Goodbye Tube Amp (guitar thread)

Cafe Society
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TLDR version: The only person who knows what you want is you, don’t buy things that are plainly unsuitable just to fit in to some ideal.

long version:

Why did I persevere with a tube amp for so long?

I’ve recently replaced my little used Carvin Belair 212 with a Fender Mustang IV and am wondering why I didn’t do something like this ages ago. That Carvin has been responsible for me NOT playing guitar for the last 14 years.

A little background. I bought the Carvin after I moved to Australia as I’d sold my previous amp, a Fender Blues Deville, in order to improve my cash situation and lighten my load when I left New Zealand. The Blues Deville was a great amp, it looked good, sounded good, and was suitable for me at the time as I was resident guitarist at the local pub and played a bit with a wedding/function type band. It sounded good clean or dirty and had a useable volume range for gigs with no PA. I lived alone in a house with a little space to my nearest neighbours so I could play it at home without getting any noise complaints.

When I got to Australia I was ampless and wanted to feed my habbit, so when I had a job and some cash together I got what I thought was going to be a good amp for me. I wasn’t gigging anymore so I didn’t need anything quite so loud. The Carvin was cheap, had a similar look to the Deville, and having four power tubes instead of two you could remove two of them and halve the power output.

So I get this Carvin and then… I stopped playing the guitar. There were a few of issues I think. First I just didn’t like the sound as much as the Fender. When I first played through the Fender you couldn’t get the smile off my face, it was a full rich sound that inspired me. The Carvin on the other hand was a bit harsh and uninteresting. The overdrive channel was too buzzy. I like buzz and fuzz but I like it in a stomp box in front of the amp, for some reason the distortion form the amp itself didn’t do it for me and I still preferred using my ProCo Rat and Crowther Hotcake (both modified by Hotcake designer Paul Crowther) in front of a clean amp. Second it was a bit unreliable. It fizzled out a couple of times due to poor workmanship inside the amp and so I was always listening to it and thinking I was hearing odd noises or wondering if it seemed to be lacking something. Finally it was way too loud. I may have been able to drop the power output down from 50 to 25 Watts but it was still unusable volumes for someone who had become purely a bedroom musician. I was constantly fiddling around with the volume knob somewhere between the 1 and 2 (out of 12) with 1 being too quiet and 2 being too loud.

The Carvin was unsuitable and before long I’d simply stopped playing guitar. Every now and then I’d plug in but the amp had more electrical issues each time and the guitar was starting to have issues as well.

Some 5 years ago I got a hankering to get back into the playing so I got a looping pedal which is something I’d always wanted to play with, and a DI box so I could just plug the guitar direct to the pedal via my various stomp boxes then use the headphone jack in the looping pedal for some neighbour friendly playing. It was good fun but still lacked something. The amp sat in the corner of the room, unused and dusty.

A few months ago I got that hankering again and my financial situation was better than it had been for a while so I started looking for amps to replace the Carvin. I was still, believe it or not, hung up on having that tube sound so I was shopping around for prices on small tube amps like a Fender Blues Junior. I knew something like that would still be loud but I was convincing myself that it wouldn’t be tooo loud. I also knew I really wanted something with a headphone jack but those are extremely rare on tube amps.

It was a slow process but after shopping on line and reading reviews and forums and listening to sound clips I eventually realised that a tube amp was totally unsuited to my situation. I’d also discovered that Fender had a range of digital modelling amps that were significantly cheaper than the Cyber Amp line I was familiar with. The more I read about them, the more the Mustang amps seemed to be a good match for me and the biggest combo version was still only half the price of my old amp, the Blues DeVille.

I ended up getting a Fender Mustang IV 2x12 combo and it is awesome. Not so much because it has the best sound or anything but I just have so much fun playing it. The sound is good enough to be inspiring and the range of sounds is phenomenal. With my previous tube amps you kind of either liked the sound or you didn’t, there wasn’t a whole lot you could do about changing the overall character of the amp.

