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Old 03-02-2009, 03:24 PM   #415
BoxOfSnoo
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Join Date: Apr 2006
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Quote:
Originally Posted by yep View Post
I know better than to argue with guitar players over what makes for good tone. But when we start to get into loose tubes and germanium vs silicon and so on, consider: Can you listen to a recording of a guitar and tell right off the bat what material the transistors were made of? Can you tell by listening how loose the tubes were? What do we mean by "very different sounds"?

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I can't tell anyone what is a waste of time and money and what isn't. You have to decide that for yourself. But I can tell you that you WILL waste a lot of time and money if you get fixated on the theory of what's SUPPOSED to sound good or bad, instead of focusing on what actually DOES.
Well strictly looking at the transistors, yes, most of us can, golden ears or not. It shows up all the time when a person hears a killer tone and tries to replicate it. They just can't seem to get the same fuzz tone because their silicon-based fuzzface is too harsh. You can hear this live as well as recorded, so it's not purely a recording phenomenon, either. It's at least a big of a difference as string gauge! Maybe focusing on fuzz is cheating because of the huge significance of the transistor makeup.

But you know there's a difference in broken-in equipment. It does sound different. Really, it does. My point was, older well-used equipment is almost always different sounding than fresh off the factory, even if you have the same circuit and same specs. So you can't simply dismiss it saying that it's just in our imagination. There is some science to it, and we haven't really nailed down exactly what it is that makes it sound "vintage".

Now none of this approaches saying which is universally better. Of course, if you give a dropped-D nu-metal chugger an old, loose sounding Bassman he'll think you're deaf and crazy, not necessarily in that order. Someone who plays Chicago blues harp with a Mesa triple rectifier would also probably go just as crazy trying to take the top end off the amp. So each guy needs to know where to go shopping to get the right tone. Sometimes you need to start in the vintage aisle.
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