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In Reply to: RE: So weird this comes up right after I looked into Brian May :) and the Heath love... posted by 2chJunkie on February 19, 2015 at 07:30:52
Brian May has to have one of the sweetest guitar tones in all of rock music for sure. Although it is my understanding Brian did not always use a big chuffin' quad EL84 AC30 in the studio but a tiny battery powered solid state car amplifier with a bookshelf speaker and his treble booster pedal. The AC30's were for live and even then I heard rumors he used his
tiny solid state amp miked in to the AC30's.
Hate to take the guitar god using banks of steaming EL84's out of the equation because that is what I had always imagined he was using when listening to Brian Play on recordings. There is a bunch of info on it if you look up Brian May Special Recording Amp.The original special recording amp is only .45 of a watt and probably a very simple early solid state design using quiet battery power.
My theory is that the very first solid state designs were made to compete with tubes directly so there is a little magic in SOME of the early solid state designs, at least that is my opinion. Only took a few years for that magic to completely disappear though. Guess it had to do with people wanting solid state amps that did not blow up or something like that, I don't know. Please give me an El84 amp over solid state anything.
I think Brian was looking for a unique sound, with our El84 amps I think most of us are looking for beauty and clear sound reproduction. Ok now I am rambling...
Follow Ups:
~!
The Mind has No Firewall~ U.S. Army War College.
The mind absolutely does have a fire wall, we just have to turn it on..LOL and my firewall was off in the beginning of the thread...sorry, didn't think there would be so much interest in the thread.
I guess the old adage "never met an El84 amp I did not like" is true judging from the enthusiasm and number of responses. Thanks everyone.
Favorite EL84/7189 power amp rough pecking order discussion from now on.
I completely agree that his sound really comes off almost too clean and strong as opposed to the classic tube guitar sound. Infact when I hear it, if it were a modern recording I would swear it was being put through a really stiff compressor possibly with sustain. It really defies odds with how long he could hold a strong note so cleanly. One would think the breakup would occur with a AC30 far more pronounced.
I just recently learned of all the love for old Roland SS guitar amps. Clearly these nothing wrong with SS done right.
I have no problem with the thought of it being a simple SS DC amp. Nothing wrong with that. Heck look at Nelson Pass's amps. Especially the current ones. Harkens to the classic KISS principal.
Its funny you mention car amps being the choice too. I recently got back into car audio after a 15+ year hiatus. I had the luxury of spending over an hr and half talking to a well known designer of gory days car amps. He is also a big tube and vinyl fan too. One of common criticisms of designs then and now was complexity. He felt that of many home amps too. When I made the semi foolish remark of class D amps of today being too complex and risky vs old school ones. I remarked about one he designed that I just bought from him. He said, you think that amp with 10 output devices per ch and how many driver and regulator transistors is less complex than a D one with less than half?!? LOL good rebuttal It inspired me to pick up some mint Eclipse amps from their hey day. A PA5422 for mids and tweets and a 33230 for running a sub. At $100 each seems little reason not to try.
Also a while back got lucky and found an old Pioneer GM120. Now thats an old car amp. Along with 2 NIB BGW 602B. Those are real rare birds.
Today found a Kenwood KR-7400 at a thrift. Never had a kenny from that era. Sounds promising. And love nothing more than high powered mid 80s era pro amps for speakers that just cant get enough. Love my MC250s too for sweet SS sound too. Needless to say I have much love for SS too. Nothing wrong with it.
Again love this behind the scenes info. When one listens to May's sound its hard to find any fault in player or tone :)
The 500 year old wood on May's Red Special guitar and talented guitar playing would probably sound good through almost anything as I think he has proven.
I also think most of the compressed sound on his amp comes from the battery power, I have personally found batteries to lack dynamics. Sorry battery lovers.
I bet now there will be someone to chime in about how there is new battery technology that has kick butt dynamics.
I will admit I had no clue about the 1200 volt Schottky diodes so I am open minded and would love to hear about new stuff too. Hot rodding the inexpensive vintage gear with new key parts is fun. Why should the resto-mod car guys get all the fun...!
Nearly all the amps I use in the house are simply not practical to run off any normal battery.
Not that a PS stage cant be engineered to ramp up voltage. But just looking at 100+ watt class AB amp sections like I mostly use I just dont see any point. You figure the rail voltage is often 40-90+ in some cases. How long or how many batteries would you want sitting around??? Why bother. Sure some low powered SS amps with lower rail voltage could get away with such a setup easier, but again why bother? Then you look into something to shut down the amp and remove it from the cell so you can safely charge it. Just seems like so much work.
That being said theres always the new class D stuff. Much easier to get away with such an approach if one cares to.
Ill always remember a tech I used to use talking about such things and power conditioners. Paraphrasing for him, all that stuff is BS. If you properly design a PS for an amp you dont need any of that. It should properly decouple the wall voltage and keep it steady and remove the common noise found in an AC line. Clearly this doesnt account for excessive volt sag or extreme noise. But in a relatively normal environment. Im not smart enough on the topic to take a strong and credible stance. But my experiences show this view to be pretty well founded.
