Joker Verox

I currently have a 15W Peavey Vyper and am looking to upgrade. Now I’ve heard both Tube and Solid State Amps, and I’m fully aware that tubes are better. However, I don’t have a sky high budget (around $200) and am wondering how the volume of tube amps compare to solid states. I know that tubes are louder, but not exactly sure how much louder. For my upgrade, I could get something like a 30W SolidState amp, or a 5 Watt Tube. Would they be about the same volume, or would it be better just to get the solid state?

No, the 30w SS amp will be way lounder than a 5w tube amp.
But really, i’d save my money for something more powerful.

The Bottom Line The future of modeling amps will be two-fold: the first will appeal to "tube-purists" and will include a tube-power-amp-section, while the second will appeal to the more "modern" guitarist.

Over the past 25 years, I’ve played many guitar amps, hundreds upon hundreds and perhaps even thousands when you factor in all the multiple models of the exact same guitar amp that I’ve had the pleasure of toying with. In the late 70’s and early 80’s, there was no question or debate surrounding tube amps and solid state amps. The tube amp was simply the guitarist preferred gigging tool. What a difference 25 years can make?

I must also admit that in 1997 and 1998, there was still a definite audible difference between tube amplifiers and solid state ones, especially when a tube amp was pushed hard and being played by a blues guitarist. Many electronic engineers who conducted double-blind sound tests comparing tube amps with solid state ones all concluded that same basic thing. The soft clipping overdrive “tone” of a tube amp was most noticeable with a blues guitar players’ particular style of playing. It was next to impossible to differentiate the clean setting of a tube amp (with no overdrive) over a solid state one, or the high gain setting of a tube amp with that of a solid state one.

Isn’t it amazing what 5 years of electronic technological advancements can do for guitar amplifiers? A couple of weeks ago, my buddy said to me that he can still tell the difference between a tube amp and a modeling (solid state) amp. I challenged him to a blind sound test! For the test, the studio owner made the following selections that nobody was allowed to know before hand: my Line 6 DuoVerb, a Vox Valvetronix AD120VT, a Yamaha DG80-112 and the Fender Stage 100 DSP-112. And for the tube amps: my pals Marshall JCM2000-TSL602, a Fender Deluxe Reverb II, a Traynor Custom Valve YCV20-WR and a Vox AC30.

Since we all agreed that it was impossible to differentiate between a tube and a modeler on the cleaner and higher gain sounds, we concentrated the exercise on the “soft clipping sound” of those tube amps when pushed into overdrive. We agreed on a young talented musician, who in turn took notes and tips from each amp owner regarding ideal settings for their amps and the different guitars and pick-ups he was to use. Every amp – 20 we’re brought into the studio but only 8 we’re selected – each was set-up in my buddy’s basement studio and our featured guitarist got to fool around with all of them before we arrived for a bonafide sound test experiment that would hopefully end the tube vs solid state debate once and for all.

The musician was out of sight and nobody was allowed to view the “setup”! 11 musicians and guitar amp owners with an additional 7 non musicians participated in the exercise as “judges”…

We all had to answer one simple question: “Tube Amp” or “Solid State Amp”? Each amp was played in random order, 3 separate times at slightly different settings and with different guitars. So what were the results?

First, some astonishing facts:

- every single tube amp was mistaken for a solid state amp, and
- every modeling amp was mistaken for a tube amp.

Our analyses of the results:

- we all agreed that many had chosen “solid state” simply because all of the sound samples could not be from tube amps alone!

- there was no correlation between tube amp owners, modeling amp owners and non musicians when it came to distinguishing between a tube or a solid state amp.

And the big winner was…

“Tube Amps” continue to rule when it comes to its’ mild overdrive soft clipping sound and tone!

Close to 90% of our listening audience could tell they we’re listening to a real tube amp when it was set to a soft clip overdrive tone. The big winner in the modeling samples on hand was the DuoVerb, 70% had mistaken it for a tube amp on both the Fender and Vox settings. While the Vox Valvetronix faired just as well as the DV on its Vox settings it did very poorly on other settings for an average of 35% overall, the lowest percentage of all modeling amps on hand which still managed to fool some who had mistaking it for a tube amp. The Fender Stage 100 did really good, considering 55% had mistaken it for a tube amp. The other surprise was the Yamaha DG80-112. It came as a complete surprise to many when it was announced that close to 60% of the audience had mistaken it for a tube amp.

What can we conclude from this little sound test?

One of the biggest realizations was that those supposedly “subtle things” like “tube feel” that “tube purists” say they can hear on their tube amps, well they also appeared to be present on “Modeling Amps” as well.

Obviously, with every new generation of modeling amps, the accuracy of modeling technology is only getting bette

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