The Steel Guitar Forum

I recently got a new custom made all tube hand made amp.
I find it really reassuring that it`s built more or less exactly the same way as my old amps some of which are over 50 years old and still working with no problems. With very little maintenance....
I trust it will last as long as the classics....
I wouldn`t bet my money on a , say, Line 6 amp, to last for 50 years...

Everything I thought I knew about tube vs solid state amps was disproved when I started playing through my McIntosh mc50 (solid state power amp). There is no lack of "character" or "warmth", and it's totally smooth across the entire range of the pedal steel.

For the time being, I'm driving it with a Sans Amp Blonde, but I'd imagine it'll only get better with a good preamp instead.

Comparing a Mac with a modern mass produced solid state guitar amp? Foul!
Maybe one of Brad's new octal preamps and a nice effects processor, add another MC50 and a couple light 12" cabs with carefully selected speakers; I think that might sound OK.

Chris

I often hook up a tube preamp thru my old McIntosh MC-250 into a JBL D130 or K120 (or both), and wow, that's a sound...


B

Chris,
I see no reason to leave great sounding hand wired solid state amps out of this discussion. If anything, it (along with the aforementioned Standel) is the first fair comparison to the handwired tube amps. I wanted to share my recent experience using the Mac because it sounds, to me, better than any other amp I've played, and it changed my opinion on tube vs solid state amps.

Btw, I'm right there with ya on using a tube pre and doubling the power. But for now it sounds great with just a Black Box, Sans Amp, and a Wet reverb.

The Mac's are special beasts. They use "autoformers" on the output, basically half of a transformer so you can get full power into virtually any speaker impedance load you want to use. They have huge amounts of negative feedback in the circuit for low distortion, precision symmetry, a pure and minimal signal path, bad-ass Motorlola output transistors, Allen Bradley carbon comp resistors thru and thru, and all that iron in the autoformer... they just have a certain warmth to them that's steel friendly compared to most other transistor amps. Mine is a 1968 Mc250, and it keeps up with many far more exotic amplifiers, even as a reference amp in a mastering studio.

I wish I was old enough to have caught the Grateful Dead's "Wall of Sound" back in the mid '70s. That was all Mac and JBL and an array of the finest tweeters ever made, The EV T-350 driven by the big tube McIntosh MC350's.


B

Brett, that was kind of a tongue in cheek observation on my part and I agree with your last point for sure.
Brad, I did catch a Dead show, in '74 at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver BC. Pretty impressive, I must say. Columns of 12 and 15 inch JBL's twenty feet high, a bunch of racks with MC2300 power amps six high, tweeters in abundance. The boys played a little better than four hours almost non stop, and I've never heard another band sound nearly so good in that horrible hockey rink acoustic environment.
Yes, Owsley had more to him than just little purple tablets.
I shot a roll of High Speed Ektachrome, mostly of the band and the Wall, which I still have stashed away as a strip, unmounted. Maybe I'll get around to digitizing them someday soon.

Chris

Chris, PLEEEEAAAZZZEEE share those photos when you can!!!!


Brad