Klarinet Archive - Posting 000352.txt from 2004/09

From: Bill Hausmann <bhausmann1@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] A bit off topic: vacuum tubes in amplifiers ??
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 00:23:04 -0400

At 11:15 PM 9/20/2004 -0400, Mark Charette wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Ormondtoby Montoya [mailto:ormondtoby@-----.net]
> > To Mark, Benjamin Maas, etc:
> >
> > While my daughter was taking her first electric bass guitar lesson
> > today, a fellow in the store told me that transistorized amplifiers
> > cannot equal the range of response that an amplifier with vacuum tubes
> > has.
> >
> > Is this true? Or is it more a matter of economcs (sufficient
> > transistor circuits to equal old-time vacuum tubes would cost more than
> > the average customer wants to pay). Or is it simply incorrect?
>
>Tubes overload & respond differently than transistors - they sound
>different. For a very long time transistor amps just clipped overloads,
>causing harsh tones. They ended up with abad rep for a long time.

Tubes clip, too, but they tend to do it more "softly." A good thing, since
square waves are BAD for speakers!

>Nowadays, transistor amplifiers are much more forgiving and are in some
>sense better than tubes ever were - the response can be a lot flatter than
>tubes were and overload protection can be a lot "gentler". Indeed, you can
>buy active preamp/equalizers to give a transistor amp the old "warm" tube
>sound and if you closed your eyes you really couldn't tell the difference.
>There was another thing inherent in tube amps - when you replaced the tubes
>when they burned out it might not sound the same. In my younger days I had a
>tube amp where I had to buy the 2 output tubes as a matched set, or bad
>things would happen to the sound and longevity of the final output stage.

New circuits can emulate the distortion behaviors of tube amps. But the
transistor's most significant advantage besides accuracy is stability --
the sound does not change as they age.

>Transistor amps are considerebly less expensive than tube amps of any
>complexity; the tube amps have a premium "cachet" attached to them, and the
>tubes themselves are incredibly expensive. I think all tube production has
>moved to Russia now.

Russian electronics continued to use tubes long after most western
applications abandoned them, even for military aircraft avionics. They do
have the advantage there of being less susceptible to electromagnetic pulse.

Bill Hausmann

If you have to mic a saxophone, the rest of the band is TOO LOUD!

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