Guitar / Bass Amplifier Info & Education

Since their invention way back in the early 1900s, vacuum tubes have seen use in a wide variety of industries and applications, from old CRT televisions to computers to microwave ovens. When amplification was introduced to the music industry, tubes quickly became the cornerstone of countless genres. The sweet, singing sustain of a tube amp is synonymous with rock and roll, country, and blues, to name a few. Let’s take a basic look at these little devices that give our guitars such a big sound!

If you were to buy a new guitar amplifier tomorrow, what would be your primary consideration? For many musicians, it would be what gives them the tone they want. It may also be based on what their musical heroes use. And it's completely understandable- we all want gear that speaks to us, our audience and helps to shape our signature sound.

Whether you’re jamming with a garage band or playing stadiums, it’s essential to protect your hearing. Our hearing is one of our most valuable tools we have as musicians, and once it’s gone it’s gone for good. In fact, if you leave a gig with your ears ringing, permanent damage has already been done to your hearing. Furthermore, if you constantly expose yourself to excessively loud volumes over a long period of time, you may develop Tinnitus, which is a constant ringing in your ears. In severe cases, that ringing may turn into buzzing, humming, or even singing sounds. Any kind of additional voices in your head is definitely something you want to avoid.

Whether you’re at the studio using your amp head as a preamp or jamming with headphones at home, it’s very important to know which circumstances require that you connect speakers to your amp. This article will break it down for you!

In response to our recent series about replacing tubes in your amplifier, we received the following question from a Carvin Audio enthusiast:

“Great article. I would like to see an article that describes how the power tubes are correctly biased. Ex: I own a Carvin Audio V3M head, but it uses Electro-Harmonix power tubes. If I want to use Sovtek EL84s what must the voltage for the output tubes be set at? Lastly, I hope Carvin Audio can develop a power amp with a self biasing output section like my Mesa Tremoverb had. All I had to do was select EL-34, 5881, or 6L6…It self adjusted to whatever power tubes I decided to use.”

One way you can affordably tailor your tube amplifier’s sound is by trying out different preamp tubes. This is possible because unlike power tubes which require expert bias adjustment, preamp tubes are self-biasing in the circuit. Because of this you can learn to swap out your amplifier’s preamp tubes in only minutes without specialized tools. What difference can changing your preamp tubes really make? Well, you can customize how much gain the stage has available, select a particular tube for the way it colors your equalization, the location of a high or low gain tube in the amp’s signal can change your distortion and tone character, and you can even choose a tube for more subtle features like ultra-low noise, durability or extra headroom. As it happens, quite a wide range of variations can be accomplished by replacing a part that usually costs less than $20.

Getting into the world of effects pedals can be an intimidating task (and not to mention expensive, too)! There are hundreds of pedal manufacturers and thousands of effects to choose from to help define your sonic identity. If you're just getting started with effects, this quick guide will outline the basic ways to implement some stomp boxes into your arsenal.

A live performance situation where gear is backlined or shared among performing bands is quite common. Inevitably you will run into a situation where you need to share an amplifier with another band on the bill, most likely the headliner, or the venue provides a rented setup for you to use. This may be arranged in order to reduce tear down time between bands, simplify the load in process, or accommodate a touring band.

When you bought your tube amplifier a major factor was probably how good it sounded! You worked it hard for a long time and made a lot of great music with it, and then one day you noticed it just didn’t seem as awesome as you remembered it sounding. Or perhaps you were playing and one of the tubes died, leaving you wondering what it would take to bring it back to life? Sooner or later, every tube amplifier aficionado will have to face the confusing task of choosing replacement tubes for their amp. Let’s look at how you can sort through the hype, get the great sounding tubes you need and avoid paying more than you have to for them.

Most guitar players today can get by in a live situation with an amplifier that’s 50 watts or less, cranked up or even a 16 watt amp mic’ed up. However, most bass players need to come to the gig packing a little more power. Here we will look at how power fits into what you may need for your bass rig.

For gigging guitarists and bassists, packing for a gig means more than just loading up your instrument, amplifier, pedals, and cables into the car. It means preparing for a plethora of “what if” scenarios that may bring your gig to a grinding halt.

However, there are often-forgotten essentials that should find their way into your gig bag sooner rather than later.

When you decide to add effects to your guitar sound start by asking yourself “Do I want to change my sound? Or do I want to add something to my sound?”

Think about those old effects pedals that go between your guitar and the input of your amplifier. The signal goes from one pedal to the next in series. There is only one signal path from the guitar, through each of the pedals and on to the amplifier. On the other hand, when your engineer turns up the delay send on your guitar channel at the mixer, part of your sound is sent to the delay processor and then returned to the mixer but the main signal still runs dry [unaffected] through your channel, so you hear a mix of the two in the main speakers. Parallel effects systems allow you to blend your sound with the effect.