Neutral Tube Poweramp for Axe

O

okewaja

Member
Hi, I,m looking for a neutral tube poweramp for Axe. Could you suggest some good choices? Atomic 50/50 stereo seems to be great, but it's no longer in production :(. Anything similar? Thx :)
 
Any reason it needs to be a tube amplifier? Not really much upside to tubes if you are looking for neutral... SS amps tend to have flatter frequency response most of the time. I have heard the Carvin TS100 is fairly flat as far as tube rack power amps go. It uses 6L6s which I would expect to be more neutral than ELxx fire bottles.
 
I just like the feeling of tubes. I have already matrix1000gt and I really like it but want to try tubes also. I have been playing axe with atomic reactor 50 wedge some time ago and I liked tubes in power section, although I prefer real guitar speakers / matrix fr212 speakers. I will try to check out that carvin.
 
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zenaxe said:
Any reason it needs to be a tube amplifier? Not really much upside to tubes if you are looking for neutral... SS amps tend to have flatter frequency response most of the time. I have heard the Carvin TS100 is fairly flat as far as tube rack power amps go. It uses 6L6s which I would expect to be more neutral than ELxx fire bottles.
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You can run valves in the linear region just as you can solid state devices, there are plenty of good quality stereo amplifiers based on valves, but there are no real advantages, a solid state device will probably be lighter.
 
cosmik said:
You can run valves in the linear region just as you can solid state devices, there are plenty of good quality stereo amplifiers based on valves, but there are no real advantages, a solid state device will probably be lighter.
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I am well aware of this. But due to the design of most rack tube power amps which are intended for guitar and in which strictly linear operation is not considered desirable, my point still stands wrt freq response. And actually, IMHO, even high fi tube amps are probably not ruler flat linear response by design. When people talk about "rich", "warm", etc for a high fi amp I would wager they are actually noting it being non-linear or skewed in its frequency characteristics somehow; which may be perfectly desirable from that listener's perspective.

In principle you could design a tube power amp with a wide linear region of operation/very high headroom but I think it would primarily only sell to people like us and we would typically opt for SS devices. And you still have the weight and maintainability factors.

In general for an FRFR rig, tubes make no sense for a device like the AFX. Tube power makes much more sense when used as a traditional preamp... AFX(power amp models off)->PAmp->Guitar Cab

If you do get one for an FRFR rig I would get one with with higher wattage than needed, say 100W per side and then run it @ half volume to stay linear.

IMHO.
 
I use Carvin TS-100 and VHT 2502 in different rigs. I'd say the Carvin is more neutral. And it runs 6L6 or EL-34. FWIW.


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I also use a Carvin TS100 and although it's not as neutral as my Carvin DCM1540L its pretty Neutral for a tube amp. It also has a complete different feel when the rig is cranked compared to the SS amp....
 
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