Is it time to start considering solid state?

I do like me some tube amps. But if push came to shove and tubes disappeared, I'd go pick up a Quilter or two (already have one, actually) and wouldn't look back. Let's just hope there's no pushing turning to shoving anytime soon... you know, for the sake of my gloriously-sweet sounding tube amps (and all the money I've got into them).
 
ScottR said:

Watched this last night. Pretty informative. Russian MIG's use tubes?! Who knew:oops:
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To the best of my knowledge, MiGs switched over to solid-state avionics with the MiG-25. Now, a nice factoid is that the Soviet tube Mike Matthews introduced to the U.S. as the 5881WXT is actually an old Soviet bomber servo tube known as 6P3S. That is why the tube is so difficult to kill.

That being said, we are now down to just JJ. Tube exports from Russia are now banned.
 
I love my tube amps (Peavey Delta Blues, Peavey 5150, and Vox AC4), but I have recently switched to a Helix HX Stomp for gigging purposes, and I could easily switch to an SS amp like the Orange Super Crush. Those things sound seriously good.
 
My only live experience as a guitar player is at church and I use a Pod Go. I've never played through the actual amps that are modeled so I can't say how close they are or are not to the real deal. But I am learning to get some pretty good sounds from it and have received many compliments. Besides, at 69 years old and with a back and knees that act up on occasion it's great that all of my amps, cabinets and effects can fit in a suitcase! I also have tinnitus and while it's not "too bad" it really ramps up when I'm exposed to anything loud. I have a Peavey Classic 30 and when I play through it I have to keep the volume fairly low.
 
I have a room full of some of the best tube amps ever made. Love them, and if I only played at home or did studio work, I’d probably still be making money with them. I switched to the Fractal Audio Axe Fx over a decade ago for live gigging, and never regretted it. That said, I’m never giving up my amps. Why would I? They sound as great as they ever did, and I’ve put back enough tubes to play them for a long, long time if I never bought another. By the way, people have been predicting “the end of tubes and beginnings of solid state” since the later 60s. It’s not new. And while tube supply isn’t what it was, the end of tube production has also been a Chicken Little discussion subject for at least two decades, as well.

I see no conflict between having both, and even using them together. If you ask me “tube or solid state?” My answer is simply “yes!”
 
I gigged a Yamaha THR 100 Dual for few years and loved it. I preferred it to the Cornford Roadhouse it replaced. I got a Quilter Cub last year. I loved it, I hated it and now I love it again. It takes a while to understand how it works particularly the limiter which is essential for tuning your sound. I've never played any other amp that can sit so well on the edge of breakup. I can play as clean as a I like and as overdriven as I like just by varying attack - I'm obviously not talking metal levels of gain. It's the first amp that I could happily gig with no pedals/channel switching.
 
Well, we are definitely a bit closer since tube exports are banned from Russia. I do not see that ban being lifted any time soon. If it goes on for a protracted period, tube production in Russia will stop and the doors to the remaining Russian tube factories will be shuttered. That leaves us only with JJ. It is not a matter of if tube production will cease, it is a matter of when. From that point forward, vacuum tubes will progressively become more expensive to the point where they are prohibitively expensive for most guitarists.

The reality is that had the Berlin Wall not fallen in the 1989, we would not even be having this discussion. Tube amps would have been relegated to niche uses. If we dial back the way back machine to the late eighties/early nineties, the amount of floor space devoted to tube guitar amplification was dwarfed by that of solid-state and hybrid amps. Sure, there was the big JAN military surplus dump, but the bulk of those tubes that are usuable in guitar amps were sold off years ago. The only amp company that was almost exclusively tube was Mesa. The flagship amps from every other gear manufacturer were solid-state or hybrid. Tube amps were a non-sustainable business model at that point in time just as they will become a non-sustainable business model if the Russian tube factories fall. Those who are unwilling to give up tube amplification will pay for that luxury.
 
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The first thing you need in any entrepreneurial enterprise, before a product/supply chain/dealer network… is a customer. There are millions of tube amp users in the world. I anticipate there will always be someone to make them, and at a price people are willing to pay. I’m not losing sleep over it.

But the hoarding that’s going on over speculation makes me think I’ll be able to buy tubes from a lot of ridiculously overstocked players for a long time should my own shelves acquired over the decades ever run dry.
 
I have both an HD500X and a HeadRush Pedal Board. If I had to go direct to the board, I could. But, I love my Fender being pushed from the front with those processors. And I have spare tubes. I have had the same tubes in my amp since I bought it four years ago. And who knows how long they were in there before that. And it is still sounding good. So, if I were to replace them, I would think by the time I'd need to do it again, tubes would be back in stock.
 
RickP said:
The first thing you need in any entrepreneurial enterprise, before a product/supply chain/dealer network… is a customer. There are millions of tube amp users in the world. I anticipate there will always be someone to make them, and at a price people are willing to pay. I’m not losing sleep over it.

But the hoarding that’s going on over speculation makes me think I’ll be able to buy tubes from a lot of ridiculously overstocked players for a long time should my own shelves acquired over the decades ever run dry.
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Western Electric still makes the 300B. Guess how much one tube costs? $700.00! Vacuum tube production is not something that one can setup in a day or even a year. It takes several years of investment before a vacuum tube plant can produce reliable tubes. Vacuum tubes may be around indefinitely, but like gasoline, they are going to get to be too expensive for the average musician.

The good news for guitarists is that vacuum tubes becoming expensive will open up investment into alternatives. Fractal may produce a good product, but they do not have the deep pockets of the big boys. It is about being able to recover R&D costs and make a good profit. Right now, solid-state generally equates to budget amp. That will not be forever if tubes become cost prohibitive for gigging musicians. Most tube amps have very little in the way of R&D expense. The circuits are mostly takes on 60-plus-year-old designs. Any technology that seriously replaces tube amps is going to be several orders of magnitude more complex technologically and have significantly higher engineering costs that will have to be recouped through the price of the product. If it costs $1M to develop a product that sells 10,000 units, then each unit will have $100.00 of engineering costs factored into its price (one can be assured that the engineering costs factored into each AxeFx unit exceeds $100.00 by a large margin). Spending $1M on R&D costs for a digital amp is nothing. The fully-loaded cost of a qualified software engineer today exceeds $200K per year and we are talking about a team of engineers for a year or more and that does not include the cost of hardware and industrial design. It is engineering economics 101.
 
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