I Feel Like I’ve Been Drinking Red Bull
August 27th, 2010Original Music at Last
I got a nice guitar breakthrough yesterday. I finally found time to start working on my own music.
And what do I mean by “my music”? Of course, I am referring to Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Honey Bee.”
I realize I did not write this song. But the transcription I have poops out after the intro, moving into a long section where all you do is whack a couple of strings once in a while, as the vocalist sings. I did not buy a pile of guitars and 4 amps so I could be a vocalist. I want to PLAY. So I’m filling in the missing stuff.
It looks like the cheap Crate amp I got years ago will be useful. It was moldering next to an old PC for years. It’s solid state, and it’s not what you would call a prize, but it’s perfect for working on tablature. I park it by the couch, and I sit there with a guitar, playing at low volume while I work. You don’t need perfect tone to do this, and a cheap solid state amp is a big convenience. I don’t have to use pedals. I just flip the “on” switch and go.
I have to wonder if I should look at a decent solid state amp. I love my tube amps, but I can’t say I’ve given solid state a fair shake. The Crate is bottom-end junk. It’s not a good sample.
Here’s something funny: if you listen to tube amp samples while shopping, you’re almost always listening to digital recordings played through solid state electronics. Think about it. Imagine you go to a manufacturer’s website, and you listen to an MP3 sample. The sample is digital, and you’re listening through your PC’s solid state audio system made with super-cheap Chinese components. How can the sample sound good, if solid state kills tone?
There are two things I like about solid state amps. First, they last forever, with no maintenance, no matter what you do to them. Second, you don’t have to turn them up to get the best sound. They’re also cheap; so I guess that’s three things.
I have two tube amps, and they attenuate down to 1/4 and 1/10 of a watt, and I still can’t turn them up much, because the sound would crack the plaster in the walls. With solid state amps, the sound seems pretty much the same all over the volume dial.
A long time ago, I went to Guitar Center, and some salesman played a cheap Fender solid state amp (the word “Bronco” sticks in my mind), and he insisted the obsession with tubes was stupid. I have to admit, the amp sounded great. But he was playing very distorted stuff, and he was all excited about “crunch.” The amp had all sorts of “crunch,” but I don’t recall whether it had warmth and presence, which are the tube-amp qualities I like.
Even if tubes are important, how much can they matter in the output stage? I have a solid state stereo which reproduces tube sounds (and the human voice and every other sound) just fine. Seems to me that a tube preamp stage ought to dominate a solid state power stage. Maybe I’m wrong. There are amps out there that have tube preamps and solid state output transistors, though. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe the stuff related to headroom and clipping comes mostly from the power stage.
Whatever the situation is at the moment, if solid state amps don’t sound as good as tubes right now, they definitely will in a few years. Technology improves constantly, and there is no physical reason why we can’t make perfect solid state amps. I’ve read dubious arguments about digital and solid state products creating “square” or “jagged” sound waves or “odd harmonics.” The proof is in the sound, though, and as far as I can tell, my solid state stereo has no problem reproducing tube sounds so well they are indistinguishable from what you would hear sitting next to a guitar amp.
You can Google around and find listening tests and articles by amp designers suggesting that the tube craze is mostly hype, and that tubes don’t really sound better in blind tests, so I think I should check out some solid-state amps once I really get it together. Maybe they won’t do the job, but maybe they will, and a solid state or hybrid amp would save me a lot of aggravation. Maybe I should look at a Fender Super Champ XD.
I’m pretty excited about writing my own variations and tunes, because it will help me get to know the instrument and amps and effects from the inside out, and it will lead to the development of a signature sound (for better or worse).
This is going to work out. Pretty cool. Allow me to reference Psalm 37:4 yet again.
August 27th, 2010 at 4:49 PM
Steve, I was playing today (also) a good deal of SRV. I was even playing bass parts, but going back to the guitar every so often, and…. I felt really good too.
Today is the 20th anniversary of SRV untimely death. As you always said, call this a coincidence.
For the record, I do not touch red bull. Espresso is my venom of choice!
PS
Get Guitar Pro. You will enjoy it.
August 28th, 2010 at 12:06 AM
A friend had a project which involved digitizing samples of speech from an analog tape, and storing it in a solid state memory. He told me that 90% of the digital data could be discarded without noticeably degrading the reconstituted speech. Not sure how this would apply to music. However, from photography, I can point out that a perfectly accurate photograph is not appealing to most people. What they like is a boost in color saturation and general contrast. What most respond to is the re-creation of the visual experience, even if they weren’t there the first time. Art might only have to touch base with reality once in a while.
