Here’s a link to my webpage “Tubes vs. Solid State.”
http://howard.davis2.home.att.net/Tubesvs.SolidState.htm

If you like tube equipment, get tube equipment – but first you should understand all the pros and cons.

Hi Julian,

Low plate voltage operation of tubes causes them to distort at lower signal levels. The higher the plate voltage (within the limits of the tube), the more linear (distortion free) operating range is available. So for clean amplification you run the voltage high, and for overdrive distortion you run it low. The optimum voltage depends on the tube, the application, and the desired effect.

The people I know that like their equipment big and heavy usually have roadies to carry it around. The new XO and NANO pedals are popular because people like to be able to fit more on their pedalboards, and like the solid state pedals in the older large boxes, tube pedals take up alot of room and add weight.

How does one define “tube distortion?”
To the engineer such as myself, distortion consists of harmonics (and other audible byproducts such as sum & difference frequencies) of the tones that make up the musical signal – harmonics that are generated by nonlinearities in the amplifying devices the signal is processed by. The harmonics and their relative levels determine how musical or unmusical, desirable or undesirable, the resulting sound is. Some analog solid state devices such as FETs and CMOS chips, properly used, emulate “tube distortion” so well that it cannot be distinguished from the overdrive distortion and compression generated using actual tubes.

Tube amps have other characteristics, such as power supply “sag,” that some people favor. I don’t care for this, as who wants their sound to muddy up and get softer when they want to rock out loud and hard? Solid state amps with properly designed power supplies do not “sag” – you play harder and they get louder, until driven into clipping.

If the distortion produced by a vacuum tube pedal and a solid state pedal both sound the same, why not choose the many advantages of solid state? I discuss these in depth on my website – http://howard.davis2.home.att.net/Tubesvs.SolidState.htm

I fail to see any “fun” in a tube going bad in an amp or pedal just as your band starts to play in a club. When reliability and predictability are essential, solid state is the way to go – these are among the many reasons why such consumer electronics devices as TVs are no longer made with tubes. And have you any idea how big and expensive a vacuum tube COMPUTER would be?

Poorly engineered CDs sound no better than some vinyl, and some well-recorded vinyl sounds better than some poor CDs, but the quality potential of CDs is far greater, especially when the masters, digital or analog, are of high quality.

I still use a film camera, but only because it has some capabilities I have not yet seen in digital cameras.
But as you said, “I guess it pretty much boils down to personal preference.”

Howard

I’ve never found a solid state amp that sounds as nice as a tube amp, never, and I’ve tried a lot of amps.
Guitars just sound better thru the majority of tube amps IMO.
I like solid state pedals via a tube amp, tube pedals via a tube amp is overkill IMO, a tube pedal via a solid state amp is fine though.
About the best solid state amp I’ve ever heard is the sunn beta lead, still not my cup of tea but its pretty decent.

The EH tube pedals sound rad regardless.

Well, i’m afraid I come out on the side of valves hands down. Most of what I feel has been said here already, but just to add my very first amp (I was 14) was a tube amp im not even sure what it was It could have been an ex military thing and some speakers in a small cab i made, wow what a sound that was (this was the 70’s !). Then in the early 80’s got my first proper amp a trany 100 watt but even with a TS9 it still sounded thin, reedy and just not very good. It wasn’t until the early nineties that i eventually got a JCM 900 and was reborn, THIS was the sound i has always wanted without a doubt. Hard to define but the words warm, rich, edgy, dirty spring to mind.

I don’t use any distortion/fuzz boxes on my board incidentally I get it all from my amp but i have two of the EHX tube pedals, the wiggler and the black finger and again the sound is the same as the above. An engineer once told me that valves have the actual element of fire in them, something very real and organic. But as has been said its all down to personal taste.