A time and a place for everything, including those crack pipes

aja

It seems everything has tubes/valves nowadays - I'm talking about pedals and preamps and keyboards etc...
I mean REALLY!?! ???

Don't get me wrong, I am crazy about those glowsticks, but surely a rig with over twenty tubes in all these pedals (and preamps and and...) is bound to fail somewhere soon?
Just marketing stuff surely. And how many tubes does a person need? If you have a tube amp you shouldn't need any more, right....

Manfred-Klose

the tube is just a marketing thing.

i've once onpened a valve unit(not going to mention names here), they' have installed light bulbs behind the pre amp valves to give it the vintage look.

it really comes down to your ear to judge nowadays. you cant really really rely on online hype. i'm over that.

guitarboy2828

Manfred Klose wrote: the tube is just a marketing thing.

i've once onpened a valve unit(not going to mention names here), they' have installed light bulbs behind the pre amp valves to give it the vintage look.

it really comes down to your ear to judge nowadays. you cant really really rely on online hype. i'm over that.

Woa, that is TOOOO funny!! not surprised though.. but i do agree, it's all apart of marketing... If you have a tube amp.. Why would you need tube pedals? That doesn't make sense to me.. However, some people will buy em!

AlanRatcliffe

Manfred Klose wrote: the tube is just a marketing thing.

Usually, but not always. Depends on the design - look at some of the studio valve gear like mic preamps and compressors.

i've once onpened a valve unit(not going to mention names here), they' have installed light bulbs behind the pre amp valves to give it the vintage look.

I know the one - a preamp that seems designed to add sibilance to vocals. ? Another of the same company's "valve" products has valves that are not even in the audio path. ?

Vick

Quick question.....

The T-rex roommate...
On the site trex claims that the tube
Is used as a "component" rather then to amplify the sound...
So wats the deal with that? Is the tube then still nessasary?

Btw,Iv heard a roommate in action,and its really awsum...

Renesongs

Opinion alert: I grew up in the valve age I still can remember the sounds and the smells of my brothers CBS through first amp an ELK the later an AC30 then a Marshall 59 stack. By the time I could afford GAS solid state was the rage so I bought a squeaky clean sounding Roland JC50 and boss effects to to fatten and dirty the sound a bit and that kind of worked but wasn't quite the real deal. Over the last 20 years I have used multi effects pedals and racks mainly Roland and Boss. I must say that it has come to the stage where when I set my pedal to Vox AC30 with I hear that sound and I can smell the valves burning. Now If you think that the old geezer is getting deaf and his memory is failing. I often compare my gear to friends who have Fender, Marshall and Vox stacks (not cubes they horrid speakers are to small). IMO amp simulation has advanced to the stage that not only can it perflectly replicate the performance of the vintage valve amps but it can emulate the best example of the particular amp with all it's signature idiosyncrasies. Flame me if you must I have my fireproof underwear on. 8)

singemonkey

I agree that for practical purposes emulation has reached that level. But I also hear the caution that what was thought to be perfect emulation sounds pretty weak when the next generation of emulators comes out. There can be only one reason for that.

One thing that I think has been useful are these zany transistors that give your overdrive pedals a natural tube sound at reasonable volume. We're discussing the Sansamp GT2 on another thread, but the Catalinbread offerings are even better to my ears - using some slightly different transistors to avoid the slightly hissy sound of Mosfets.

With a pedal like this, I don't see any further attraction for a tube overdrive in front of a tube amp, at least:

Renesongs

I have no doubt that the next generation of valve emulation will be even better. At the moment I believe the developments are less at the level of does it look identical on the scope and more the psychometrics of does the listener believe it to be real. There is still a tremendous amount of scope for developing smaller speaker cabs that can move air in the same way their bigger bulkier brothers can. I am waiting for the day that you can stick a little dot and a wire on a wall and the wall becomes a 8 x 12 stack