a tube primer for guitar and bass players - Guitar Amplifier Blueprinting

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Before we even get started … if you just want a few basics and hate to read There are three items that are the foundation of most of what is in this document. Tube and solid state differences, matching, and bias. I will cover these briefly. Brief Tube and solid state differences Much is available on this subject, but from a very high level there are a few points worth mentioning. Some folks feel that solid state and digital components have greater frequency response than tube devices. I suppose this may be true in some area out in areas that are so far out in the frequency spectrum that it’s crazy, but for our purposes, this is not the case. Remember, there are tube devices operating in the gigahertz range, way beyond what we need in the world of audio. There are devices such as the DITTO, which have a bandwidth of 6 Hz – 200 kHz which are tube units, as an example, in the audio business. Solid state devices have sort of an “on or off” aspect to their operation. This is something akin to one being in a dark room, with their eyes closed, while another in the room flips the light switch on and off. You cannot see the light, but know that something is going on, as you hear the switch being flipped. This is true in the digital realm, and is sometimes called “hash” or has other terms, for this by-product if digital products. You think this is no big deal or does not matter? Thankfully today, there are very powerful tools available to mere mortal men, only available in the past to folks that worked at places like Bell Labs. Pro Tools, a popular recording suite, can illustrate this pretty easily. Look at any digitally recorded aspect of one of your recordings. Drum tracks are great for this. Zoom in on one short area of a sample of the sound. You will see a lot of information there. Now, borrow something like a DITTO box or Brick. “THE BRICK” is something of a DITTO but has onboard phantom power so you may use it for microphones also. THE BRICK shares some of the ViPRE technology. More can be found on THE BRICK at http://www.groovetubes.com/product.cfm?Product_ID=2084 4
DITTO – The Swiss Army Knife of the recording studio and for live performance to the house system Take the original track, reroute it through the DITTO, and reproduce it to another unused track area. Now listen to the difference. Look at the difference. You will notice that the DITTO rerecorded track lost NONE of the original material, has more dynamic range, sounds much more open and alive, and yet has less on the display. Why is there less on the display? Zoom in on the “missing” part of the waveform. LISTEN to only that aspect of the sound. I think you found it was clicks or noise, or whatever you want to call it … but in any case, stuff you did not want and stuff that did not help your sound. Try plugging a POD XT into one of these before you go to the board or the amp. You may be surprised Tubes do not have the “on-off” aspect. They are always conducting and flowing the electron flow. This is one of their differences. This is not better or worse, it is different. Before you think or buy the fact that sticking a tube in the front end of a digital or solid state amp is going to turn it into a tube amp, think again. It may give you everything you are looking for, and that may be just what you wanted, tube or no tube. My Personal Favorite or Most Impressive Amplifiers Being a big fan of Aspen Pittman’s “The Tube Amp Book” for almost two decades, one of the first sections of the book that caught my interest was Aspen’s Top Ten amps of all time section. Today, there is a wider selection of amps than ever before, and although many of the original amps are still considered the classics, some of todays amps are what I consider to be the classics of today, and probably tomorrow. I picked these amps for various reasons, but some of the aspects are unique features, design, and superior build quality. I will explain some of my thinking as I go along. I do not own all of these amps by the way, but have had access to them and they impressed me enough to stick in my mind. I know many will complain as there are not amps such as the Matchless DC30 and many other great amps here that they feel should be here. These are amps that a higher number of folks out there can afford, and amp that in their price range give up nothing in the way of tone and build quality compared in cases to amps with two or three times their retail cost. This book is primarily a tube document, but I could not keep myself from saying a little more about the amplifiers themselves. 5
Page 1 and 2: A TUBE PRIMER FOR GUITAR AND BASS P
Page 3: 6V6 OUTPUT TUBES ..................
Page 7 and 8: THE ‘MARSHALL” STYLE AMPS in th
Page 9 and 10: HUGE ROCK AMP COMBO FOR THE CLASSIC
Page 11 and 12: Great designs with something worth
Page 13 and 14: Biasing in brief Bias your amp prop
Page 15 and 16: The Dr. Z Carmen Ghia. Sure, the go
Page 17 and 18: Preamp Tubes Please note that the t
Page 19 and 20: The basics of preamp tube differenc
Page 21 and 22: 12AX7 (ECC83, 7025, 12AT7, 12AY7, 1
Page 23 and 24: Keep in mind, the specs on the tube
Page 25 and 26: 12AX7-R2 - Sovtek 12AX7LPS Gain: 83
Page 27 and 28: ECC83-S - from the JJ factory Gain:
Page 29 and 30: 5751 New Manufacture Expected Gain
Page 31 and 32: The famed 7199 gold pin of the past
Page 33 and 34: 12AX7R3 Electro Harmonix (10/29/02)
Page 35 and 36: Additional Small Signal Tube Tests
Page 37 and 38: Recent tube test results DATE TUBE
Page 39 and 40: Fairly wide current spread, so bewa
Page 41 and 42: DATE TUBE B+ BIAS mA TC (gm) gp Gai
Page 43 and 44: B+ BIAS mA TC (gm) TUBE volts volts
Page 45 and 46: B+ BIAS mA TC (gm) DATE TUBE volts
Page 47 and 48: This is simply a basic power output
Page 49 and 50: Maximum plate dissipation on tubes
Page 51 and 52: 6V6C - a new 6V6 off new tooling th
Page 53 and 54: This is the 6L6C or straight bottle
Page 55 and 56:
6L6-R2 - The Svetlana 6L6. Prior to
Page 57 and 58:
KT-66-HP - Russia, built under cont
Page 59 and 60:
EL34 - E34LS - and 6CA7 types 59
Page 61 and 62:
EL34C - Chinese EL-34 (25 watt tube
Page 63 and 64:
The Groove Tubes GT-6CA7GE “The G
Page 65 and 66:
The RCA Gray Plate. 65
Page 67 and 68:
Power output comparison test result
Page 69 and 70:
RCA 7027A NOS A big KT-90 69
Page 71 and 72:
The KT-88C A very strong KT88, with
Page 73 and 74:
Sorry, but I just HAD to show a pho
Page 75 and 76:
6550-R - Russian 6550, takes longer
Page 77 and 78:
Power comparison chart of current o
Page 80 and 81:
A pair of the famed Telefunken NOS
Page 82 and 83:
Output power chart for EL-84 family
Page 84 and 85:
New Electro Harmonix EL-84 (June 20
Page 86 and 87:
These are some of the 1980s JAN Phi
Page 88 and 89:
The 5R4-GYB, often used in place of
Page 90 and 91:
5U4GB above - 362 volts max. 5V4G a
Page 92 and 93:
The GT Rating system - an explanati
show all

a tube primer for guitar and bass players - Guitar Amplifier Blueprinting

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?