hey everyone,
i've been hearing both sides of this argument for quite a while. i'm wondering what the big difference is between solid state amps and tube amps and i want to hear your opinions on what's better. some people say that tube amps sound great but other say solid-states hold up better. and vice versa.
post your thoughts.....

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Thanks for listening to this small piece of me.

Once you go tube you don't want to go back. I much prefer the warmth and punch you get out of a valve amp and the quality of sound. Going from my Marshall tranny amp to a Fender Valve amp was an expensive move but it was well worth it at the end of the day. I'll swear by a valve amp.

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"When I was a kid,all I wanted was a red electric guitar.It had to be red,because of Hank and his magical sound." Mark Knopfler on Hank Marvin.

trendkillah nailed the basics. Here's a few subtleties:

The power supplies in most tube amps are 'soft', in that they are poorly regulated. To a typical engineer, this seems like a really shabby way to do things, but what happens, is that notes 'swell' as the initial attack drains off a lot of the energy stored in the filter caps, which is then built up again as the note sustains. Once the technogeeks got put right, (probably over several pints consumed in front of various bar bands), many transistor amps have been designed to reproduce this effect.

That sweet-sounding tube distortion only happens when the power stage of a tube amp is pushed into partial saturation. This causes the even-order harmonic content, and the compression, that characterise this sound. I've seen some interesting work based on FET output stages, but it isn't there, yet. The buzzy, overdive sound that a lot of players use, is generated in the preamp, or even between the guitar and the amp. Obviously, processing in this part of the signal chain does not interact with the speakers, missing an important part of 'the tube sound'. The plus side of that situation is the flexibility in volume level available to transistor amps that don't have to be cranked in order to find that 'sweet spot'. And preamp distortion sounds the same in headphones.

Transistor amps are ideal for accurately reproducing a signal. A signal can be amplified without adding to, or taking away from, the original. Once a sound has been 'warmed up' by a tube stage in the preamp, a transistor amp will faithfully carry that warmth to the speakers. This is why modelling amps work as well as they do. What a transistor amp will not do, is provide that warm, 'springy' touch that (so far, anyway) can only be coaxed out of a transformer-coupled tube power stage, reacting with a speaker cab.

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Lordathestrings
Guitar Tricks Moderator
www.GuitarTricks.com - Home of Online Guitar Lessons

I agree that tube amps sound better generally, but there are a couple of brands that pull it off with solid state. Randall and JJ Labs to name two. Dimebag Darrel has one of the best tones in the business, and he uses solid state amps.

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"I'm playing so fast, the tubes can't reproduce all the notes!"
- Marcus Paus

holding that thought...
which artists use solid-state and which artists use tube? i'm talking about metal here. oldies to now really.

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Thanks for listening to this small piece of me.

Tube: Metallica, Slipknot, Dream Theater, Korn, Dimmu Borgir... anyone wo uses stuff like Mesa, VHT, Soldano, Marshall, etc. Most people use tube amps. In general, solid state amps have more gain, though. Listen to Pantera, Anthrax, recent Disturbed and early Michael Angelo stuff to hear Randall solid states at work.

Personally I'm saving up for a VHT. It's the big bad mother of all metal amps. And it's all tube. But it really comes down to taste. Solid state amps are good if you want as brutal a distortion as possible, for exapmple for death metal, and tube amps are good for everything else.

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"I'm playing so fast, the tubes can't reproduce all the notes!"
- Marcus Paus

Tube always
You cant beat a tube sound, even with digital tube modellers, the sound of a real tube is amazing.
Andrew