I quickly realised with the Mustang that because there is so much you can do it is best if you artificially limit yourself. I pretty much have the same setup as I had with my Blues DeVille except it is all modelled internally in the amp.

The Mustang basically models the characteristics of a number of classic amplifiers from the Fender, Marshall, Vox, and HiWatt line as well as a range of cabinet/speaker options and countless effects pedals. So I can play through the Mustang while it pretends it is a Fender Bassman amp through a Twin Deluxe 2x12 cabinet with a Big Muff in front of it and say a flanger and a stereo tape delay in the simulated effects loop (oh yeah, it’s a stereo amp so there’s lots of stereo goodness when listening through headphones.) I can save up to 99 presets that I can recall using the four button footswitch. I have an expression pedal that can be used both as a volume pedal and to control any of the effects parameters I want.

I’ve just been experimenting with having a pitch shifter in front of a big muff then the bassman amp head and a bit of reverb and delay to round it out. I have the pitch shifter set to play an octave up and I have the expression pedal set to blend the pitch shifter from zero up to 100%. I ended up with a lovely fuzzed out tone that I could blend in what sounds like an octave harmonic at will. Used aggressively and it sounds like a subtle wah, used more judiciously and it’s like having super controlled feedback. All done digitally within the amp, no actual stomp boxes present. Very awesome and much fun and I haven’t even touched on the joys of layering sounds, rhythms, etc with my looping pedal. It’s like having a band where every member knows all the songs you know and likes all the bands you like.

Now I’m a bit :smack: for not at least getting a solid state amp ages ago. Versatility aside, it is just nice being able to plug in the headphones and destroy my own hearing while the rest of the household sleeps soundly.

Unfortunately I’m recovering from a broken left collarbone so I’m limited to playing somewhere around the 12th fret for now, any further down the neck puts too much strain on the shoulder. Can’t wait to get back into it properly again.

Is anyone else using a Mustang amp? A nice feature is that you can share patches so if someone has come up with your favourite guitarist’s sound, you can download the patch, load it on to the amp and tweak it and use it to your heart’s content.

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Wow - quite the story! Mustangs are good, inexpensive, versatile amps. Congrats on having one and being so inspired by it!

I have not played Carvin tube amps, so can’t comment. But I love tube amps - learning to play a good one is really fun. But yeah, if you have a piece of gear that is keeping you from playing, it is so important to understand that and make a change.

How old is your ProCo Rat? I have a first-generation one from wayyy too long ago - apparently they are going for a few hundred bucks on eBay…:wink:

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My real Rat is probably around 18 years old, officially a ProCo Rat II, but it’s had a few mods done to it and isn’t recognisable as a Rat anymore (visually that is, it still sounds like a Rat.) I had the Hotcake first and was impressed with how quite the gain was. When I got the Rat I found it to be a bit noisy and it didn’t have enough bass for my liking so I had Paul Crowther, who makes the Hotcake, modify the Rat with quieter gain, and a switch to go between the original sound and a boosted bass sound. It meant it had to go into a different housing as well, so it looks like a home made job, but it’s mainly Rat on the inside.

I’ve never been happy with stock standard stuff, I seem to have a need to make things unique. I have a set of Fender Noiseless pickups waiting to go into my Tele when I get around to the shop next, after that I think I might replace the neck as it frets out when bending the high e string more than a whole tone when above the 12th fret, if that makes sense.

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Sounds like you should assemble a guitar, like I did! It is really fun and you end up with a (in my case) Tele that has the mods you want (in my case, a super-chunky neck, my pickups and electronics, tuners, etc…)

If you are a modifying kinda guy, though, I will say this: a simple Tube amp can be a lot of fun. I know nothing about Carvin amps, but maybe that says something because I know a bit about amps :wink: A simple, great tube amp is a joy to play and can be modded all to heck. But tube amps are kinda like stick shift vs. automatic in a car - you have to learn a bit about how to work them, and a bad example can put you off them unnecessarily…

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Here’s an old thread where I go off a bit on tube amps and why they can be cool.

