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Old 4th May 2022, 11:04 AM
kt66se's Avatar
kt66se kt66se is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Montgomery, Powys (Wales
Posts: 71
Default Guitar Amps vs HiFi

Hello,
Sorry, I have not posted on here for ages but I do drop by to see how things are going.
I am still the very proud owner of a KT88 and KEL84. I have to admit that I did swap out my KT88 for a Rotel 1582 power amp but it sounded worse so that amp is running a studio hifi in the attic.

I had a friends Marshall guitar amp to look at the other day that was faulty, one white top EL34, he agreed to swap out all 4 valves for matched pairs, rebiased and running sweet, then I had another Orange amp sent to me based on recommendation and that was a blown O/P transformer, replaced and now running well but.... I can't get my head round the amount of cheap components in these amps including the iron.

Why do we as hifi lovers spend so much money on high quality components when the music we are listening to is played through highly respected brand name amps using 1p signal capacitors and 10p regulation caps.

The musicians use the amps to record directly into their own studios and when on stage, use a mic to pick up the "Marshall" sound into a bigger stage amp which is all good I guess - I am just surprised at the cheap component count in these amps, the Marshall that I changed the valves out on cost the owner £800 - just for the head amp, was not a combo.

The Orange and Marshall amp uses fixed biasing and it would seem this is the common configuration for these amps - every time a valve is changed, or a new set put in, the bias needs setting and sometimes this is down to preference for the musician who may like the amp to run hot or cold. I set the bias to the EL34 datasheet based on the anode voltage and made sure there was no red plating but it looks to be a preference that could mean long / short life valves. (Why do guitarists call them tubes!)

Is this why these amps use fixed bias as opposed to auto bias as used in the WAD amps, I don't think WAD uses fixed bias?

I've seen EL34's, KT88's and a really weird Blackstar amp using a 12BH7A as an output valve all designed to be driven to the max - I have wondered what a guitar amp would sound like using high quality components and maybe one running in triode mode through some decent iron and a decent speaker - is there a philosophy / template for guitar amp manufactures to follow?

Sorry this is so long, just wondering aloud
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