No more valves…..?

I don't say never. I know me and modeling may happen eventually but it will be rather dictated by being unable to sustain what I have right now.

I leave my Atomic AA3 and QSC CP8 at church. The CP8 is my personal monitor for my sound only, the other output goes direct to PA. I keep thinking I'll try my Bogner ATMA in 5 watt mode, but all my speakers are 12's so even that can get loud in a hurry. And I'd have to take at least a few pedals to have verb, delay, solo boost, etc. It's just MUCH simpler to come up with a tone on the AA3 (which is the size of one big pedal or two regular ones) and go direct.
 
I leave my Atomic AA3 and QSC CP8 at church. The CP8 is my personal monitor for my sound only, the other output goes direct to PA. I keep thinking I'll try my Bogner ATMA in 5 watt mode, but all my speakers are 12's so even that can get loud in a hurry. And I'd have to take at least a few pedals to have verb, delay, solo boost, etc. It's just MUCH simpler to come up with a tone on the AA3 (which is the size of one big pedal or two regular ones) and go direct.

Aw that too. I don't gig you know. I do play occasional jams tho. The solution I came with was to by 4x4 SUV :D
 
I started on the boss katana but bought an archon because the boss just wasn't cutting it for me. The katana is portable and has more effects available than my pedal board, but those are the only upsides of it vs the archon for me. Sound-wise the archon blows it away.

I think for me the katana is too fizzy/fuzzy/spitty/sizzly on any of the gain channels. I wish they had made one of the channels sound like a Mesa Boogie instead of a Marshall.

Sounds like that refreshing drink I had earlier today.
 
Except "fizzy" is good in a drink. And even maybe in a fuzz pedal. But not an amp tone. :(

Yup. Tell that to the guys who've been sitting on their butts all day. Like some of us, I've been doing the same, but not wasting my time with games. Last night I enjoyed a refreshingly fizzy flavored water with my feet up watching what's wrong with this world. Then, I turned off the TV, listened to some music, read a book, sipped a cuppa tea and munched a snack, all in the safety of my own home. My "car" would normally be in my "garage," but is instead outside in the parking lot.

Regards amp tone, fizzy/spitty/buzzy doesn't bode well. Only thing the OP forgot was the "umbrella in his drink."
 
Yup. Tell that to the guys who've been sitting on their butts all day. Like some of us, I've been doing the same, but not wasting my time with games. Last night I enjoyed a refreshingly fizzy flavored water with my feet up watching what's wrong with this world. Then, I turned off the TV, listened to some music, read a book, sipped a cuppa tea and munched a snack, all in the safety of my own home. My "car" would normally be in my "garage," but is instead outside in the parking lot.

Regards amp tone, fizzy/spitty/buzzy doesn't bode well. Only thing the OP forgot was the "umbrella in his drink."
What??? No play yer geetar?
 
I started on the boss katana but bought an archon because the boss just wasn't cutting it for me. The katana is portable and has more effects available than my pedal board, but those are the only upsides of it vs the archon for me. Sound-wise the archon blows it away.

I think for me the katana is too fizzy/fuzzy/spitty/sizzly on any of the gain channels. I wish they had made one of the channels sound like a Mesa Boogie instead of a Marshall.

I second that.

And you have a point there, nobody makes Boogie emulations, always Marshall or Vox or Fender. I don`t know much about the Katana head as I have not played it yet, but I remember borrowing the Boss ME 80 multieffect board (I know it is not the latest/top model, but it is built well and I like the hands on approach with all the knobs) and the overdrive/distorsion sounds were just awful and full of "fizzy/fuzzy/spitty/sizzly" processing artefacts that made me want to instantly stop playing.
 
I had a Katana few years ago. Mk1 100W combo. Great cleans but I couldn't bare drive channels higher than Crunch. I'm not stranger to high gains but I could get better results by boosting Crunch with onboard overdrives than using Lead and Brown.

All in all I would kill for an amp like this when I was a kid!
 
Remember, there was period of time when one could walk into any Radio Shack or even a 7-Eleven store in the United States and purchase vacuum tubes. They were consumer consumables, not the exotic components that they are today.

I remember that every drugstore in my neighborhood had a large tube tester, and several shelves of American-made tubes in boxes. The image of shelves full of Red and White RCA boxes and a tube tester about the size of a washing machine right behind where you'd sit at the soda fountain at a particular drugstore of my childhood, where we'd hang out and get cherry Cokes and French fries after middle school, has stuck with me for many years.
 
All in all I would kill for an amp like this when I was a kid!

