Re:One Man’s Quest to Revive the Great American Vacuum Tube
by iainctduncan on Friday March 31, 2023 @11:01AM
(#35388131)
I wasn't comparing with solid state, I was comparing with computer emulations for tube saturation. I have owned all of tubes, solid state, and dsp based. But I would not buy hardware emulations anymore - I just do that on general purpose computers that don't depreciate to nothing and wind up in landfill.
My point is - you buy a tube amp (or quality hardware solid state that is not a computer on a surface mount pcb that no one can repair) and you will have it for decades or sell it at close to what you paid. Not at all the case for Line 6 style stuff.
Re:One Man’s Quest to Revive the Great American Vacuum Tube
by tiberious726 on Saturday April 01, 2023 @09:59AM
(#35400368)
Line 6 is the bottom of the barrel in the market. The Fractal stuff holds value well, and the kemper has barely dropped in value on the used market at all.
Maybe my ears are a bit less golden or whatever, but I barely break out any of my old tube amps since getting a Kemper years and years ago
Uh, yeah, no. Tube amps are terribly unreliable and most solid-state stuff will survive being dropped off the truck. There is a reason why touring musicians are tending to use modeling amps now. They can take their Neural/Kemper/Fractal box in their carry on on a flight and grab whatever standard speaker-amp is available at the destination and be ready to go.
And maybe a tube amp is nicer--if you get the "stage queen". Unfortunately, that's less than 10% (often less than 1%) of whatever amp model you have and costs a fortune if you are ever lucky enough to bump into one probably needs an expensive amount of service work to start. Whereas your modeler is a very good approximation and you will always get it when you buy one.