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Comment by iainctduncan | Hacker News Reader

What a lot of people miss when wondering why musicians still love tubes when emulations are so good now is: Tubes amps are repairable. Something goes wrong, you can fix it with soldering irons and spare parts. Many of us are sick to death of throwing out cheap microcontroller based crap. It's a hell of a lot easier to bring some spare parts on the gig than a whole damn spare amp, and tube amps don't depreciate to garbage in five years. (Good micro-controller based stuff is a different story, but amp emulators are not built like top of the line digital equipment.)

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>Tubes amps are repairable. ??? Sorry, but Tubes guitar amps are fairly unreliable creatures, especially if you are gigging musician. Don't get me wrong, they sound cool (I have Vox AC15), but they require upkeeping: tube changes, changing caps, burned parts due to heat, and a lot of modern tube amps(even reincarnations of old models) aren't well designed for the long run. See https://www.youtube.com/@psionicaudio if you are into guitar tube amp repairs. What you probably meant to say, is that tube amps are fairly easy to service and maintain, if you have a good tech.

Generally, traditional tube amplifier circuits are much more simple than modern solid-state designs. If a tube amp breaks, you are not just going to toss it. Most tube amplifier have schematics floating around for them on the internet so anyone who might be inclined can fix one. Additionally, some HiFi designs are fairly minimalist which makes them easier to understand. Swart amps are a good example of this.

I bought a busted JCM 800 combo for $20 when I was 18. I fixed it with a soldering iron, multimeter, a copy of the schematic from ampage.com, and Forrest Mims III electronics book from radioshack.

As one who enjoys repairing gear rather than replacing it, I certainly get what you're saying. But... an entire bass head that weighs 2.5 pounds and fits in my gear bag was just too tempting, and has been utterly reliable for years. Speakers have gotten proportionately lighter too, thanks to modern magnets, though not much smaller. Granted, historical bass amps are heavier than guitar amps to begin with, and the weight savings is more appreciable.

In response to other posts about repair, high quality tube guitar amps are actually extremely reliable if not abused, and some component replacement that is done prophylactically (e.g., re-tubing and re-capping) is often unnecessary.

> What a lot of people miss when wondering why musicians still love tubes when emulations are so good now is: Tubes amps are repairable. Something goes wrong, you can fix it with soldering irons and spare parts. Many of us are sick to death of throwing out cheap microcontroller based crap

Even my 10 years old behringer junk still work, what are you buying that breaks so often than you'd consider paying 5x more vs just having a spare piece of gear ?

> (Good micro-controller based stuff is a different story, but amp emulators are not built like top of the line digital equipment.)

I mean if you buy the cheapest, sure

If your behringer junk still works - you are lucky. Mine doesn't, and isn't worth repairing. Won't buy from them again.

Can you talk a little bit about how this balances with other tradeoffs? Solid state devices should be more durable and configurable, and cheap to replace in theory.

And some parts in them should also be able to be fixed or replaced with a soldering iron and basic electronics diagnostics.

Yeah but if you need to solder in a musical instrument tube amp, you can do it with a hot brick. Casual home tinker types can manage pretty OK on point-to-point stuff.

Fairly good, modern SS amp (like Boss Katana) have complex circuitry that requires a very knowledgeable tech who can diagnose and repair the issue. That can be $$$/h. Repair can cost as much as the amp. Guitar tech amp about repairing Katana: https://youtu.be/EPvon7zLdgw

That's because the manufacturer won't provide service manuals or schematics. Probably the thing itself is not designed to be repairable, but that's an issue with the product itself, not with the technology.

exactly this, and it sucks to throw stuff out because of this. I'd rather pay twice as much for quality and not create junk and support the junk economy. I'm done throwing out gear.

> What a lot of people miss when wondering why musicians still love tubes when emulations are so good now is: Tubes amps are repairable.

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.

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.

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

As a musician, guitar tube amplifiers sound better and my ear (mind) will never be changed.

Unpopular opinion: for hobbyist guitarists, the amp is one of the least important thing in the chain. A good cab is much more important.

I once built one of these mini guitar amps based on an LM386, $5 of solid state components. When plugged in a real cab it sounds just great.

I'm going to use this comment as a good suggestion for folks reading this thread to look at Jim Lill's youtube channel. He is a down-to-earth gigging musician who goes through the scientific process to try and accurately guage what aspects of the Electric guitar chain (from strings, to body, to amp, to speaker cabinet) actually affect tone.

And spoiler alert; with a couple of flat solid-state volume boosting pedals, an EQ made on a breadboard, and cheapo amplifier he was able to basically recreate the tone of several famous amp sounds. Honestly it makes me reconsider what sort of setup I want and need personally.

I do think that tubes do give a particular overdriven characteristic that is difficult (though far from impossible) to achieve with solid-state components; I don't think it's impossible (or even difficult) to make a solid-state amp that is as good as a tube amp. Just happens that when you use SS components, it's almost always much cheaper; and it becomes harder to sell an expensive amp if your cheapest amp is almost as good. So I believe that the engineers at the big name guitar amp companies tend to give less effort and development to cheaper amps than their big siblings. Which has given SS amps a bad name.

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