S

[Poster]

h

[cactuskeeb]

He (the amp builder in question) is wrong about everything he says at the bottom of the page.  I mean, scientifically he's wrong.  And what is he talking about when he goes off about the importance of a components tolerance?  It just seems made-up...

[cactuskeeb]

I don't doubt the amp sounded great but I knew you had found us a winner when I cased the webpage.  Man that page looks like that guy might be crazy, what with all that blustering, large front, unformatted text, ranting and raving...And never an indication that he's not a god among amp building mortals.  If he's indeed selling a lot of these things, I'm hella jealous of the riches he must be raking in.  There's a couple photos of the inside of one of his amps, which i found hilarous.  I know exactly what online retailer he gets all his parts from, because it's the only one that sells ultra high-end tube audio (i.e., sound system for listening to music) parts as if they were the creme de la creme of vintage-sounding replacement parts for tube guitar amplifiers.  It's a great idea on the part of the online retailer, especially since it's all just re-branded surplus that has stockpiled after the slowly waning consumer interest in the Chinese and Japanese high-end audio gear finally brought an end to the production of this stuff (for instance, the gold coupling capacitors that Jensen/Jenzen manufactured for twenty five years).  Anyway, the sound of this stuff in a guitar amplifier -- to me -- is like listening to a solid-state, albeit a really good one that doesn't fatigue the ear like the espeically weak Vintage Reissue tube amplifiers.   

[cactuskeeb]

How about "the science of orange-dropped vintage amplifiers."  The amplifier repair business in the '80s and '90s consisted, on the whole, of replacing all coupling and/or tone capacitors in vintage amplifiers with Sprague Orange Drops; I mean, that was the standard among most hard-working amp techs because it meant _reliability_ in the long term, which was much more important than great tone, especially for the repair (wo)man working in a high-profile, high-volume music store.   I think there's a rather obvious relation between this phenomenon of orange-dropping everything and a steep rise in usage of the following descriptive tone terms: harsh, (too) bright, ice-picking... However, this does not mean I agree with those who insist that a 50s or 60s era amp remain untouched and unchanged, both in component value/type/manufacturer as well as design.