That's the real beauty of the Katana and similar amps. It's incredibly cool to have an affordable option that lets new players experiment with effects and gain levels without having to buy a board full of pedals or multiple amps. My Katana is my living room/backup amp, and it's also great for that, learning songs, messing around - and sounds decent enough that if my Marshall craps out at a gig or rehearsal I can still get through it using the Katana without being terribly compromised.
 
I started on the boss katana but bought an archon because the boss just wasn't cutting it for me. The katana is portable and has more effects available than my pedal board, but those are the only upsides of it vs the archon for me. Sound-wise the archon blows it away.

This is as one might expect - the Archon is a far more expensive piece of equipment that's designed to do one thing very well, and it makes few tradeoffs for the sake of price point and features.

Sometimes we forget that even a modeling amp has to go through analog amplification stages. The quality of the analog stages matters as much as the quality of the model being pushed through it. The same is true of any audio gear, including solid state electronics.

F'rinstance, there aren't many Neve 1073 mic preamp 'clones' that actually sound like a Neve 1073, because they lack the Carnhill/St. Ives transformers, the craftsmanship, and pricy discrete electronics. Even the original 1073s were transistor, so this isn't about tubes vs something else, but the good ones are made without tradeoffs such as ICs. Anyway, there's a difference, and you pay for it with something like a BAE.

There are plenty of examples like this.

In our throwaway digital culture, the axiom 'you get what you pay for' is often forgotten because it's so darn easy to come 'close enough for rock and roll'. But the good stuff still has a price.

On the other hand, for lots of folks that price isn't worth it, and for others, something like the Katana is still just fine for practice, etc.

"You're an opinionated SOB, Les."

"True. Who isn't?"
 
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That's the real beauty of the Katana and similar amps. It's incredibly cool to have an affordable option that lets new players experiment with effects and gain levels without having to buy a board full of pedals or multiple amps. My Katana is my living room/backup amp, and it's also great for that, learning songs, messing around - and sounds decent enough that if my Marshall craps out at a gig or rehearsal I can still get through it using the Katana without being terribly compromised.


Totally. I used to own it for work when I was working in satellite stations. I only sold it as we rarely have a decent break lol
 
Sometimes we forget that even a modeling amp has to go through analog amplification stages. The quality of the analog stages matters as much as the quality of the model being pushed through it. The same is true of any audio gear, including solid state electronics.

100%

I used to have a L6 Spider Valve back in the days when Strymon had Spider Velve retrofit kit and... maybe one more pedal to offer :D

This amp with input stage replaced with Strymon gizmo was the coolest thing I had prior and I still thinking well about that rig. I don't care what others think about it - that was a decent amp even prior to the mod

I have seen one for sell for £200 not so long ago and I really wanted to score it for sentimental reasons
 
I remember that every drugstore in my neighborhood had a large tube tester, and several shelves of American-made tubes in boxes. The image of shelves full of Red and White RCA boxes and a tube tester about the size of a washing machine right behind where you'd sit at the soda fountain at a particular drugstore of my childhood, where we'd hang out and get cherry Cokes and French fries after middle school, has stuck with me for many years.
Ahh, yes, I remember this as well. Wasn't every store for me but the one nearest my house, growing up, had this exact setup! See, Les, you're not as old as you thought! Or, maybe I'm . . . . oh nm.
 
Sometimes we forget that even a modeling amp has to go through analog amplification stages. The quality of the analog stages matters as much as the quality of the model being pushed through it. The same is true of any audio gear, including solid state electronics.

This is so true. There have been higher end Solid State guitar amps made in the past (not digital, or modeling, just solid state amps) that sounded very good,but didn't sell very well. The reason? Because in the words of one of the designers "it costs just as much to make solid state sound great as it does tubes, and most people won't pay $2K for a solid state guitar amp, even if it lasts forever, is rugged, is not temperamental and never needs tubes replaced." Higher end devices cost more for a reason, and even in DIY or clones, you can save some money, but if you skimp anywhere, you lose some degree of the magic.
 
This is so true. There have been higher end Solid State guitar amps made in the past (not digital, or modeling, just solid state amps) that sounded very good,but didn't sell very well. The reason? Because in the words of one of the designers "it costs just as much to make solid state sound great as it does tubes, and most people won't pay $2K for a solid state guitar amp, even if it lasts forever, is rugged, is not temperamental and never needs tubes replaced." Higher end devices cost more for a reason, and even in DIY or clones, you can save some money, but if you skimp anywhere, you lose some degree of the magic.

