why solid state amps suck

chilipeppermaniac said:
My Buddy Angelo used to play this amp and had the big folded 18 inch cab and of course I fell in love with his sound especially with his Music Man Bass.

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My bass player uses one of those cabs with along with the 300 and 360 combination in front of it. John Paul Jones stage sound in his basement. That's why my 100 watt JMP is drowned out during practice.


eSGEe said:
Polytone user............................ and -- lets be honest HE SUCKED!
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A friend of mine gave me one of those that had sat in his garage for the past twenty five years. Still can't get it to work.






I use this for bass. 100 watt JMP Master Lead Series. Totally solid state and has two '70s Pyle Driver speakers in it. Sounds like ass with a guitar, but sounds pretty good for bass.


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I have one Tube amp and one SS (hybrid?) amp for my stereo setup.
DSL40CR & VS65R.

Whichever way round I slave them, they sound great.

TBH The VS65R gets more stereo outings since it is setup with my pedalboard and the TC Mimiq.

BTW I did used to have a Peavey Transfex 208s back in the day.
That was my 1st amp that wasn't a Marshall, and boy did it (SS)uck.

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Cadorman said:
Two questions:

1) Who makes a SS guitar amp kit?

2) What did Lemme use?
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Lemmy's amps are legends in their own right. A lot has been written about them over the years.

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eSGEe said:
Polytone made SEVERAL very innovative items ......
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mega brute jazz head for example


Ive also owned more PEAVEY Solid State amps in my lifetime than any other brand or style .... I cant even list ALL of them ......MOST of them lets put it that way -- if PEAVEY made it in SS Ive owned it except for the REALLY HUGE wattage SS amps




nope ...... no they dont ........lol

They arent musicians but they are the reason your woman shakes her butt and dances.. ............
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The true (old) polytones were manufactured in a garage.
I used to be the service center...these amps were blowing en mass all over the place.
The old ones self-destruct due to design and parts failures. (thermal issues mostly)
Inadequate heat sink for the output transistors.
There are very few original polytones still working.
But the new polytone is the name only, and is not designed the same way as the old ones.

These amps were very popular when they first appeared.
But over a few years time, the originals pretty much disappeared.
There was a time when lots of people wanted one...and then came a time when nobody would buy one.

Now it is back, but in name only. But it couldn't be the original design, hopefully not. :pound-hand:
If you play an old original, don't run it for more than 1 hour (I wouldn't). Then let it cool off.
 
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Robert Herndon said:
Once you set aside the romanticism of the JCM800 2204...

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You find the Line 6 is far more versatile in a studio for hire work environment...FWIW

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when i lived in florida i bought a spider III 30 watt amp just to mess around on.
i ended up hating it so bad i gave it away.
however, the helix is a different story. i love that thing and would rather use it in a studio setting than anything else.
live i still prefer my tubes though.
the last time i was in the studio, a real studio, i brought my dsl20, and we just couldnt get a good tone out of it without picking up some kind of high end fizz crap . the engineer had a 60w supersonic i ended up using, and that thing was great.
almost got one until many people told me it would be spending alot of time in the shop, so i got a 65 drri instead.
i cant say much about other ss amps, but yeah, imo, the spiders suck.
 
I had a Line 6 Vetta 2 gave it to a friend sounded like ass it was a pawn shop prize thank god I didn't pay the retail price $3400.00
at $400.00 I felt ripped off. In the last 30 years I've serviced thousands of amps it's rare to find a great sounding amp one or two per year.
 
A lot of the newer/smaller/cheaper solid-state amps use monolithic power amp IC's, and the "overdrive" channel is essentially a built-in distortion pedal. None of these amps feel like a tube amp, they feel like playing through a cheap hifi amplifier.

I don't think I've ever tried a solid state amp that wasn't built like that, except for a Peavey Renown and that was such a long time ago that I don't remember how it was. Maybe it was OK since I don't remember it being particularly bad.

I'd like to try a Transtube series Bandit one day but at the moment I can't really justify having more amps, or have the space for them...
 
gball said:
As has been said, SS amps don't all sound bad, and tube amps don't all sound good. But...(and it's a biggie for me)...I have yet to play a SS amp that FEELS like a tube amp. I know its an intangible, and there is not evidence-based criteria to compare them to each other by that I am aware of, but I just never find SS amps rewarding to play in the same way a well-designed tube amp is, no matter if the tone is good or not. The feel alone makes me play better, and really at the end of the day that's what its about.
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This is a good observation, and it is the characteristic that was initially somewhat off-putting to me when I started playing tube amps, having only played solid-state amps and processors prior. I wasn’t expecting it. However, after awhile the “feel” of it and the touch sensitivity of a tube amp becomes part of the playing experience.

Where I see this most prevalently is at that point of gain just on the edge of actually sounding distorted. At this point, the feel of the amp really comes into play because you can make it sound edgy and clipped, or still mostly clean just by how you dig into the guitar. I have not, personally, found SS amps to have this same sort of sensitivity.

Now, this is not to say the SS amp sounds worse than the tube amp; it just feels different, as gball points out.

Those who have incorporated this feel into their technique may feel somewhat handicapped by many solid-state amps. On the other hand, I can see how a more consistent result that is less dependent on individual touch could be a real plus, particularly in a studio environment.

For me, it’s dawned on me that I have talked about wanting a clean sounding amp for awhile, and just eighteen inches from where I’m sitting is my Peavey Transtube Special 212 that actually has a really nice clean channel with two possible voicings - Vintage or Modern. It‘s also got two overdrive channels, each of which has three possible voicings.

Maybe, I should just use what I already have! But, I will say, I have kind of grown used to that tube amp feel….

Decisions…decisions….!
 
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