it's no reason to ignore technology.

For instance, everything that lives, eats. Everything that eats, poops. Would it be better if we didn't have wastewater or sewage treatment plants? Depends on which tree-hugger you talk to. Some of them would rather we all die as a result of our being alive so that the planet would remain clear of shite, never considering that vast amount of shite that exists doesn't even come from humans.

Many things are that way. Some people get all worked up over mercury, lead, gold, arsenic, and other base metals.  They never consider that you can't "make" any of those things. They're base elements. They were there long before humans, and will continue to be there whether humans are here or not. Are they poisonous? Of course. So, you take due and timely notice thereof, and govern yourself accordingly.

The squeaky wheel always gets the grease, so a small number of radicals who make enough noise will always get attention before it's realized that appeasing them has far-reaching negative implications for a much, much larger majority who wasn't suffering in the first place. But, who can stand the incessant squeaking?

But it's already too late.

According to my calculations based upon the latest Global Warming stats and the movie "2012",
life as we know it will end in 2012; squeakers (especially) included.

 

[Patrick from Davis]

The difficulty with ignoring the warnings is that large scale abuses have already happened.  In California in the 1850's on to the 1960's it is estimated that tens of thousands of tons of mercury was used and not recovered from gold mining operations.  In a previous job, I got to study the crash of the Striped Bass population in California, and in every sample fish we acquired, there were elevated mercury levels.  Not to mention long banned pesticides that had decomposed in to estrogenic molecules that cause unnatural hormone shifts in animals, and pesticides that cause DNA damage.  There are signs on the rivers that warn not to eat the fish from the waters more than once every two months because of the levels of material in the fish.  In the last thirty years populations of species have crashed by over three orders of magnitude.  Certainly the elements were here long before us, but we concentrated them and used them with out regard for anything else.

While I am not a tree hugging radical, the facts are sobering.  So when some one wishes to attempt to conduct business in a manner that is not as impactful on the environment, I will applaud.  If the amp from this business sounds good, I am more likely to support it.  I think it is a good idea to proceed with some thought about the consequence of your actions, rather than to write it off as appeasing a small number of the population.
Patrick

 

[Cagey]

According to my calculations based upon the latest Global Warming stats and the movie "2012", life as we know it will end in 2012; squeakers (especially) included.

It's entirely possible. It's going to depend heavily on whether or not the majority of US citizens want to continue to rapidly destroy the country or begin to repair it.

 

[Jusatele]

According to my calculations based upon the latest Global Warming stats and the movie "2012", life as we know it will end in 2012; squeakers (especially) included.

It's entirely possible. It's going to depend heavily on whether or not the majority of US citizens want to continue to rapidly destroy the country or begin to repair it.

Cagey, everyone wants cuts till it effects them, so do you actually think we are going to cut?

 

[OzziePete]

Years ago, gasolene (petrol) was aby product of the in demand product of kerosene - which was being used for power production and lighting/ cooking etc.

Someone got to working on the waste product (gasolene) and the result was it could be burned and then soon they had  an engine to work off it. I also believe the first diesel engine ran on what we would term today as biodiesel.

So the use of waste products has been of great benefit before and ended up reshaping what we use for power consumption.

I think that wherever there is humans there is shitee, no doubt about it. Some of that shitee may flow more freely in places in Arizoona, but truthfully, it's everywhere.

It DOES make sense to work on making human waste a bio fuel......but how does all this environmental talk relate to someone wanting to build an amp?  :dontknow:

the best any small time manufacturer of goods can do is take advice from their local councils about their waste, and also what measures they can do to recycle (though as mentioned above that is labour intensive and can work out less efficient environmentally wise if you factor in the 'carbon footprint' to do all that work).

 

[Cagey]

According to my calculations based upon the latest Global Warming stats and the movie "2012", life as we know it will end in 2012; squeakers (especially) included.

It's entirely possible. It's going to depend heavily on whether or not the majority of US citizens want to continue to rapidly destroy the country or begin to repair it.

Cagey, everyone wants cuts till it effects them, so do you actually think we are going to cut?

What's this "we" stuff? You got a mouse in your pocket? <grin>

This isn't up to us, directly. The votes for various administrative and legislative moves will align with what effect it will have on the upcoming votes for those who can make those moves. The people who decide such things don't want to lose their jobs, or more importantly, their perks and position and future earning potential. The last batch who tested that lost huge. The public memory is astoundingly short, but many of the issues that led us to this point are still hot. Some massive reversals on relatively few items would do nearly magical things for the whole situation, but they aren't going to occur until the power to block those moves is itself removed. I know I'm being somewhat evasive here, but...

If I'm curt with you it's because time is a factor.
I think fast, I talk fast and I need you guys to act fast if you
wanna get out of this. So, pretty please... with sugar on top.
Clean the fricken car.​

 

[Superlizard]

It's entirely possible. It's going to depend heavily on whether or not the majority of US citizens want to continue to rapidly destroy the country or begin to repair it.

I'm doing my part to help save the nation; come next week I'm joining a commune in California.

We'll do drugs, play (air) guitar and sing folk songs... all for the common good.

 

[pabloman]

Stop poking fun. You're going to hurt my feelings and then you won't be able to sit with the cool kids at lunch.

 

[OzziePete]

It's entirely possible. It's going to depend heavily on whether or not the majority of US citizens want to continue to rapidly destroy the country or begin to repair it.

I'm doing my part to help save the nation; come next week I'm joining a commune in California.

We'll do drugs, play (air) guitar and sing folk songs... all for the common good.

Mark Lindsay in disguise?  :icon_scratch:

 

[Strat Avenger]

"Carbon footprint" my ass. 

 

[kboman]

I like the premise of this thread, using as few resources as possible is always a good thing regardless of circumstances. I think the least resource usage comes from buying used gear though.