Solid State amps and pedals

jimilee

jimilee

Well-known member
So I wondered what the deal was with pedals that are meant to emulate tube amps or preamps. All of my amps are tube amps, so I decided to pick one up on the cheap. Picked up a Marshall Code 50 50watt SS amp used for 149 and free shipping from sam ash.

After I played with all the emulations for a couple of days while waiting for an ear infection to clear up, it was time. I built a TS-10 sounded good. I tested a few others, a Piercing overdrive (Tim pierce) and a TS-7. Sounding better. Next was a Hudson side car. The diodes I used were 1n270, 4148 and a red LED. The bass pot on that thing is huge. The amp came to life and literally shook the floor. Amazing! I must say, some of these pedals make more sense on an SS amp.

As a pedal builder, I can recommend getting one (for research purposes, of course) and giving it a try, I think you’ll be surprised.
 
Blooze said:
I use my Boss Katana MK1 to try pedals initially 99% of the time, mainly for the convenience.
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Same here - and generally I've found if you're on the Katana's clean channel, it plays really well with most pedals... the Cornish NG-2 being one notable exception. I mean it's okay, but that pedal really doesn't seem to come alive until you have it on a tube amp...
 
vigilante398 said:
I just use tube pedals into tube amps.

Solid state: not even once.

*This PSA was produced by someone who makes money from people choosing tube effects.*
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I’ve always had tube amps, but never used the tube pedal until you came along. Your shit has changed up my game. The quality of the gain that I can get with 6-8 preamp tubes in my signal chain is just insane.
 
Virtually no local bass players I know use tube amps, just a tiny handful at most. So pretty much everything I build is meant for use with solid state amps, and for cabs with tweeters. But with that said, my favorite way to get tube characteristics is with actual tubes - go figure!

For me at least, guitar is way different, and although I ‘ve been using modeling widgets for at least 25 years, I still like them more running into an old Fender tube amp. I do plan on getting one of the little Spark Amps though, the one that belongs to the host of our Friday night jam sounds really good in that context.
 
Passinwind said:
Virtually no local bass players I know use tube amps, just a tiny handful at most. So pretty much everything I build is meant for use with solid state amps, and for cabs with tweeters. But with that said, my favorite way to get tube characteristics is with actual tubes - go figure!

For me at least, guitar is way different, and although I ‘ve been using modeling widgets for at least 25 years, I still like them more running into an old Fender tube amp. I do plan on getting one of the little Spark Amps though, the one that belongs to the host of our Friday night jam sounds really good in that context.
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My Bass head is a tube amp also. I prefer tubes as well. But if you think about it. Back when the tube screamer was created, there weren't as many tube amps as there are now. We had to use solid state because they were more affordable.
 
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This was my main amp from 94-2012. I despised the gain channel on it. I hadn’t even tried pedals with it until ab 2010. Most of those first pedals were cast offs from a co-worker (a Grunge and finally an Ibanez tube king and a radial tonebone classic distortion). The 2 tube pedals were what spurred me to look into tube amps, after all if the tube pedals were giving me the distortion I wanted then why not just go all tube. As is always the case, I wish I hadn’t sold it. It had a pristine clean channel that would have been perfect for some of the pedals I have built.
 
I love the sound of tube overdrive pedals, at least the ones I have used. It's a long story but the first OD pedal I ever used consistently for gigs was a Matchless Hotbox. Basically a Vox Topboost channel in a pedal. Same concept as a Badcat Two-tone which is even better. The Kingsleys are pretty good too. The first overdrive I ever used was the tube OD built into my amp.

But after frying a tube OD pedal at an outdoor gig (The organisers lied and used a generator for power instead of mains) I started looking at SS options. Some of the Menatones which used Jfets in a similar way as tubes sounded pretty good to me, so I tried blind testing to see if I could tell tube OD from SS. And I discovered that a really well designed SS OD is almost impossible to distinguish from tube, at least for what I do with them, and I'm fussy! I like low-gain overdrive tones which you would think would be the domain of tubes. But I have found that SS can do them just as well these days.

So now I really like my little SS boxes. I still love my tube amps though. And I love building them, tweaking them, making them my own. Anything which is well designed, well built and used properly can sound amazing. I wouldn't mind a great SS amp but haven't found one I like yet. I'm sure it's possible but I guess I don't really look that hard. I used to work in a guitar store and at the time never found anything as good as tubes but some came pretty close. They just never had the balls of a good tube amp. I should look again. And maybe I should look at tube ODs again. :)
 
I think a lot of the wariness some have towards SS amps is due to the fact that they don’t known how to use a SS amp. You have to approach the amp as having far less an impact on the tone. The amp is designed to amplify what you put into it (at least with a good SS amp). With tube amps, the amp is providing much more of the tone. When you are used to the amp shaping your tone, and then you plug into a SS amp, it’s going to sound wrong…
 
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