Do 12AX7 tubes distort more "musically than solid state stages?

[aron]

I ask this question because assuming you take 12AX7 stages and start "overdriving" them - do they really distort in a "warm" or even "less harsh" way than some of the newer solid state stages currently presented (FETs, BlackFire, Vulcan)??

I'm just talking about preamp 12AX7 overdrive.

Just throwing this out there.

[bancika]

in my expirience - Yes
even my girlfriend (who knows nothing about guitars) can tell the difference. I let her compare between my marshall mg od channel, marshall jackhammer pedal into clean channel, tubescreamer into clean channel and my tube reactor preamp (one 12AX7 and one 12AT7) into clean channel and she was totally for the last one. I was strugling to get nice lead tone with soild state devices, tried just amp, boosting it with TS, distortion pedals into amp, boosting distortion pedals - nothing, just increasing noise and harshness. Now I think I'm very close to my dream tone.
Can't wait till my princeton clone is done

[R.G.]

Yes. So far at least.

That doesn't mean that SS devices aren't good, or that 12AX7 circuits can't sound bad (I know this by experience!)

[Meanderthal]

That doesn't mean that SS devices aren't good, or that 12AX7 circuits can't sound bad (I know this by experience!)

I hear that! I made the mistake of impulse buying a tube pedal intended for bass once(many moons ago)- it was calles the "blue tube", not to be confused with a newer product with the same name. Made by "Real Tube" or something like that. Had 5 knobs and a 12ax7, so I ASSUMED it would sound good.
Hell no! It was just awful! All kinds of nasality and mud to push around, but I found it impossible to dial in a tone I liked, and there's usually SOMETHING I like about any pedal, but not this one! I replaced the Groovetube with an RCA... subtle difference, but no better.
Eventually it was stolen. I don't miss it at all. I've heard many SS devices that sounded more musically pleasing than that!

Of course, this is subjective, but I've heard many 12ax7 devices that sounded fantastic, so I really do think it was a bad design or defective.

Beware of those cheap Shaguang 12ax7 tubes... to me they sound just awful. I made the mistake of buying a pair of em for my Ampeg v4b because they were cheap. Yuck! Went with JJs next and all was good...

[Gilles C]

Yes...

I tried to convince myself that solid state sound could do the tube job, but my ears always said NO WAY...

And as Bancoka said, even my wife can now tell the difference, without knowing why at first, but now she can say which is which.

My friend has a Fender SS amp that sounds Fendery, but doesn't sound tubey, with or without distortion. His brother changed his SS Fender amp for a tube amp after hearing and trying my Fender tube amp.

I also remember a guitar player that had a very good sound with a not so good amp through an homemade box. When I asked him what was his box, he told me it was just a preamp that one of his friend built for him, and that he knew nothing about electronics, and that the only thing he knew was that it was a ... tube preamp...  

Oh, and my brother-in-law has a Line 6 amp that he once told me was sounding as good as a tube amp, and that he could emulate any amp he wanted. He almost convinced me that it would be better for my back if I'd buy one to replace my tube amp. Cool I said. But a few weeks ago, I went to a practice he had with his band. I stayed polite and told him it was sounding... heu... ok... I couldn't tell him the truth. I didn't like his sound.

Gilles

[JonFrum]

First post!


I'll answer just because I come to pedals from tube amp building. I don't know about "more musical", but there are things that tubes can do that transistors just haven't been able to do. There's an element of complexity in tube materials and design that gives a complexity that SS designers can't seem to recreate. I look at it like the ability of sea lions to balance beach balls on their noses. It's not something they were designed to do - it's just a byproduct of their need to chase fish underwater. Tube designers certainly weren't considering voicing audio harmonic production when they built 12AX7s. In their minds, that's all distortion, and it's a problem, not a virtue.

Then again, there's nothing more musical than a good fuzz pedal in a psychedelic freakout.   

[mojotron]

I know that JFETs sound more tube like than 12AX7s (Just kidding folks...)

