Says Dave:

The guitars were American-made and made at the height of American craftsmanship, the Marshalls were made with quality parts, and you had quality players – you couldn’t record a record unless you had a high level of ability.  Plus studios had the best mics in the world, they had good consoles and tape. Now we might have more stuff available, but it’s not as high-quality.

Jay goes on to ponder the current state of electric guitar gear and whether it is actually more difficult to get what he calls “a convincing, old-school rock tone” than it was when Page, Clapton and Beck were young. So, here’s the deal!  I thought I would ask what you think about this topic…

First, read Jay’s article. Then click on the link below to take a quick four question survey and tell me what YOU think!

CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE “BETTER NOW OR THEN?” SURVEY!

As always, I’ll share the results next month!!

Cheers!

Don Mackrill – Don@MackAmps.com

PS: Check out another article on Woody Tone: “Mack of Mack Amps on EL84s and Tone Controls”. In this two part interview I explain why I like EL84s, how the Heatseeker line of amps came about and why I don’t like TMB tone stacks!!

PPS: Join the Mack Amps mailing list and take advantage of the current Member’s-Only discount on Heatseeker HS-18 and Skyraider SR-15 boutique amps!

Better Now or Then? (The Tone Survey!) from MyRareGuitars.com

So, what’s the ideal amp? Let’s find out!

The Ideal Guitar Amp

The following composite descriptions of the Unlimited Budget and Limited Budget Ideal amps are based on the most selected features (in some cases I used the mid-point of a range of selections if they were equal in popularity).

Unlimited Budget

• Head configuration
• 50 watts
• 6L6 power tubes
• Tube rectifier
• Treble-middle-bass tone controls
• Tonality: great cleans and ‘shred’ preamp distortion
• Two preamp channels
• $2,500

Limited Budget

• Combo configuration, 1×12
• 18 watts
• 6V6 power tubes
• Tube rectifier
• Treble-middle-bass tone controls
• Tonality: great cleans and ‘shred’ preamp distortion
• One or two preamp channels
• $750

Following are the compiled results from each question.

Musical styles:

On average each respondent selected 2 music styles.

• 80% play rock music.
• 40% play blues. (DOH! I can’t believe I left this category out. Thanks to all you blues players for using the ‘Other’ category to write in your preference.)
• 25% play country.
• The rest are spread out over jazz, metal, fusion, surf, garage, noise, grunge, ska, gospel, swing, “folk noise Americana” and “post-rock biiiing biiiing sounds” (whoever plays that PLEASE send me a sound clip!).

Price

As you can see, it is quite clear that $2,500 seems to be the sweet spot of the ‘Unlimited Budget’ (UB) price point. It’s interesting that there are about as many people willing to pay no more than $1,500 as there are those willing to pay $5,000 for their dream amp!

The ‘Limited Budget’ (LB) sweet spot is wider spanning $500 to $1,000.

Use

When asked “What are you going to do with your ideal amp” the answers were evenly spread across playing at home, jamming, rehearsal, gigging and studio recording. There was slightly more interest in using the UB amp for gigs and in the studio, while the LB amp would get slightly more use at home.

Head or Combo?

The UB amp is slightly more likely to be a head (55%) than a combo (45%). The LB amp is most likely to be a combo as selected by 65% of respondents vs. a head selected by 35%.

Output Power

UB amps will have a fairly wide range of power spanning 30 to 100 watts.

LB amps will be lower powered with 15 to 20 watts being the clear preference. There’s a reason why there are so many amps available in this power range!

Almost all of the respondents who selected the ‘Other’ choice identified a desire for the ability to adjust the power of their UB or LB amps whether that be a continuous adjustment or switching power levels.

Power Tube Preference

Clearly 6V6s and 6L6s are the preferred tube for the ideal amp. As can be seen, V6s are the preferred choice for LB amps while L6s are the UB choice. This makes sense when desired output power is considered: 6L6s produce more power than 6V6s, which matches with the UB vs. LB desired power output.

