Amplifiers
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Blackface or silverface, or modified tonestack, you ain’t gonna get the two referenced tones (Tommy with moonshine amp and Sumlin) with any of those. You might get closer, but not there. And getting almost there might be just fine with you–it’s your amp and your sound.
There is more to it than tonestacks…those old amps were archaic designs, which are/were inefficient in a lot of ways by modern (60’s onward) standards.
Minimal filtering in the power section=looser bottom end. A corrected inefficiency in the blackface era.
Lower plate voltage and cathode bias. A corrected inefficiency.
Rectifiers that dropped more volts. A corrected inefficiency–eventually going to no drop with the Solid state rectifiers.
Low power rated speakers. A corrected inefficiency.
simple tone stacks, which were as simple as frequency cut controls. A corrected inefficiency.Louder was the name of the game by the time rock n roll was becoming mainstream. These aspects of those old amps are now seen as attributes by some folks (us for example), but lots of people still like tighter feeling amps that hold up in higher volume situations. A lot of it has to do with how loud you want, or need to play.
Even a bassman doesn’t sound like a tweed deluxe. Hell, Tommy’s pro doesn’t sound like Tommy’s bandmaster. His pro has octal tubes in the preamp and a single tone control–the bandmaster has features of a later design–still not 60’s in design, but not early 50’s.
If you want a greasy, raw, early 50’s blues tone (like the referenced tones, or like that ol’ Sun records blues stuff), you’re gonna need to use an amp of that era, or one modeled after one of that era. And you might find that that amp ends up being a 1-trick pony. If those early amp designs could do it all, then there wouldn’t have been any amp evolution from that point onward–because that was what was happening, design evolution–not just amp variety.
If I were you I’d start with replacing the output transformer in your Gibson amp. If I didn’t have a kid, I’d be looking into an old Gibson, I think they’re pretty cool amps.
I should of mentioned I was just speaking generally I didn’t realize this thread was talking about a specific thing I thought we were just talking amps in general I should of read the start haha.
I agree with you Craner. The really old amps were replaced with newer amps that were better. At least better by the goals and standards of the day. That was more power / louder / lower distortion circuits / better speakers……. I find many of the really old amps with the best tone, or at least the tone we are talking about, are a little small for anything but recording or home use unless you will always be able to mic them live. Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but many of the early amps were for lap steels or accordions and when you plug a guitar in you get something cool. Super clean, high headroom modern amps can sound beautiful, but that’s not the sound we are talking about. Who purposefully makes amps the old way now, wonderful flaws and all? Vintage 47…… who else?
Who’s making clones/copies/replicas of old amps? That’s a good question. If you go to tube depot or the tube store, you will see some new production octals like 6sl7, but who is doing amps with those? I don’t know. I think Victoria had a Gibson style design they are doing, and vintage 47 was already mentioned. But that is a good question.
That would be interesting to know. This is a student of Tommys playing this so he may have info. I’m sure liking that amp by Vintage 47 but is only a 5 Watt. Great tone though. I may order one just for home playing.
Going back to my original post to open this thread…
I found these amps are now available for order. I’m off to buy a lottery ticket now. MikeDon’t bother Mike my wife told me she bought the winning one lol! I’ll getcha one of those amps though. I will make a sggestion, my buddy Kevin Nelson dollar for dollar makes the best affordable tweed clone. He is in the neighborfood of 800.00. It;s the amp I use in all those beachfire posts. I will have to say though for gig worthiness The Nocturne amp kills.
Don’t bother Mike my wife told me she bought the winning one lol! I’ll getcha one of those amps though. I will make a sggestion, my buddy Kevin Nelson dollar for dollar makes the best affordable tweed clone. He is in the neighborfood of 800.00. It;s the amp I use in all those beachfire posts. I will have to say though for gig worthiness The Nocturne amp kills.
Kevin Nelson has a great reputation in the amp world. I didn’t win the Lotto so the amp is a future investment. In the meantime though I can afford your next video lesson so went ahead and placed the order. Looks like the best one yet. Still hoping your wife had that winning ticket though lol.
Hey Mike thankyou very much. My wife didn’t win either. Another broken promise. lol The videos are uploading right now. Hope you like them.
That is a very cool tone you got out of that Vintage 47 amp. I would love to hear them side by side with the original Valco amps they are modeled after. I own one of them from 52 that was branded under the National brand. Those Valco amps that are being copied all had Field Coil speakers, so I am curious as to how much difference that creates in tone vs. the modern magnet driven speaker amps. From my understanding the field coil speaker caused a lot of power to be used up between the output and speaker since the speaker had it’s own transformer that had to drive it. It is also a very inefficient speaker design in reproducing sound. I know mine was rated around the 15 to 20 watts but played more like a 5-10 watt amp. That thing is a work horse though. Still running off the original pair of JAN Sylvania 6V6’s. The reason behind tube failures, and why manufactures do not make them to last a lifetime is another discussion topic. One that makes you ill as a consumer when you familiar with the process in constructing filaments in vacuum sealed glass. Things like tubes and incandescent lights.
Hey Gretschman…I should have done a disclaimer that it isn’t me playing in the vid I posted. He’s a student of Tommy’s and someone posted it on Facebook so I hauled it over here. My previous career was Marine Engineer and there was always lots of reference to engineered life span and how it was so much better “back in the day”. I know that incandescent light bulbs are time rated and it’s advertised as rated life. People that leave their porch lights on all the time can’t figure out why their bulbs burn out so soon. Doesn’t take much to rack up 1000 hrs use when ya do that. If the “back in the day” quality was so much better, you’d think those NOS antique tubes would last nearly forever. Alot of tubes are Chinese made now. That could be a quality factor but I don’t know much about the construction process of tubes. Just know how they are connected into the various circuits and how they’re supposed to behave.
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