Sorry, I am in no way trying to comment on your Mustang. I have recommended Mustangs to a few folks. For an everyday player, a nice solidstate modeling amp can be an excellent choice.

But if you want to take a sports car out on a twisty road and see what it can do, a stick shift can be really fun :wink:

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I had a good experience with the Blues DeVille, I think the Carvin was just a bit crap as you’ve hinted at. If I ever realize my dream of having a farmlet on a 10 acre block where I can put the amp some distance away from my ears and crank the volume, I’ll probably return to tube land.

As for mods, I used to be a get-the-soldering-iron-out kind of guy but I’ve turned into a take-it-to-the-shop guy where the end result is more important than the process of getting there, mainly due to having less free time I think.

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All good. If you find your way back to tinkering, assembling a Tele is surprisingly straightforward. It’s not a snap-together model so you have to pay attention and be open to improvising, but that’s part of the fun. I have a long, multithread journal about building my second one. I am on a smart phone now so can’t look for them.

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Don’t worry, you are preaching to the converted, I’m well aware of the strengths of a tube amp. The one thing I miss with the current setup, and it’s to do with mostly playing through headphones, is not having any interaction between the sound and the guitar strings, not so much feedback of the howling type but just the endless sustain you can get.

I’m not a big fan of soldering, but I might just do the neck myself. I don’t mind that kind of thing, setting up etc.

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Just a quick techie-type of question:

If I’m understanding correctly, a modeling amp reproduces the electronic characteristics of vintage/classic amps (say, a Fender Twin Reverb). How do they get around all those different amps coming through the same set of speakers? For that matter, does the amp “model” include the speaker characteristics? Just curious. Thanks.

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Reasonable. A quick check on Wiki has this: Amplifier modeling - Wikipedia

Basically, the signal is digitized. Some of the characteristics of the note are replaced with the sonic profile of the setting you have selected; other characteristics, like the heaviness of your attack, are retained.

Different modeling software have different degrees of flexibility - amp presets are what they are; some in-studio set ups let you dial up heads, speakers, cabinets, the “room” they are playing in.

At this point in the tech, they do an amazing job. For a producer friend, they are his go-to for 90% of his work. As a player, I still don’t get the same level of responsiveness, but I am in the minority. Again - an automatic transmission, which the vast majority use and prefer vs. a stick shift…

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^ Nifty. Much obliged.

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TL;DR: I agree, but I took a different approach to solving the problem. :slight_smile:
It seems that you know what you need at the moment, and I largely agree. SS amps sound fine when done well, even if they don’t sound the same as a tube amp. Hell, one tube amp doesn’t sound the same as the next tube amp. As burpo the wonder mutt points out, plug the same amp into a different cab, and it will sound different from itself a minute ago.

The modeling amps are very good at copping 95% of a specific tube amp’s tone. I have heard both good and bad reviews of the Mustang, but most of the bad reviews are along the lines of “it’s too complex!”. I understand their point, I don’t want to get out the laptop to tweak the amp myself. But it has a lot of capability for an inexpensive amp, and it’s a route around having to lug a pedal board.

I’ve got tube, SS and both kind of hybrid amps in my house, and they all have their purpose. Some are louder than hell, one’s a 500W hybrid bass amp (wayyyy too loud for guitar in anything but an arena, but it’s clean guitar tone is crazy) and some are mice ( a 15w tube combo from the 60’s, it can’t keep up with a drum set when it’s running flat out). My favorite SS box is a little 10w Danelectro HoneyTone. It’s louder than the 15w tube combo even with a speaker half it’s size*, is battery powered, costs about as much as 4 sets of strings, and has a headphone out. That it sounds nice when you turn the knobs right is just a bonus! And if you’re the adventurous type, you can build a higher voltage battery pack! There’s at least one harmonica guy that swears by it.

And I’ve never heard anyone speak well of Carvin gear unless they were being paid to endorse it. :slight_smile:
*Watts don’t matter that much in terms of volume. Halving the watts of an otherwise unchanged amp lowers the volume 3db. You can hear it, but it’s not much. Speaker area and efficiency affect it more, but sometimes inefficient speakers sound really good. That 15w combo sounds great! But again, a snare drum holds it down and makes it turn over its lunch money. It could hold its own with bongos.