Power Supply Rectifier
70% of UB amp designers selected tube rectifiers for their ideal amp compared to 50% for LB amps. Of the non-tube rectifier responses most said they didn’t care whether the rectifier was tube or solid state.

Flexibility: Range of Tones

These results surprised me, which makes me think that I didn’t do a good job of selecting the categories. However, the data shows that, regardless of budget, EVERYONE wants an amp that does great cleans and produces shred levels of preamp distortion. That’s surprising because virtually no one said they played shred-type music!!!

Preamp Channels

Predictably, LB amps were designed to be more simple with fewer channels than UB amps. However, there was a strong desire for even the LB amps to have built-in flexibility from 2 channels.

Single Channel Design

These results underscore my belief that the questions regarding tonal flexibility were not well conceived. The above chart shows that in a circumstance where an amp has only one channel, guitarists DO NOT want preamp distortion. That contradicts the Flexibility results shown above where it appears that most guitarists want shred preamp distortion in their amps!

The single channel preamp design question was much more clear than the flexibility question, which leads me to believe that its results are more reliable than the flexibility results.

Tone Controls
No surprises here. Regardless of budget, guitar players prefer treble-middle-bass (TMB) tone controls. They would be found on over 70% of UB amps and 60% of LB amps – 20% of LB amp owners would be OK with treble and bass controls. A presence control was a popular addition for those who selected ‘Other’.

Effects

There was widespread response regarding the inclusion of effects. However, no one effect received support from even one half of respondents. The most popular effect is reverb, only one in three think it should be included in their ideal amp.

Thankfully, digital multi-effects were generally ignored by the ideal amp respondents. As can be seen, reverb and tremolo/vibrato were relatively popular, but none of the options provided were wildly popular. That would indicate that guitarists questing after their ideal amp are mostly focussed on tone and not effects.

Combo Configuration
60% of UB amps would feature two speakers and 70% of respondents wanted 12″ speakers in their UB amp. LB combos were more or less evenly split between one and two speakers (49% and 46% respectively), but a strong preference was still shown for 12″ speakers with 65% of respondents selecting them.

The Last Word
When asked what else they would add to their ideal amps, LOTS of ideas were thrown out including:

• Stand by switch
• Wheels
• Various colors
• Ceramic tube sockets
• Hand wired circuit board
• Specific tube rectifier models
• Switchable negative feedback
• EF86 preamp
• Speaker impedance selector
• Dual power amp – high power for cleans, low power for distortion
• Fire-spitting jets that flame up during a solo!

Send me an email with your comments about the results of the Ideal Amp survey: Don@MackAmps.com.

The Ideal Guitar Amp: Survey Results from MyRareGuitars.com

More tone controls are better – treble, middle, bass – a tone stack for every channel! Always has been, always will be… maybe not!

WHY?

Tradition is a powerful thing and change is hard to make. But, if you consider how tone controls affect an amp’s signal chain, investigate what a guitar and amp sound like with minimal tone controls (or none!) and then decide if you REALLY need them, you might be surprised at your conclusion.

Tone controls change or modify the tone of an electric guitar signal as it passes through an amp. However, the primary determinant of how your electric guitar sounds is the instrument itself, the amp’s overall design (gain stages, pre vs. power tube overdrive, etc.), its tubes, the speaker(s) and YOU the player. Tone controls are but one in a long line of factors strung between your brain, your gear and your ears.

We all have used tone controls to change the sound that our amp produces. Roll off the bass for a humbucker equipped guitar; trim the treble when you plug in that ice-pick Tele; peg the bass when playing your Strat; boost the mids to cut through the mix. All useful stuff. But, what would you sound like if you didn’t have tone controls at all?

In my opinion, despite their tone tweaking usefulness, traditional tone controls can detract from the quality of the tone… if you consider what your amp would sound like without them. Let’s dive into the nature of tone controls to find out why I hold this wacky belief!

Virtually every tone control you’ll run across, at least in a typical tube amp, is a ‘passive’ device. That means that it cuts or reduces the volume of certain frequencies. A passive tone control cannot boost frequencies.