When talking the power you say May's amp generated I dont see any worry of dynamics LOL. Most of those sub 10 watt (minus a Pass class A amp ;) dont need boat loads of current or volts. I dont see any harm here. Not to mention the car audio scene. Clearly a 12v based amp can be made that sounds great and has loads of dynamics. I just dont see the need when one has nice AC lines in the home. At least not for my needs.
Im with you tho. For my high power class AB output SS amps... A good ol big ass linear PS sure sounds good to these ears :)
And yes Brian's guitar is another one off work of art like the player himself. I also really dig the mellow laid back sound of the late Jim Hall's playing. Not that he had a signature amp sound per se. But his playing sure had a signature sound to my ears. And he favored a mellow milky amp sound to my ears. Kinda reminds me of my 69 Traynor YSR-1 head I had rebuilt. Left the coupling caps there as they were fine. But PS caps replaced and I had a giant hammond choke added as mine didnt get one from the factory for some reason. SS rectification with EL34 PP power. My god that head is thick, milky with a nicely rolled top end. But if you want over drive or pedal distortion it wont let you down either. Just balls to the wall power. Love it. Total opposite of the Sunn Sentura I had rebuilt. Very marshall bright and in your face. Oddly enough GZ34 rectified. Again just funny how a circuit can change the sound regardless of common stereo types. But Im sure being a designer yourself this is all, well duh, thoughts LOL....
Again thanks for the input and info. Love hearing all this stuff and folks takes.
I was trying to be polite to the battery people but maybe I didn't make myself very clear, in my opinion batteries are very un-dynamic and should not be used in a real audio system. End of story for me unless some tech geek can tell me there is some new technology in batteries that solves all the problems batteries have with dynamics.
The black background of the batteries does not make up for the lack of dynamics for me with batteries. You are talking to a horn/high efficiency speaker lover here, I am addicted to realistic dynamics.
I wasnt slamming the battery approach either. At least not on a performance level. Its why I brought up the notion of many wonderful sounding car amps that lacked nothing in power and detail in my experience at least. Cant speak from having heard allot of battery powered home amps. But I have heard some. Oddly enough on horns too. I was just trying to point out, that to me, in a home AC environment I dont see the point of going through all the trouble.
On the notion of being polite I got a hard lesson in that becoming a member of the horn camp. Had a long ordeal waiting 10 years for part of my Egar horn order to arrive. I now have Ed (another member here) J horn mids. Bruce tracrix salad bowls for the compression drivers and a Bruce fridge sub. Along with some Klipsch Forte. Love both setups.
What I was wondering. In your opinion, would it be more accurate to say its more a shortcoming of the amp design itself in the dynamics depo? I ask as in my prior post I point out feeling great sounding amps can be made to run on batteries. Assuming an amp was designed well and doesnt exceed current and volt draw limits of the battery. To my not so well educated EE mind. Just seems the battery in such an environment wouldnt be the limiting factor. I dont know....
Ive become a big fan of active amplification. Nice active external Xovers. Pick your amp of choice for the driver. I like SET and single ended in general. Have many tube amps of those too. Also like much SS sound too. All have their strengths and weaknesses. Fun to play around with all to me.
If youd care to share Id like to know your rig and gear? Dont have to be super detailed if you dont like. You have some great points and sound like you more than know your way around this stuff. Be cool to hear about it. Sound like you prefer horns and SET overall.
Thanks much
I have tried all kinds of batteries on different amps in different parts of the circuit and I think the issue with batteries is that most batteries seem to have a fairly high impedance, not good for a power supply. Even though my experience with batteries has not been positive (pun ha, ha) so far I do have an open mind and am always willing to listen or try a new approach if someone reports good results in comparison to a well designed wall supply.
Not sure but maybe someone out there has put enough tiny batteries in parallel to reduce the impedance and got some good dynamics out of batteries. I would give that a listen for sure. But again like anything else different types of batteries sound quite different so there would be that issue to deal with as well.
As far as my systems, I have a bunch of stuff laying around both horn and direct radiator, tube and even some interesting low powered and not commercially available solid state for some specialized purposes. The common thread that seems to occur again and again on my systems are/is 1. Alnico speaker magnets 2. Paper speaker cones even on my tweeters, usually, (sometimes metal for compression drivers, etc, etc) 3. Paper for transformer bobbins instead of plastic. 4. I am also a big solid core wire fan, although for best results you have to vary the gauge for different applications with solid core or it could be disappointing. I could go on but I think you get the idea. I usually like vintage style construction techniques to get a sound I like to listen to for long periods of time.
One of my idea's for the purpose of this thread is to find two identical great sounding vintage stereo El84 amps and run them as mono amps while bi wiring the two amp channels on each amp to the speaker's woofer and tweeter. Wah-lah, a cheaper easier way to get more power, headroom and mono amps all at the same time rather than finding four vintage mono amps that would take up quite a bit of space using even the smallest amps. Also at less cost and problems of finding four identical vintage mono amps.
Now this all makes sense.
