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05-21-2023, 08:58 PM
Hi Guys
Anyone who solders as well as plays guitar knows well that the ultimate arbiter of tone is your ear and personal taste. It is art, and as the TUT-series shows, there is science behind that art to explain what you hear and how specific circuit elements change the sound.
There is no separation of art , science, engineering and math - they are all part of the same spectrum and are part of the same quest. In general terms, an ancient view of science was that it is a search for god, or a way to understand the mind of same. For our purpose of tone creation, we use the tools at our disposal and the knowledge we acquire through our own observation and those of other people to help our quest.
For example, a voltage regulator can be viewed in many ways. An ideal form has absolute rigidity of output regardless of input and load variation. This is called a "voltage source", and is unattainable. We can get very close, and within the Human Scale of requirement / ability, it has been achieved. This would be "hard" regulation.
Real-world components have tolerances and there are countless circuit variants one can use to regulate voltage. In guitar amps, I only use "soft" regulators as this works better in a tone creation system. I do not select the circuit for its sound per se, but realise that there are aspects of component understanding and circuit design that are overlooked by the mass of engineers primarily because their focus is not the same as mine. Our views are more in line for hifi design.
Hobbyists often have difficulty reading component data sheets, specifically in mining out nuances of performance that are there if you know what to look for. For example, a zener diode (just like every other diode) has internal resistance that can be taken advantage of for use in audio, even in a regulator. Remember - the power supply is the other half of the signal path, so it needs a bit of love and attention. Zeners are tested at 5mA - sometimes other values depending on the rating of the device - and if they are operated at a lower current, their performance is not guaranteed. What you will see is a higher voltage than rated, up to the rated voltage tolerance.
Readers of the TUT-series know that we can increase the dynamic resistance in the circuit to provide soft clipping, for example. The compliance value (resistor) can be anything we find that sounds good to us. The science is there to show what happens. The art is in selecting it simply by empirical means. No one will die if we choose the wrong value. Nothing will blow up.
So, your experience can be that solid-state as a whole sounds terrible, or that some of it sounds good, or that all of it has its own place. Your opinion is not wrong even if it is uninformed. If you have only ever experienced the sonic impact of zeners used for hard regulation, then you cannot know what else they can do.
Everyone keeps re-inventing the same things. We live in isolation and experience the world uniquely despite the general Human experience being the same for the most part. We each invent happiness, sadness, fear, sex, creativity. When it comes to guitar amps, there is a safe common tonal range where every player begins or ends up in, with occasional excursions into varied realms. "Safe" is not a bad word here. It just represents a widely accepted sort of tone that most other players acknowledge and accept, and that audiences accept, for example a Fender clean tone with a touch of reverb.
When I design an amp, I usually want it to at least be able to provide that safe Fender clean sound. The rest is ear gravy.
Anyone who solders as well as plays guitar knows well that the ultimate arbiter of tone is your ear and personal taste. It is art, and as the TUT-series shows, there is science behind that art to explain what you hear and how specific circuit elements change the sound.
There is no separation of art , science, engineering and math - they are all part of the same spectrum and are part of the same quest. In general terms, an ancient view of science was that it is a search for god, or a way to understand the mind of same. For our purpose of tone creation, we use the tools at our disposal and the knowledge we acquire through our own observation and those of other people to help our quest.
For example, a voltage regulator can be viewed in many ways. An ideal form has absolute rigidity of output regardless of input and load variation. This is called a "voltage source", and is unattainable. We can get very close, and within the Human Scale of requirement / ability, it has been achieved. This would be "hard" regulation.
Real-world components have tolerances and there are countless circuit variants one can use to regulate voltage. In guitar amps, I only use "soft" regulators as this works better in a tone creation system. I do not select the circuit for its sound per se, but realise that there are aspects of component understanding and circuit design that are overlooked by the mass of engineers primarily because their focus is not the same as mine. Our views are more in line for hifi design.
Hobbyists often have difficulty reading component data sheets, specifically in mining out nuances of performance that are there if you know what to look for. For example, a zener diode (just like every other diode) has internal resistance that can be taken advantage of for use in audio, even in a regulator. Remember - the power supply is the other half of the signal path, so it needs a bit of love and attention. Zeners are tested at 5mA - sometimes other values depending on the rating of the device - and if they are operated at a lower current, their performance is not guaranteed. What you will see is a higher voltage than rated, up to the rated voltage tolerance.
Readers of the TUT-series know that we can increase the dynamic resistance in the circuit to provide soft clipping, for example. The compliance value (resistor) can be anything we find that sounds good to us. The science is there to show what happens. The art is in selecting it simply by empirical means. No one will die if we choose the wrong value. Nothing will blow up.
So, your experience can be that solid-state as a whole sounds terrible, or that some of it sounds good, or that all of it has its own place. Your opinion is not wrong even if it is uninformed. If you have only ever experienced the sonic impact of zeners used for hard regulation, then you cannot know what else they can do.
Everyone keeps re-inventing the same things. We live in isolation and experience the world uniquely despite the general Human experience being the same for the most part. We each invent happiness, sadness, fear, sex, creativity. When it comes to guitar amps, there is a safe common tonal range where every player begins or ends up in, with occasional excursions into varied realms. "Safe" is not a bad word here. It just represents a widely accepted sort of tone that most other players acknowledge and accept, and that audiences accept, for example a Fender clean tone with a touch of reverb.
When I design an amp, I usually want it to at least be able to provide that safe Fender clean sound. The rest is ear gravy.