Terminology check: tone controls are often referred to as ‘tone stacks’. The passive components that comprise tone controls – resistors, capacitors and potentiometers – are connected in such a way that when they are drawn on a piece of paper – a schematic – the treble, middle and bass controls look like they are ‘stacked’ on each other. That’s where the term tone stack comes from.

Because tone stacks are constructed from passive components, even if you turn the knobs up to 10, each tone control still reduces certain frequencies.

Yes, that’s right. With passive tone controls there is no such thing as a TRUE ‘flat’ setting where the signal is not affected in any way there is always some signal loss.

What the heck does all that mean?

Below is a graph that shows the frequency response of a typical treble, middle, bass (TMB) tone control often used by an amp company originally located in southern California. The graph depicts the level of frequencies with all the tone controls set to 10. As you can see the signal level at all frequencies is well below 0 dB — that means that the signal level is being attenuated or reduced as it goes through the tone stack – even at a 10 setting (yes Nigel, the same would hold true at 11 too!).

What does this mean? Two things.

First, a tone stack reduces the overall level of your signal. That’s why amps with traditional tone stacks need an extra gain stage to return the signal to its level before it got hosed down by the tone stack – more components, more cost, more complexity.

Second, even when all the knobs are on 10 the stack is changing the tone profile of your signal. The tone stack’s frequency response as shown in the graph has a big dip centered on 300 Hz. That means that the volume level of those frequencies around 300 Hz is a lot less than the rest of the frequencies – a cut in the low mids.

Here’s our tone stack’s frequency response set to provide a flat frequency response. Note that although the tone controls are not shaping the tone – all frequencies are being passed at an equal level -the signal has been severely attenuated across the board.

• 10Hz
• 100 Hz
• 1000 Hz
• 10000 Hz

You’ll likely be surprised to learn that to produce this ‘flat’ response the controls have to be set as follows:

• Bass = 1
• Middle = 8
• Treble = 0

I bet that’s not where you set your tone controls!

There are a few things at play here. First, at this flat response point you have to really boost the volume to compensate for the gain loss through the tone stack. Second, it shows how much the typical tone stack scoops mids – bass and treble have to be severely attenuated to match the low mid-frequency response of the stack. Finally, this shows that the tone controls are highly interactive and changes in one dramatically affect the other – you have to dial in crazy settings to get a flat response.

So, if it takes this dramatic an alteration of your tone controls to get a true representation of what your guitar sounds like why bother?

Is all this ‘bad’? Not necessarily. The tone stack in question has been used in dozens of amp designs that produce great tone. Maybe you won’t like the true sound of your guitar!

However, I want to plant a crazy idea in your brain: what would happen if you didn’t have a tone stack or you had a very simple tone control that could make subtle tone changes, but would not suck nearly as much gain and would not dramatically alter the frequency response of your guitar?

Well, in my experience you can really ‘hear’ your guitar (!) … you’ll hear a more balanced tone coming from your rig. Your tone will have more presence and, with an amp that has been designed with minimal or no tone controls, you will experience a more responsive, dynamic feel. If you like that sort of thing it’s VERY cool!

Of course, it’s impossible to properly convey the sound of a ‘tone-stacklessR17; amp on a piece of paper … you have to hear the difference!

So, when you see amps with minimal tone controls don’t dismiss them. Play through them when you get the opportunity so you can see for yourself. You may be surprised at what you hear and feel!

Send me an EMAIL (Don Mackrill) if you would like to discuss this further!

PS: Crystal ball time! I predict you’ll see an increasing number of amps with ‘lift’ switches that take the tone stack completely out of the circuit. A few big name amps have had this feature for years labeled as a “solo” switch. Why call it a solo switch? Because eliminating the tone stack increases gain and midrange response – both perfect for bringing your sound front and center! Wouldn’t that boost in tonality be a good thing all the time?

Consider having your local amp tech add a lift switch to your favorite box so you can experiment for yourself … the stack might get lifted and never put back!

Amp Tone Controls: Tone & Gain Sucking Leeches? from MyRareGuitars.com