ok I know this is a really noob thread, but how the hell do I know if something is a tube amp? What makes them sound better/different and how do I use them properly? When I made a earlier thread asking about pedals, everyone told me to get a tube amp, why is that?
I'm sorry if I sound like a total moron, but I just don't know shit about amps.

A tube amp uses tubes to power it where as a solid state amp does not. Duh. But basicly a tube looks a bit liek a lightbulb almost.

Anyway, what makes them better is that tubes allow impurities into your signal, whcih is a good thing. It gives "color" to your tone. Many solid-state amps are sterile sounding. you may not udnerstand this unless you have herad what i'm talking about.

They are quite a bit more expensive because it just simply cost more to manufacture an amp that runs off of tubes.

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if you could open up the tube amp or see inside it youll see something like this http://www.ampaholics.org.uk/MARSH%20sl100w%2067.jpg where as a solid state wouldnt have that. tubes sound better because they warm up and get that nice saturated sound, but you have to let them warm up (like a deizel engine) and usually crank them for the saturation point to be reached. once it is though theres nothign like it.

because of the tubes in a tube amp you obvioulsy have to be much more careufll with them then you would need to be with a SS amp.
the only real 'downfall' is like lightbulbs the tubes do blow and need to be replaces but i belive you can usually get a few years out them befor they need to be replaced
a good example of the two (even though they do have other shit in their rig and sich to help define their tone) is pantera uses solid state amps where as a band lke death or children of bodom uses tube amps

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Simple question but big answers. I'll start with the first.

A real tude amp uses triode grid vacuum tudes in both the preamp and power stage of the amp.

Hybred amps use tubes in just the preamp stage and solid state diodes in the power stage

Solid state (SS) amps use both diodes in the preamp and power stage parts of the amp.

You can see if a amp has tubes by looking at it. Tubes heat up so they need vents to help them remain cool and you can see the tubes through the vents either in the back or front of the amp. You can't miss them. You have to be able to get to them to replace them some times.

One reason they sound better to mose people is because the vacuums are not perfect in the tubes. They contain trace gas particles that react with the tubed grids and give the output sound "flavor". SS diodes are very clean; too clean for most people. Diodes distort differently than tubes and since good natural distortion comes tubes being overdriven and not diodes, it's good reason to use tube amp for metal distortion.

Using them isn't that different though. You just have to let a tube amp heat up on Standby mode first for 30 seconds, then jam.

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alot of people would argue there san alot of tube amps sound their best when the tubes have been on for bout 20-30 min or so

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wow, you guys definitely answered all of my questions, thanks!
now I don't feel so ignorant

Ok I do agree with you if you want the best tone, but for simple use 30 sec will do.

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I swear when you think about it, a wooden casing with some tolex, and some tubes, and circuitry (yeah I know there's more shit to it), and companies charge like 2000 for them.

well, the parts are only part of the equation... labor is another part... and then stores take their cut too..

mesa dual recto for example... it only costs them like $500-ish to in parts(don't quote this price, cuz i don't know exactly, just a rough guess) and then another $500 in labor to put them together... the that right there is the factory price. about a grand(i know that).. from there, the store charges another $500-ish..

there is your $1,500 dual recto... in a nut shell, (mostly estimated)

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Devlopment, patents, labor.. theirs ALOT to it. You go ahead and make an amp from scratch for me.. tell me how much fun you have

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yeah but think about it, at a gig you need to get up and build up in like 10 minutes if you're playing with 3 bands, you need a short soundcheck etc. so it won't be on for that long. you can't move your amp when she's still hot, you'll risk damaging the tubes, plus you can't move an amp on stage 'hot' because you won't have any power when moving it...

if you're headlining you can put it on stage somewhere, hiding it behind a cab on standby. But I've never warmed it up for 30 mins.

oh i know... i never let shit warm up for that long... i just don't have time... i mean "c'mon guys lets go practice" in that 30 minutes i could have ran through the set list. and after it's warmed up for a half a minute and you play like one song at high volumes... it's about as warm as it would be from just sitting on standby for a half an hour. tubes cook more when you play, and the louder you play, the hotter they get.

turn your amp on, crank it full blast and then turn off the light and look at the tubes in response to your playing... pretty trippy shit man.

