Crazy amp comments I encounter in my hunt for a new amp

Gary Blanchard said:
I have a Fender (Frontsman?) that I can plug into.
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At the very least you should
*swap out the speaker for an alnico one to eliminate those ghost notes and cone cry you can't hear
*get one of those hospital grade power cords do the electrons flow freely in the proper directiong
*replace the speaker wire with the finest oxygen free heavy gauge cable possible to preserve the delicate nuances of the amp and tighten up those transitions

Get a mod'n.
 
Tiltsta said:
There's higher voltages running around a tube amp, the paper thin traces on a pcb can't properly transmit these signals without adding unpleasant distortion, that's why pcb amps sound thin and harsh.
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I have seen the one person make several comments that all PCB amps have a digital/processed sound to them.

Somehow using copper traces instead of copper wire makes the amp digital? Sure. I bet there are lots of complaints about how '70's JMP's are processed sounding.
 
More on PCB and PTP....

I know if you move the wires around in an old amp, the tone changes. There's more going on in a valve circuit, than whats on paper.

and another....

Oh c'mon, man! Don't you know electrons flow more easily through PTP than PCB??!!!1! Geez...

Yes, they do, actually. You can replicate this yourself. Plug into your marshall amp directly from the guitar. Notice the quality of the tone. Then plug into 10 stomp boxes with true bypass switches. If your ears are worth a ****, you'll notice a major difference. You tone will be darker. Less treble will be present. It will sound lifeless. Like someone threw a heavy blanket over your cabinet. The same principle applies inside an amp. PTP wiring allows components to be wired together directly, without going through the internals of a PCB. This affects tone.
 
Tiltsta said:
More on PCB and PTP....

I know if you move the wires around in an old amp, the tone changes. There's more going on in a valve circuit, than whats on paper.

and another....

Oh c'mon, man! Don't you know electrons flow more easily through PTP than PCB??!!!1! Geez...

Yes, they do, actually. You can replicate this yourself. Plug into your marshall amp directly from the guitar. Notice the quality of the tone. Then plug into 10 stomp boxes with true bypass switches. If your ears are worth a ****, you'll notice a major difference. You tone will be darker. Less treble will be present. It will sound lifeless. Like someone threw a heavy blanket over your cabinet. The same principle applies inside an amp. PTP wiring allows components to be wired together directly, without going through the internals of a PCB. This affects tone.
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bitches-be-trippin-meme.jpg
 
Man, I'm so done with this kind of talk. :annoyed:


It's all just different icing and glitter on top of your playing. Some of the local monster players I've become friends with can pick up a cheap acoustic and start ripping their way through country picking, jazz comping, funky riffs.... it's just staggering. They are musicians who gig multiple nights a week (and even tour with national acts) don't piss and moan about about this sounding so much sweeter than another. They use the tools that help them get the job done. Period. Getting in the groove and playing with musicians you love does more for "your sound" than tens of thousands of gear can.
 
baimun said:
Man, I'm so done with this kind of talk. :annoyed:


It's all just different icing and glitter on top of your playing. Some of the local monster players I've become friends with can pick up a cheap acoustic and start ripping their way through country picking, jazz comping, funky riffs.... it's just staggering. They are musicians who gig multiple nights a week (and even tour with national acts) don't piss and moan about about this sounding so much sweeter than another. They use the tools that help them get the job done. Period. Getting in the groove and playing with musicians you love does more for "your sound" than tens of thousands of gear can.
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Yeah, I have grown tired of the 'gear nuts' on the web. I used to really pay attention to all of that stuff, but the longer I have been around the more I realize how full of shit most of those people really are. I think that is why this place is so good; it lacks that dumbfuckery.
 
But then again my main amp since 1995 has be a little class A Vintage Club 20w 1-10" combo w reverb.
It's def not PTP but it's a great little tube amp.
 
Tiltsta said:
More on PCB and PTP....

I know if you move the wires around in an old amp, the tone changes. There's more going on in a valve circuit, than whats on paper.

and another....

Oh c'mon, man! Don't you know electrons flow more easily through PTP than PCB??!!!1! Geez...

