Amp Misconceptions

[Elric]

Oh no doubt (about the tube thing), but once I have enough understanding of the language and the science behind it I can most likely go down other paths and have a much better understanding of it all. Just understanding what all the components do and how to read schematics would be a huge amount of info to build off of. Amps and pedals are just one aspect of electricity than interests me, I find it fascinating as a whole.

And yeah, maybe I’ll actually understand WTF Cliff is saying one of these days.

For sure. That is awesome. Learning never stops and it keeps you fresh in so many ways. I would totally recommend taking some intro classes if you feel that level of interest and have the bandwidth in your life/time.

It's just funny because I remember thinking I would learn about amps and stuff in school but seriously, I only had one class where the prof literally said, "Today I am going to teach you everything you will need to know about tubes for your entire career" and he just devoted one lecture to it, and I literally never saw anything else in school, re tubes, because even in the 80s it was consider nearly irrelevant academically.

I am guessing the majority of boutique amp designers are self taught. It is a totally doable thing. Steve Fryette talks like an engineer (not sure if he is or not) as does Cliff, but some well known folks I would totally bet just learned by doing builds and adjusting stuff and experimenting with self-taught knowledge. More like learning a craft or trade than doing traditional engineering work. Which is cool in and of itself.

 

[JT]

Clips of that seminar amp have haunted me ever since they got posted up years ago

 

[Bruce]

FWIW: You can get an Electrical Engineering degree and never hear the word "tube" once. You'll learn a lot about the core priciples and science though. I'd like to take Bruce Egnater's build a JCM800 clone class, sometime. I bet that would be a very cool intro if it gets into the theory side at all and I'm sure he would answer questions directly... Just building the amp would be educational I would think if you already have some core knowledge; so I really think it would be cool.

Unfortunately, haven't had a good workspace for that kind of thing since moving in 2012... I think I definitely would have built an amp by now, if I did... Was already doing pedals, etc.

Anyway I love the science talk. Cliff at FAS is awesome for that stuff, BTW. I love how he talks about the internals here and there. Lot of interesting stuff.

I dont even know what a lot of the modeled FAS parameters do because I dont know how to build an amp and have little understanding of how one works. Outside of changing a tube or a fuse, I dont touch it. Those deep parameters I never touch. I think the fact they’re even there is both a blessing and a curse for them. People complain the FAS stuff is too tweak heavy. Well yea if thats where you take it. You can have a cab and an amp block up and running in 20 seconds too though.

The beauty of the Egnater class is walking out with your own hand built amp that he (hopefully) checks wont burn your house down. I really wish I was closer.

 

[Deadpan]

Bruce Egnater has a 2 day amp building class but it’s only somewhere in the Midwest. Told him he should license it and sell the lessons. I’d take it.

I was very close to doing this then covid happened.

 

[laxu]

I dont even know what a lot of the modeled FAS parameters do because I dont know how to build an amp and have little understanding of how one works. Outside of changing a tube or a fuse, I dont touch it. Those deep parameters I never touch. I think the fact they’re even there is both a blessing and a curse for them. People complain the FAS stuff is too tweak heavy. Well yea if thats where you take it. You can have a cab and an amp block up and running in 20 seconds too though.

At the same time it's safe to just play around with all those knobs and see if you can tell a difference. For me, most of the time the makers of the original amp knew what they were doing so any advanced tweaks don't necessarily make it better.

 

[DrewJD82]

For sure. That is awesome. Learning never stops and it keeps you fresh in so many ways. I would totally recommend taking some intro classes if you feel that level of interest and have the bandwidth in your life/time.

It's just funny because I remember thinking I would learn about amps and stuff in school but seriously, I only had one class where the prof literally said, "Today I am going to teach you everything you will need to know about tubes for your entire career" and he just devoted one lecture to it, and I literally never saw anything else in school, re tubes, because even in the 80s it was consider nearly irrelevant academically.

I am guessing the majority of boutique amp designers are self taught. It is a totally doable thing. Steve Fryette talks like an engineer (not sure if he is or not) as does Cliff, but some well known folks I would totally bet just learned by doing builds and adjusting stuff and experimenting with self-taught knowledge. More like learning a craft or trade than doing traditional engineering work. Which is cool in and of itself.

Yeah, I think the ratio of self-taught to school-taught builders definitely tips in the self-taught direction. Every time I watch Tone Talk I’m like “Damnit! This guy didn’t even go to school and he’s doing killer sh*t!”

For the most part, I’d be going in with classes that were more in line with what I do at work and maintaining commercial buildings. At least that’s how I‘m going to phrase it when I go to my CFO to pay for it.

 

[la szum]

That’s actually really cool. I’d like to take that and I have no intention of ever building an amp. Would just be cool to learn all the ins and outs, especially from someone like him.

I booked a class with Bruce a several years ago to build that EL34 based amp he calls the "Seminar." It was VERY
reasonable.... around $1100... and you had an amp to take home. I am only 300 miles North of him, so no flights
or serious travel for me. It ended up being refunded as something came up (health as I recall?) and the weekend
had to be rescheduled. Just never worked out where I could take it again.

Be cool if a bunch of us took it at the same time.

 

[la szum]

Another guy local here is Bryan Gallup who bought Dan Erlewine's old shop. He offers a Tweed
Amp building workshop.

He turned Erlewine's old shop (who he apprenticed under) into a world-class Luthier School. Even
has a pickup winding class, which I think would be really cool, too.

https://www.galloupguitars.com/

 

[andergtr]

I feel like one of the biggest pits people (including me) fall into is putting powertube distortion on a pedestal. Some old school amps can benefit from it, some amps like Trainwrecks can really benefit from it whereas majority of modern master volume amps actually sound worse with anything more than a little bit of compression.

What people actually want is loud volume. You could buy a Fryette Power Station, plug the world's best amp (for your preference) into it and it won't sound that great if you try to run it at a too low volume. You might still have fun with it, but it's not going to sound anything like it sounds at 95+ dB volumes because a lot of that sound is entirely about our perception of sound.

You could record the cab at low volume, then at your "sounds awesome" volume, normalize the tracks and then play them loud through a PA and both would sound good to you and probably pretty similar. If you were to then turn the volume down enough both would sound like crap because how you hear it changes.

That's why I don't really use attenuators for volume reduction anymore and would rather just buy a master volume amp I can get sounding good at the desired volume level.

For actual low volume, I use a digital modeler because having stereo sound, effects etc and all the things I can do to the tone on my Axe-Fx 3 through studio monitors or headphones is better than trying to make a tube amp work through a real guitar cab at low volume.

agree with this 100%.