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Amps are fairly inexpensive. I have a tube amp, Blues Jr. and a small 5W practice amp. A Four Force EM-1 that weighs only 8 lbs.

Like the OP. I primarily use the practice amp. Light weight. I can carry my guitar case and amp out to the car in one trip. The Four Force is super tough and won’t damage easily like a tube amp. I still play the Fender tube amp too. I only have $275 in it (bought used) and have a spare corner for it to sit in. Playing for fun through that fender makes all the practice time worth it.

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For the Mustang the amp heads and cabinets are modelled separately so you can mix and match any of the modelled heads with any of the cabinets. I assume they are modelled in a way that compensates for the Mustang’s cabinet. Some of the cabinet models have different variations of speakers. As I haven’t played any of the modelled amps in real life other than a Vox AC30 I’m not really interested in the models sounding just like the real things, I’m more interested in having a variety of sounds at my disposal.

I think the key to getting around the complexity is to treat it like a real amp. If you had a room full of amps and effects you’re not going turn them all on and go from one to another all the time, you’ll probably find an amp you like, a couple of effects you like and spend some time with them. That’s what I do with the Mustang, I’ve got a clean sound I like (Fender Twin) and a couple of “pedals” I like (“Black Box”, “Big Fuzz”, and the stereo tape delay) and I just play it as if I was in a room with that amp and those pedals. Every now and then I’ll stumble on a particular sound I like and I’ll save it as a preset. Sometimes I’ll be after a particular sound and will build it up with purpose but I’m still working mainly around one or two basic clean amps.

I currently use the laptop connection for two things, to change the order of the effects and to program the way the expression pedal works. The default effects order modelled in the amp is distortion -> amp -> modulation -> delay -> reverb, but I like to put some modulation effects before the distortion for a more subtle sound so I drag and drop the effects around for what I want.

I don’t bother playing around with tube bias, sag, and other details like that and mainly just treat the amp like a normal amp, using the amps physical controls for gain, volume, treble, mid, bass, reverb etc.

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I don’t bother playing around with tube bias, sag, and other details like that and mainly just treat the amp like a normal amp, using the amps physical controls for gain, volume, treble, mid, bass, reverb etc.
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Richard, you should DEFINITELY “mess around” with the Bias/Sag settings on the Mustang. It’s VERY quick and easy, and makes a satisfying difference. Other modeling amps don’t have this ability ~ and these specific adjustments are the key for dialing in the “warmth” and “attack” that you’d usually only get from a tube amp. It’s VERY simple, you don’t have to get “deep” inside the software to get to this section. I, too, use the Mustang like “any other amp”, and don’t get lost in the “Ooooh Shiny!” aspect of a hundred crappy over-fuzzed squeal-and-scream over-affected presets. BUT Bias/Sag is the real heart of the Mustang’s authentic emulation of tube-style amps. Dial up whatever amp you prefer (I hang with the Fender Amp models myself)… Press the “Amp” button under the digital screen, press the big button on the right to scroll thru Gain, Volume, Treb, Mid, Bass, Reverb etc, until “Sag” and “Bias” show up. I turn up the the “Sag” (for broken-in tube sound) and adjust bias for the kind of single-note attack that sounds good to me. (You can experiment before saving. This is very simple & takes only a few seconds). Hit Save/Save, and you’re done. Seriously, this is what make the Mustang a superior modeler to others on the market.

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I have no experience with modeling amps but this all sounds really smart in terms of what to focus on.

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Thanks for the tips jefgat. I must admit that due to babies and work and older children etc I haven’t turned the amp on for some time. I did end up playing around with some of the deeper settings but its nice to know what effect to listen out for.

I got myself an upgrade to my Boss looping pedal a while ago and am just waiting for a few quiet days to start using it. It is sad to think that 20-25 years ago you wouldn’t have been able to get me away from the musical equipment I have now, and now I can hardly find the time to look at it.