This is an email newsletter I got today from an amplifier manufacturer. I'm 100% in the Axe III camp!
Does Liking Tubes Make Me Old School?
It’s not just that I’m “old school,” but I prefer tube amps. Sure, many of the new digital amps offer scads of features that are admittedly fun and cool. But, when it comes to the pure player-guitar-amplifier connection, there is nothing like the warmth and tone that tube amplifiers produce.
Vacuum tubes are timeworn technology. Digital amps can almost mimic the sound of a great tube amp … but not quite. The physical transfer of electrons within the tubes, initiated by the electro-magnetic charge transmitted from the guitar pickup can be imitated, but not perfectly digitally reproduced. When the combination of preamp and power tubes shapes the tone you produce over the entire spectrum of volume and distortion, the complex composite of even and odd order harmonics as signal amplitude changes simply cannot be recreated in a digital amp.
This creates the most pleasant overdrive, or distortion, because the predominately even order harmonics reproduced best by tube amps in the richness of their timbre above the note being played, are ideally suited to the human ear. Not to get all “sciency” here, but our tympanic membranes are best able to respond to vibrational frequencies at multiples of a primary tone. So, tube amplifiers at modest overdrive, or distortion (by creating by predominantly even, but also a fraction of odd order harmonics) offer a pleasing experience to the listener because the multiple vibrational frequencies are congruent. One day it may be possible for digital amplifiers to recreate the complex inner workings of vacuum tubes and reproduce a more natural overdrive, or distortion, sound. But, it hasn’t happened yet. The harmonics created with the attack and decay of a note played through a tube amplifier offer a staggering complexity for digital amplifier manufacturers to copy. Because that is what they are doing – taking the recorded sound of a tube amplifier and working to recreate that sound from attack through decay, at a variety of volume levels and tone settings. They have done a fantastic job at getting it close. But, as yet, no cigar.
Indeed, the better your speaker(s) and cabinet, the more you will appreciate the subtle advantages of a tube amplifier. This holds equally true whether you are listening to a live performance, or a recorded performance through speakers or headphones.
Tubes are here to stay. Not because I’m “old school.” Because they sound better.
-Ted
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