I also agree that in (many / some, folks will argue either way) one can often make a wonderful new production tube amp with new xfrms, parts that can go toe to toe with allot of vintage amps. No real reason it couldnt if designed properly. And clearly examples like Citation II or MC-3500 so on are obvious exceptions to such an idea. But comparing more mainstream designs its more of grounded stance.
I get the impression you and many others feel allot of vintage tube amps are most appealing when found at reasonable pricing. Not to state the obvious ;) Just when prices start hitting $500-$XXXXK it becomes a case of, could I build it for less. Makes sense to me.
While Im not AS big a fan of Alnico drivers in relation to woofers. I prefer ferrite counter parts for the power handling in most cases. I agree they sound wonderful. And totally agree on paper for mids. Ill never forget being in a car with a past tech who did its stereo. He blasted some good rock music at pretty darn loud levels and it sounded amazing with great imaging and detail. He asked me, what do you think the speakers are. I wouldnt know... He said, its the stock drivers. Thats when he gave his take on how paper just sounds more natural. And then driven with good amps, even stock car speakers can sound amazing. Granted it isnt his end all speakers. He too was a big JBL pro audio driver guy. It certainly made a great case for even cheap paper drivers can sound incredible with a good amp.
I also dig aluminum and titanium domes for tweeters and compression drivers. Alnico and ferrite, either or sound great to me on this regard.
Good luck on your search for the right tube amp for your application. Be wonderful to hear what you end up with when all is said and done. And nice to see you like allot of different gear too. I find so many wonderful examples of good gear in all makes and designs.
It is not just the usually low entry price of the vintage gear that draws me in but I feel if you are building a new amp or speaker you should know what was possible in the past and not go backwards with some aspects of the sound in the new design.
Very interesting on how good amps on what is usually considered junk car speakers made them listenable and actually not bad.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised as I have heard the tiny EL84 amps do some of that magic also on crappy home speakers as well but just never thought to try in a car. Makes perfect sense.
Not to go off topic but look up the story on the JBL 1500AL woofer. The magnetic structure handles 5000+ watts because of the alnico being one of the few magnet materials that doesn't loose power from the heat. Don't try that with a vintage alnico speaker though!
It sure gives credit to the virtues of Alnico.
That being said, when most of JBL's home and pro drivers are about 94 db efficient or more in most cases. Does it really matter that the magnetic core can withstand 5K watts of power / heat? Will there ever be a even remotely realistic scenario where that would or could occur? I cant imagine the coil could come close to withstanding such current. Let alone sustained current. They bring up in the article that in order to design a suspension system to take the extreme excursion they designed a dual spider system rather than compromise the surround to save face for the dynamics. Reminded me of the old Cerwin Vega stroker design.
Not trying to slam the driver by any means. It just kinda reminded me of a number game design. Not sure just how much of its extremes really matter in overall performance in practice. I tried finding a spec sheet for the driver that gave more specifics. Couldnt find one. Weird. I was really curious just what its sensitivity was???
Again not trying to slam the thing. This driver may very well have been a landmark achievement. Just when the dust settles physics still dictates what can and will be achieved with a speaker and its limits.
The big reason why I like the old ferrite bass drivers from JBL isnt really the magnet. Its the fact they have far greater power handling and Xmax ranges in many cases. On lansingheritage its often talked about, the differences between a LE15A and a 2235H. In a nut shell the H has around 2x or more the power handling and over 2x the Xmax. All while being nearly the same efficiency. Its simply going to make more bass and take more power. While not all folks listen at levels that would make a LE15A inadequate. Just if one wants a system that will go that extra mile, the newer drivers like the 2234 or 2235 were nice new additions. I really like them more than the older LE15A drivers I used to use. Both great drivers just different abilities.
I got a kick out of a paragraph I found while trying to find info on above drivers.... Its from an admin over there...
"Most of the qualifying 4" motors will loose 1 - 1.5 dB unless they are pummeled. Some of the older 3" with really short magnets, like the 2213A and 123A will typically be around 3 dB down. They go really easily. The old Decade woofers (116A and 127A) only had to see an amplifier in the room and they got really nervous. FYI, the new 1500Al used in the S9800 can take continued pulses of 5000 watts and loose no more than 1%. The test can only be done a few times before the coil is destroyed, but the magnetic assembly is totally stable."
All this being said Im sure a wonderful woofer or sub could be made around Alnico. But considering few exist today, it begs the question why. I assume cost of production plays a large part. And would the gains it MAY present be worth it. Who knows. All this may change in time. Like you say of batteries for power. If a better design comes forward...
Again neat design and sounds very impressive. Sadly its as rare and costly as say a MC-3500
I love talking speakers but I would like to keep this thread on the subject of great sounding vintage EL84/7189 amps based amps if possible as there has been a better response than expected to the question and now the thread is getting kinda big.
Alhtough I just had to mention the Jbl 1500AL for you to read about because it is such a cool and absurd driver, and to let you know alnico does not necessarily mean low power.
enjoy
Why not make another post about vintage speakers? I will chime in and once I get started talking about speakers it is hard to shut me up.
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