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I will and I'll enjoy it. And you eat shit after I make my Silent Night custom Dual Rec. for like $500 bucks.

You are going to need a $10,000 osliscope to make it work right though. Just FYI.

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A $400 oscilloscope is more than sufficient for an audio amplifier. Sometimes you can find older operational units at salvage yards or swap meets for less than $50 that are good enough for audio.

I didn't know that, cool. The ones at my work cost $10,000 but they have everything. More then enough to build a amp.

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Yeah, the Agilent and Tektronix advanced models are the shit in the $10,000 range. I bought a BK Precision 30MHz Dual Trace scope for $450 new last year at Fry's. I'm sure you could get similar deals or better online.

Sweet! Looks like I could build a amp after all. The real problemm is getting the design right and that can take years to get it right for your own liking. I would like to just steal the scematics, spec list, and parts list of a few amps I like and work from there.

*cough*MESA*cough*

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it wouldnt be that hard to steal schematics... hell, you can buy them buy the book even.

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If your a fan of Lee Jackson's amps, he offers the schematics for his m-1000 heads on his site for free. If your looking into building, check them out. Either that or check out the project guitar forums. There is a special electronics forum there and a lot of guys there do work with amps. Any questions you got could definately be answered there.

I have seen lots of schematics for 5-10W amps but never one for like a 50-100W. I haven't looked very hard either though. I think I'll investigate more into building one.

I know one dude in Canada that custom makes amps to order but the base price is $2000 usd. Peteramps

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10w tube amps can get very loud.

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my bro use to have a laney 15 watt tube amp tha fucker was like tinyass but the noice was fucking big

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hehe wow, I don't know much about amps and haven't played a lot of them but, the best sound I've ever heard is Dime's sound on CFH and apparantly that was with an SS amp...

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Back then he was playing a Randall RG-100 Head

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Check this site out for schematics and info:
http://www.drtube.com/guitamp.htm

If you decide to build a tube amp the most expensive and hard to find parts are the transformers. Probably cheapest to get them from an old junker.

ohh ok so that's a tube amp head?

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no

but its still a kickass head!

Dime and tube head??

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yeh, Dime was 100% Solid State, to the bone

Good luck on that Dual Rec clone. If you find correct schematics somewhere online pm me. Not only that, you will have a bitch of a time setting up the multi layered PCB unless you go PTP which the inside of the chassis will look like spaghetti. You would have an easier time cloning a Soldano SLO100 as the schematics that are found online are correct AND there are even correct PCB layouts online.
Also, an oscilloscope is really only needed if you are building amps up from scratch. I'm talking where you are designing the entire amp from circuit to finished product. If you are doing the clone thing all you need outside of a good soldering iron, and the knowledge of how to read a schematic is a good digital multimeter.

I have found some amp schems that claim to be the basic Mesa Recto build but I wouldn't trust them. They are just basic amp drawings with some spec numbers drawn in. If I did build a amp I would start with basic designs from a few amps and engineer from there. I would indeed need a ocsiloscope because I would have to build the damn thing with nearly all variable resistors, amoung other components that can be changed easily, so that I could tweek it until I got the perfect proformance and tone. Thing is that it would take me a lot of money to buy the right components, not to mention the time invloved.

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With all that time involved, it would be just cheaper to get a extra job and use the money to buy it instead

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And most likely in the end it would end up not working..

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Can't you just rent an osciloscope? Or perhaps borrow one from a physics lab?
Shit, my physics teacher is so into his shit, that If I wanted one, he would probabaly build one for me! Eh, maybe not

And become target practice.

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