I have one from the 70's Moog was involved with. It does sound good but I've only seen one other one in person because they were sales flops.
 
Ahh, yes, I remember this as well. Wasn't every store for me but the one nearest my house, growing up, had this exact setup! See, Les, you're not as old as you thought! Or, maybe I'm . . . . oh nm.

I'm still hoping that I wake up one day, look in the mirror, see a guy in his 20s, and think, "Wow, I had the worst dream! I dreamt I was old!"

"That's why they invented dementia, Les. So old people like you can actually think you're still 20, all the time."

"I'll be damned. I thought that's why they invented viagra."
 
I remember that every drugstore in my neighborhood had a large tube tester, and several shelves of American-made tubes in boxes. The image of shelves full of Red and White RCA boxes and a tube tester about the size of a washing machine right behind where you'd sit at the soda fountain at a particular drugstore of my childhood, where we'd hang out and get cherry Cokes and French fries after middle school, has stuck with me for many years.

Absolutely, tube-type consumer electronics did not just vanish. The technology slowly went away because we used to be a much more frugal society than we are today. Those of us who are 55+ probably remember being given an All American Five AM tube radio by an older member of our family when we were kids or teenagers. Those things were everywhere. Tube-type stereo hung in there until the eighties (Dynaco was still selling kits for the ST-70 throughout the seventies). The first thing to go were TVs. Unlike American consumer electronics manufacturers, the Japanese adopted solid-state electronics much earlier than the U.S. did. They developed much more efficient ways to grow silicon than we did and their engineers embraced the technology better than engineers of consumer electronics (tube-type TVs were drifty at best). We could never catch up, so we abandoned consumer electronics to the Japanese. That is when the label "no consumer serviceable components" started to appear on electronics. Before that, everyone who owned a piece of tube-type equipment went to a Radio Shack, 7-Eleven, or a drug store to purchase tubes. Those old "TV" tube testers are still available on eBay. There were so many of these devices that some had to survive just by shear numbers.

My father built the stereo I had in my bedroom as a teenager for my grandfather in the 50s. It was sitting in my grandfather's basement, so I asked him if I could have it (my grandfather, like a lot of the grandfathers of the period, was my hero). The stereo system was built around was an EICO HF-81 integrated amp and an EICO HFT-90 AM/FM tuner. Like the studio in which the album "Dreamboat Anne" was recorded, it was all tube. The HF-81 used 4xEL84 in pairs of two. I wish I still had that stereo system, but my parents got rid of it when I went into the Navy. I replaced that stereo with a Pioneer SA-9800/TX-9800/SG-9800-based stereo system, which had clinical accuracy and better bass response, but it lacked the warmth and sound stage of the EICO HF-81, even with the help of the SG-9800. Old recordings sound best with a tube stereo.
 
I remember that every drugstore in my neighborhood had a large tube tester, and several shelves of American-made tubes in boxes. The image of shelves full of Red and White RCA boxes and a tube tester about the size of a washing machine right behind where you'd sit at the soda fountain at a particular drugstore of my childhood, where we'd hang out and get cherry Cokes and French fries after middle school, has stuck with me for many years.

“Hey McFly!!”
 
I replaced that stereo with a Pioneer SA-9800/TX-9800/SG-9800-based stereo system, which had clinical accuracy and better bass response, but it lacked the warmth and sound stage of the EICO HF-81, even with the help of the SG-9800. Old recordings sound best with a tube stereo.

By coincidence, last week I visited a friend I hadn't seen in a couple of years due to COVID. Since we're all vaccinated, we got together with him and his wife.

We listened to some music on a '70s Audio Research tube amp, through a pair of large, 3-way KEFs from the '80s (he recentlyreplaced the drivers with original spec drivers). The audio quality was incredible! Everything came to life, whether vinyl, CDs or some of my high-res stuff.

I built a Dynaco kit back in the early '70s! The gear sounded much better than its price implied. It's where I learned what little I know about tube gear. My dad had a Fisher stereo tube receiver and a Garrard turntable. That was big stuff at the time, and goodness, it sounded good, even though he had the speakers built into a wall soffit. My dad knew nothing of electronics, he just liked music.

There used to be something called the McIntosh Clinic. McIntosh owners could bring their amps and preamps to one of the McIntosh dealers where they'd hold these clinics, and get new tubes and a checkup, for free. I had a solid state McIntosh amp, and took it to a clinic, and the McIntosh clinician said something like, "Why bother, nothing ever goes goofy with these." Then again, it didn't sound like an Mc275, either.
 
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