Yes, they do, actually. You can replicate this yourself. Plug into your marshall amp directly from the guitar. Notice the quality of the tone. Then plug into 10 stomp boxes with true bypass switches. If your ears are worth a ****, you'll notice a major difference. You tone will be darker. Less treble will be present. It will sound lifeless. Like someone threw a heavy blanket over your cabinet. The same principle applies inside an amp. PTP wiring allows components to be wired together directly, without going through the internals of a PCB. This affects tone.
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Because 50-100 individual wires, each with their own man-made solder points is always going to "sound" better than those exact circuits that are precisely aligned and layered to tolerances microns thin, made of pure copper that will NEVER be exposed to the elements due to being exceptionally shielded and isolated by the resin of the PCB and ultimately soldered precisely and with perfectly proportioned solder by a machine.

What a fucktwit.

Hey asshole, you know why moving the wires around in an amp full of spaghetti wires changes the tone?

Because all of that spaghetti was made by a fucktwit like you. It's called "inconsistent quality control" in the real fucking world.
 
OGG said:
Because 50-100 individual wires, each with their own man-made solder points is always going to "sound" better than those exact circuits that are precisely aligned and layered to tolerances microns thin, made of pure copper that will NEVER be exposed to the elements due to being exceptionally shielded and isolated by the resin of the PCB and ultimately soldered precisely and with perfectly proportioned solder by a machine.

What a fucktwit.

Hey asshole, you know why moving the wires around in an amp full of spaghetti wires changes the tone?

Because all of that spaghetti was made by a fucktwit like you. It's called "inconsistent quality control" in the real fucking world.
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My brother the electrical engineer thinks it is hilarious that people actually pay MORE for PTP over a well designed PCB board. He also reminds me that turret board wiring isn't the same as PTP, so no one in the guitar rant threads even knows what they are talking about when they mention PTP. He also finds our application of vacuum tubes pretty funny, as he only thought they were used in giant radio transmitters and deep space stuff.
 
Tiltsta said:
My brother the electrical engineer thinks it is hilarious that people actually pay MORE for PTP over a well designed PCB board. He also reminds me that turret board wiring isn't the same as PTP, so no one in the guitar rant threads even knows what they are talking about when they mention PTP. He also finds our application of vacuum tubes pretty funny, as he only thought they were used in giant radio transmitters and deep space stuff.
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My dad was a technician for RCA in the late 1950's and early 1960's in New York and even worked on tests they did in Radio City Music Hall to learn more about reverb. One day I went to pick him up for lunch and he saw a matched set of NOS RCA 6v6 tubes in my car and asked how much they cost me (which was around $60-$80) and he laughed his ass off. Apparently when we moved to California he threw out CASES of never used RCA tubes of all types.
 
Amazing. Imagine what those are worth today. I remember going to the local hardware store with my dad to test out tubes for our television as a kid. Tubes were still kind of common in old tv's then, and the store had tons of them.
 
Tiltsta said:
Amazing. Imagine what those are worth today. I remember going to the local hardware store with my dad to test out tubes for our television as a kid. Tubes were still kind of common in old tv's then, and the store had tons of them.
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One of my most vivid memories of my childhood was my dad hanging half in and half our of our giant console TV replacing tubes and otherwise trying to make it work. And going to the drugstore to test tubes once we came to California and he had gotten rid of all of his gear because he had made the jump to Component Engineer.
 
Help!I'maRock! said:
I don't have a problem with people tinkering. It's when you have no idea of what you're talking about, but you tinker anyway, that I take issue with.
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For the record, I have no problem with people tinkering, either. I don't get it, and am not into it, but to each their own.
 
Gary Blanchard said:
For the record, I have no problem with people tinkering, either. I don't get it, and am not into it, but to each their own.
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It's almost a given that I'm going to change something on a guitar. Pickups, wiring, bridge, tuners, and nut are all fair game. On an amp, I've tinkered with lower gain preamp tubes. But my primary mod is changing the old, ungrounded power cords for newer grounded ones. I've also been known to change a speaker from time to time.
 
Help!I'maRock! said:
It's almost a given that I'm going to change something on a guitar. Pickups, wiring, bridge, tuners, and nut are all fair game. On an amp, I've tinkered with lower gain preamp tubes. But my primary mod is changing the old, ungrounded power cords for newer grounded ones. I've also been known to change a speaker from time to time.
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I feel radical when I change the strings...:grin:
 
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I've only swapped out 2-3 pickups in about 30 years of playing. The stock pickups have to be really bad or not doing what I want to make me swap them. I've done lots of small wiring mods, like adding blender pots, changing cap values, splitting humbuckers, and the like. My amp tinkering is limited to tube swaps and bias adjustments. I guess I never really caught the modding bug. Also, I don't know enough about electronics to really poke around inside an amp.
 
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