Yes, I like the sound of 12AX7s in a lot of cases, there is some kind of intangible thing about the way a tube treats the signal, I'm not sure if that's input impedance, or parasitics.... My modded tube driver is really 'musical' in the way it sounds - but this sound is really kind of harsh and rough until I put it through a LPF/tone-stack to mellow it out.

[nightingale]

Then again, there's nothing more musical than a good fuzz pedal in a psychedelic freakout.   

This is true!

[aron]

COOL!

>Yes. So far at least.

OK, then I ask and this is kind of dangerous (to do) - how many of the people here that say YES, have listened to the sound of the preamp before it hits the phase inverter tube. Or even after - but before the power amp section.

Do you hear buzziness, or smoothness or? Assuming no filtering to roll off the edges, does it still distort in a more musical way?

[bancika]

I built tube preamp only, so yes, I've heard it directly from preamp, from preamp to speaker sim and from preamp to solid state amp clean channel. In every case it's smooth. The least smooth is last one.
I don't think that power tubes will smooth out sound of preamp. Maybe it will be smoother compared to solid state power amp, but then in most amps power amp distortion is very desirable, solid state power amps are made to stay clean because they mostly sound awful when driven into distortion.
By the way, why is it dangerous?

[Connoisseur of Distortion]

first let's try to define what musical distortion actually sounds like, then we'll decide if it sounds musical... agreed?

in my opinion, tubes have a valuable complexity in very specific situations. most of what i play on the guitar is heavily distorted and loaded with treble- hence, tubes and SS equipment are similar enough at times as to not even trouble me. however, in these very situations, it is often much more difficult to find a useful tone on an amp with a tube power amp, because it so heavily emphasizes the bottom end of the signal. Too much bottom end with high gain is not especially musical, IMHO. SS equipment often shines in this department simply because the parts are much less complicated. The actual preamp on a tube high gain amp doesn't usually do much for me, either. It seems to 'fuzz' or 'buzz' the signal more than it will 'distort' it (i hate these words, but i don't really know how to describe the sound).

I'd not argue for SS in certain other situations. The 'blues' tones squeezed from a SS amp will rarely even approach those made by a decent tube amp; this remains true when using rock tones, too, as the gain is often dialed down or palmed away to give room to the vocals.

I'd say that tubes definitely have their place, but that they don't satisfy all aspects of musical tones.

[R.G.]

I really think that Russell O. Hamm had it right.

[Meanderthal]

 That's a good read there R.G.! Thanks!

For the curious:

http://milbert.com/tstxt.htm

[aron]

>I built tube preamp only, so yes, I've heard it directly from preamp, from preamp to speaker sim and from preamp to solid state amp clean channel. In every case it's smooth. The least smooth is last one.

Interesting. The only reason I ask is because it sounds fuzzy to me when it really starts overdriving. To me, it's the combination of the preamp->power amp section plus the speaker that seems to really make the difference. Even when I was taking the power amp out to line out, it still sounded buzzy to me.

Even most hi-voltage tube pedals sound buzzy to me.

The reason I said it was dangerous is that you could "pop the hood" and tap right into your Fender(i.e. amp) preamp and hear the preamp tone as you really crank it, but it would be dangerous.

[Meanderthal]

how many of the people here that say YES, have listened to the sound of the preamp before it hits the phase inverter tube.

I'd have answered this sooner had I understood- I thought you meant by tapping into an amp and not a seperate preamp...
Anyway, one (well, 2) of the best tube distortion sounds I ever heard came out of a 3 channel Hafler preamp into a SS poweramp. Channel 1- clean, Channel 2- overdrive, Channel 3- balls out distortion. Don't know if it used 12ax7 though. I was told it was "starved tube" distortion.

[runmikeyrun]

I'd have to disagree about blues, BB King has used SS Labseries heads for i don't know how long and i have seen a lot of blues/jazz players using Rolands.  But I think once you start to cross over from clean blues/jazz tones a good tube amp is where it's at.  At low to moderate gain tubes just seem to have more oomph, better low end and punch than SS. 

