Mr. V's Top Secrets to Great Tone
Wait a minute.... If it was really top secret classified information, then I wouldn't be posting it here. Ok, so here's what you need to know, in a no-nonsense baloney-free write up.
Most Amp makers are up to something, and they like to keep royal secrets about their designs. Many of the amps on the market today are pretending to be something they are not, or the true gems on the market are shrouded in mystery as to why they are darn good. So, here's a number of things that I'm sick of seeing in the market..
#1. There's no "Magic Quick Fix" to tone. People with more money than sense usually get struck with this. The "audiophile" community gets really stung with this one. A single piece of cable, some little ring wrapped around your tube, or silicone feet on your amp aren't going to make a huge miracle difference in your sound. FACT--There are bad cheap cables that can hurt sound. FACT--A good cable has adequate conductance, and quality connectors. FACT--Good cables can be made for $10
#2. What most mega makers are calling "Re-Issue" amps are complete baloney. Once upon a time, Mega corp had people working, building and soldering guitar amps state side. This happened in California, Chicago, Kalamazoo, and other places too. Those amps were done in a point-to point style, just like my amps are. Today, a re-issue amp is an amp that LOOKS like the old one did. The circuit in today's re-issue may be similar or different from the original. Most of them are made by machines in Asia, and assembled there with everyday factory workers.
SOME re-issue amps and "HandWired" amps are actually legitimately done, usually by ANOTHER company. Victoria, Mojotone, and others have been asked to build a re-issue amp for a mega-corp. The price tag on these is usually crazy high, but good craftsmanship is many times to be found. In the case of one Re-Issue I have here, it isn't even close to the original amp's schematic/design. It looks like the original, and sounds great, but that's about where the similarities end. It has a very different speaker, very different circuit, and even different tubes. Needless to say it's an original amp sold as a re-issue.
#3 The Magic of the "Tone" is almost completely in the circuit-- Oh boy, get the flame throwers! There's no super-magic in a specific make/model of resistor or capacitor. The design of the circuit is the real champion of the sound. Using good top shelf components is your INSURANCE against out-of tolerance faulty parts. Most "boutique" amp makers are sold on using Sprague, or F&T capacitors. They are great caps, because they LAST, and they deliver the performance that they are stated to deliver. Simple as that. Second of all, If you actually research adverts from back in the day where everything was tube, you'd find that component makers weren't making up stories about better sound, and better TV picture. Good components are and always were about consistent proper performance regardless of temperature and moisture in the air.
#3 It's almost completely impossible to build a 100% perfect re-issue of a vintage amp. -- Amps in the 50's and 60's used Capacitors and Transformers that are a bit different than what we have today. Good news is, many of our best components today are actually MORE reliable. With modern components, and the Vintage circuit, it's my opinion that we can make an amp with fantastic tone, less noise, and better longevity.
#4 That 1950's amp you just heard that sounds fantastic isn't 100% original-- It's very likely that any old amp has had a tech work on it to replace worn components. The GOOD techs actually fiddle around in there and adjust a few things, many times leaving them as good as, or better than new.
#5 They used to make amps sooo much better than they do now!--Not really... Here's the good things about the good-ol days. Older amp designs were easy to fix, thus we still have 50-60 year old amps still in working order. Many amps from that bygone era had the same budget constraints that we try and work with today. A very famous amp maker had their own "Special Design" speaker that was made as cheap as humanly possible. These failed often. You could order these amps with a JBL or Jensen speaker upgrade. Even today's cheaper amps have a more reliable speaker than the budget model of yesteryear.
I will add some more information here as it comes to mind, but what I want you to get through your mind is this. A good amp has THREE components to making it sound great, and work reliably. The three things are A good circuit design, Reliable quality parts, and Craftsmanship of the builder/assembler. This is why we LOVE our boutique amps. I cannot think of ONE artist that plays a stock major brand amp. Every one of those amps has been re-worked by their favorite tech.
THD doesn't mean squat in a guitar amp!
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Looking back at how some traditional guitar amps were made, lots of hi-fi principles were used to reduce and control distortion. Most of that is the "THD" number that we see on hi-fi amplifiers. In a Hi-Fi situation, I can see how the goal is to faithfully re-produce the sound of the recording, but a guitar amp isn't really a re-producer as much as it in a producer. That said, THD doesn't mean squat in a guitar amp. The Fender tradition was to use a negative-feedback loop to cut down on the distortion, and although that does yield some nice benefits, you have to really push the amp to get it crunchy. Vox AC30 has NO negative feedback loop, and the top boost sound is a legend in itself. Although NFB's can help make a very clean sounding amp, it can also make it sound icy with no character. The "Presence" control on some amps will fiddle with the NFB loop a bit, but I'm not sure it belongs in every circuit. In working on RTL-2, I've been playing with tubes that have 10% THD number on paper, but yet the tone is absolutely beautiful. 2nd order harmonics are why we use tubes in the first place, so why fight them so hard? That's my thought of the day.
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