Re: Tubes in Pre-amps: your expertise and honest opinion.

[mmccabe@finleysound.com]

On Tue, January 2, 2007 8:31 am, margaret noble wrote:
> Now, i have heard it to be widely accepted that many
> prefer tubes because they create a warmer sound. So i
> read a bit to see if i could understand why?

Margaret,

A lot of the "warmth" people associate with gear, vintage in particular,
is actually due to the transformers used in the designs.

> I think in my most basic primitive grasp of the
> concept "tube" that the benefits are due to tube
> circuitry whereby a small distortion spectrum results
> which causes added harmonics???????<--am i on
> track????

> so, i am wondering then, do all current technology
> tubes sound better/warmer then non-tube preamps? or
> are there only certain tubes that do this?

No, not necessarily. A lot of the "classic" vintage gear that people
associate with being "warm" is solid state.

It's always best to use your ears and disregard the marketing hype.  I've
tried my share of guitar signal processors that were touted as being
"warm" because they had a tube in the preamp section.  Compared to a real
tube preamp, they all sounded extremely thin and, dare I say, brittle!

Matt

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King Never
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