Of course when i say tubes i mean a well designed tube amp.  I have also had bad experiences- one being with the Real Tube blue tube.  I could not get a single useable tone on my bass from that thing.  It always sounded cold and sterile.  But my Budda Zenman- equipped with a couple of mullards (at7 and au7)- that thing was MONSTROUS!!  After the price of the tubes it was like a $300 rig.  Then someone decided they needed it to sell for a few crack rocks and i was out a pedal.  Having very limited funds to purchase another one (cause i had to replace a lot of other gear) i surprisingly settled for a boss ds-1 (slightly modified of course  ).  I could not believe how similar this pedal sounded to that setup, even before modding for extra gain.  I even fooled our studio engineer when we went back to record more songs, and this is a guy with gold records on the wall!  A $39 vs. $300 pedal, who knew?

So the debate rages, as it will until the end of time.  Am i sold on tubes from my budda experience?  I thought so.  Am i completely sold on SS from my ds-1 experience?  Not necessarily.   A good sound to YOU is good no matter what it comes from.  Some people like the sound of those kits on ebay that you solder in your guitar cavity, the schottkey diode or whatever it's called... Black Ice or something.  And some people have thousands of dollars worth of preamps and processing gear to get what they need.  In the end, it's your sound and it's what you like.  Finding what it comes from is the fun part!

[brett]

Hi
so much messing with tubes, so many different sounds.  One of the great things about the older tube pre-amps is that they respond so well to extra drive.  A simple booster pedal lets even an ordinary guitarist like me get some great tones.  It's probably no impossible, but I haven't seen this from pre-amps based on JFETs and BJTs.

When I boost a 12AX7 I hear a modest volume increase (and hence pleasant compression), but a major increase in the richness of overtones.  Technically, I've wondered a few times if some complex behaviour around cutoff is the reason for this.  When I've built circuits using 12AX7s, I usually try to find some magic around cutoff (rather than saturation).  The Real McTube has a first stage that is biased wwaayyy down towards cutoff, and it gives some great tube-drive tones.

Interestingly, the 12AT7 and 12AU7 don't usually sound as musical to me as the 12AX7 (especially if directly substituted for one), so exploring the differences between them might reveal some reasons for the "extra" magic in the 12AX7.
cheers

[Gilles C]

Indeed, I used the "Preamp Out" of my Fender tube amp a few times to practice or record my guitar without disturbing my wife. And even if it didn't have the same rich sound than with the speaker, it still sounded good.

Btw, the only tube preamp I built myself didn't sound good... I should try again,I used a 12AT7.

I also tried to replace one or all the 12AX7s of my amp with 12AT7s, and it didn't sound as good as with the 12AX7s. I thought it was because I had cheap 12AT7 tubes, but it seems I'm not the only one who noticed that 

It reminds me that someday, I should record my Behringer MIC200 which permits me to use or not the 12AX7 "warmth" with the position of a switch. (No matter what some people think about Behringer...)

Gilles

[RedHouse]

A:   Yep!

but, a combination of both it where we dwell.

[bancika]

When I boost a 12AX7 I hear a modest volume increase (and hence pleasant compression), but a major increase in the richness of overtones.  Technically, I've wondered a few times if some complex behaviour around cutoff is the reason for this.  When I've built circuits using 12AX7s, I usually try to find some magic around cutoff (rather than saturation).  The Real McTube has a first stage that is biased wwaayyy down towards cutoff, and it gives some great tube-drive tones.

Interestingly, the 12AT7 and 12AU7 don't usually sound as musical to me as the 12AX7 (especially if directly substituted for one), so exploring the differences between them might reveal some reasons for the "extra" magic in the 12AX7.
cheers

yeah, boosting is great with tubes. I boost my tube preamp with solid state overdrive (level at 100%, drive at 0%) and it only adds about 10% of volume, but great amount of sustain.
I like 12AT7 in some situations. My preamp originaly had two 12AX7's, but I replaced second one with NOS GE 12AT7. It's only one gain stage and one cathode follower. It drives tone stack better, has more than 50% more volume (which I don't really need), only a bit less distortion and more sustain than 12AX7. AT appears to compress more signal before clipping occures than AX.