August 28th, 2010 at 12:38 PM
It’s not the transistors Steve – it’s the cables. You gotta use $$$ Monster cables /snark..
August 28th, 2010 at 6:37 PM
Tubes do sound better, but like you hinted at, it’s kinda like owning a Ferarri – expensive, constant maintenance, a bitch to find parts, and if you don’t use it the way it was intended, it kinda makes you think what’s the point? But oh man, what a sound..
A Tube preamp with a solid state amp would probably be the best compromise, but like you said, even all solid state amps sound pretty good, and with all the relatively cheap signal processing gear available these days, you can come fairly close.
Now if only I had the money for a Hartke half stack. 🙂
August 28th, 2010 at 9:36 PM
I’ve had a couple of Peavey transistor amps. The first one was a 20W with switchable saturation that I liked a lot. Then it got stolen or something, and I got a 65W Peavey Bandit with a saturation dial and a separate Presence control. I now use it every day, 20+ years later. It’s integrated, and needs no accessories or effects to totally rock.
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I really like crunchy amps. These Peaveys are beyond crunchy, they’re downright crispy. I guess I wouldn’t describe the sound as “warm”. I find that my Peavey sounds best with the Presence cranked to its maximum positive value.
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Anyway, Peavey saturation is some GOOD distortion, and because you can separately control saturation, preamp and main volume, you can get whatever sound you want at whatever volume. It’s easy to set it so you can ring clean notes with a gentle touch, then get some burn and buzz when you play a little harder.
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As I said, it’s been twenty years, so I don’t know how the late-model Peaveys stack up against other amps and manufacturers. When I bought my amp, the Peavey was really the only satisfactory thing I could find. Other amps, at the time, did not compare.
August 29th, 2010 at 3:03 AM
Back in the late 1970’s at Georgia Tech I had a friend who was a great living room guitar player. Sound levels were always a problem in the dorm except in the middle of Saturday afternoon when the college football games were going on at the stadium next door.I don’t think that he ever set foot on a stage in a band to this day but his “real” blond Fender Strat…with a white pickplate (more or less the same as Jimi Hendrix payed strung upside down because he was left handed) sounded great played through the auxillary input in an old reel to reel tape player/recorder which was all solid state and he cranked it up to about eight or nine on the volume and the sound he got “rocked.” I think that practice and technique matter most with any instrument and can be developed with what ever stuff you have on hand at the moment. I know drummers with $10,000 worth of drums and cymbals who can’t hold a candle to guys that play a high hat and a bass and snare with a few beat up sticks and some brushes, so my suggestion is that you keep on working on your callouses and picking and try to get some soul and feeling into your delivery…and leave the tube versus solid state argument to the nerds who really can’t do anything but make loud noise.
August 30th, 2010 at 2:26 PM
Okay, this is funny.
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When I bought the Peavey amp I mentioned in my previous comment, I was playing punk and heavy metal music with a Les Paul clone. I used to crank the preamp, saturation, the low and the high. And I’d zero the midrange. This was a great guitar sound, but with those extreme settings, the presence control didn’t really do anything.
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There are two inputs on the amp, a high gain and a low gain. There’s another control called “norm. gain preamp” which appears to be independent and unrelated to the controls in the “lead gain” bloc, and it never seemed to do anything either. I always figured it was a separate volume control for the low gain input. I kept it zeroed.
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Fast forward twenty years and multiple musical incarnations. I’ve been playing unplugged acoustic instruments for the last few years. Only about three months ago did I get around to installing a pickup in my concert axe because I wanted to play shows again. That’s when I got out my old Peavey.
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Since I’m now playing a large and eclectic repertoire on a very different instrument, my old extreme-distortion settings obviously weren’t going to work. So I spent a couple sessions fiddling with the controls and found a new setting that sounds good, which I’ve been playing since. Then I read your line about the warmth and presence of tube amps. I’d never thought about these qualities before. Thinking it over, I had to say my amp didn’t sound exactly warm.
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Last night during practice, I grabbed that “norm. gain preamp” dial and gave it a twist. Guess what? IT’S THE WARMTH. Like, it heated up the whole room at about 7 on the dial. It’s a whole new dimension. Already my music sounded almost too good through this amp. Now it’s better!
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So, twenty years ago, Peavey was making a transistor amp that will rock your world. It has reverb too, if you like that. I have no use for reverb, but it’s there.
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The amp is integrated and you can carry it like a suitcase. It can play soft or very, very loud. I feel confident saying that whatever you want in an amplifier, you can get it in a modern transistor amp.