Were they doing hybrid amps wrong the entire time?

[Sascha Franck]

Yes, they sound legit, but that feel just isn't there for me, especially at high volume.

Did you ever compare them in a more or less fair shootout? As in using a decent class-D poweramp and some FR cabs providing the same "ooomph" as your tube amps plus cabs?

 

[Sascha Franck]

A Marshall Valvestate sounded the way it did because...it was a solid state preamp that had a single tube operating at low voltage into cheap solid state amps that didn't have a ton of headroom feeding a budget speaker. It's a sum of product design decisions

Every bit this.

 

[EOengineer]

I have limited experience with solid state into tube power amps, but I do have a Fryette PS-2 that I run my modellers into some time. Sounds super cool, especially with a good cab.

That said, I don't think we can make blanket statements like this. For example, the Valvestate 8100 was used on a tonne of Death recordings and sounds so good. Just check out the later albums like Symbolic and The Sound of Perseverance. Awesome tone, imho.

Let me preface this by saying I’ve always thought the 8100 received undue shade from the larger guitar playing community.

However…

The tones I liked and mostly see other people using from that series of amps are surgically tight, percussive, and very aggressive punk and metal tones. I don’t recall those amps offering much to appease the guys looking for Hendrix Plexi tones or whatever traditional tone you want to throw in there.

I hope we’re just around the corner from some advancements in power amplification - something that appeases the metal heads and blues lawyers alike.

 

[gy1900s]

Did you ever compare them in a more or less fair shootout? As in using a decent class-D poweramp and some FR cabs providing the same "ooomph" as your tube amps plus cabs?

I've used fender tonemaster with the FR-12 cab Right next to both a real Deluxe Reverb and the Deluxe Reverb tonemaster.

There's a slightly different response with the real thing. When you do stuff like snap or pop the strings, palm mute, or just bang a realy powerful bar chord.

A tonemaster with the FR-12 cab holds together better than both the tonemaster Deluxe Reverb or a real Deluxe Reverb at very high volume when you adjusted the volume off of the FR-12, and not the tonemaster itself. Those high wattage FR cabs really have solved the problem of solid state not holding together at high volume, but the feel still wasn't there, and I have yet to obtain that feeling on several quality modelers like the Helix, tonemaster, head rush, Boss etc.