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Headroom and the Virtue of LOUD
2 Plays1 minute ago
Charles is back in Japan, Chris is resurfacing backplates, and Bryan is hungry. The three discuss copper scrap and rising copper prices, magnet wire costs, and more. A voicemail asks if louder is always better. Another question prompts a framework for headroom.
If you'd like Bryan, Charles, and Chris to answer your question on an episode of Amplified Nonsense, call (513) 334-3803 and leave a voicemail.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Listener Engagement
00:00:07
Speaker
Welcome to Amplified Nonsense, a podcast that is technically about amps, but is mostly driven by your voicemail questions. Your hosts are Chris bennson have Benson of Benson Amps, Charles Henry of Silktone, and Brian Sowers of Sour Sound Transformers. My name is Emily, I produce this podcast, and before I get too far into the episode, you can call into 513-334-3803 and leave your own voicemail questions for our hosts. That's How are y'all feeling today? Pretty good. I just want to say to yeah anyone listening, if you've been waiting to call in and maybe haven't, any question that might be on your mind, we'd love some more questions. That'd be cool. I'm hungry. I'm grouchy.
Challenges with Aluminum and Repair Stockpiles
00:00:49
Speaker
Grouchy? Yeah, you are. a little grouchy. I'm feeling grouchy today. I was trying to reclaim aluminum face panels for like, I've probably tried to do it for 20 hours this week with a drum sander.
00:01:01
Speaker
Wait, that long? Wow. I've spent a long time on it this week, and it is not going well. I ordered some different sandpaper today just to see if that helps. but Could you say it's not time-saving?
00:01:16
Speaker
It's not time-saving. The joke is that the proper tool for the job is called a time-saver, which is like a $10,000 essentially belt sander with a conveyor belt that most metal shops have, which is great.
00:01:29
Speaker
I got a Grizzly drum sander that's 12 inches wide and is not a belt sander. Oh wow, grizzly too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why are you doing this? What's going on?
00:01:40
Speaker
um I'm grinding the tops of aluminum panels because we have a lot of blems. Like either the anodizer scratched it or the metal shop scratched it or someone scratched it in my shop.
00:01:51
Speaker
Yeah. There's nothing wrong with them other than they're scratched and they're just aluminum. So if you can grind them down so they look nice and then anodize them again, they're they're good to go.
00:02:02
Speaker
Yeah. And we probably have something like 300, a pile of 300 of them. So my project right now is trying to figure out if I can, if we can resurface them. Is that your biggest like repair pile? Like I do that too, where like, if there's anything I need to fix, I just kind of like throw it in a box until it's too overwhelming and takes up too much space. And I'm like, okay, time to fix 48 fuzz PCBs.
00:02:28
Speaker
Gosh, I have so much stuff in my barn and my house and two shops that just need attention. ah What's the like one item that you have the most of that you need to fix?
00:02:40
Speaker
Oh, gosh. You said 300 faceplates or so. I mean, in terms of time, I probably have like 12 amps and maybe another 10 pedals that people have sent me to modify, quote unquote, when I have time or if I want to. When I have time.
00:02:57
Speaker
they're They're just sitting in piles. yeah I do it every once in while. Once a year, I'm like, I'm going to get through the pile, and then I'll do like three of them, and then get distracted by other things. so yeah We have stuff like a backup pile of PCBs where like people are assembling PCBs, and every once in a while a transistor gets put in
Recycling and Wiring Innovations
00:03:15
Speaker
backwards or something. And rather than Rather than stopping the whole process and fixing the one, I'm like, nope, just set it aside and move on to the next. site Let's go, let's go, let's go. It might be time to go back through and fix a bunch of PCBs.
00:03:26
Speaker
Oh, dude, I don't even ask how many of those we have. I know there's boxes and boxes. Yeah, they're just waiting. But it's so time-consuming to sit and look at, like okay, what's wrong with this one? okay I like how you guys have a repair pile. I just have like bins for metal recycler, basically. Yeah.
00:03:45
Speaker
and That's not true. I've got i've got one tub that's that's like an unwind pile. We're actually talking about it today. And it's basically like, you know, you start winding something and maybe like an entrance angle or like the angle of ah how the wire...
00:04:01
Speaker
you know meets the former is off and like you get Boeing that you didn't expect. and You do like maybe like a portion of the primary and then you check it and you're like, oh, this is this doesn't look good. No, no, no, no, no take this off, reconfigure.
00:04:12
Speaker
so Like you, like i don't unwind it usually like right on the mandrel. We'll just toss it in a bin and you know yeah and then put ah put another former on there and go because it's just faster. but we were talking about like what to do with it because copper is so expensive now that we need to go through and recycle all this wire that we have. like We really need to do it.
00:04:35
Speaker
But so much of it is just like stuff we started winding. And i was like, hey, David, like maybe we should. or my guys, David, you know, maybe we should just like get like a metal bin or like a barrel or something and have a gasoline fire out back and just like toss all this crap in there and just burn it up until nothing's left. But just like nasty copper wire. I know there's probably some folks in Montevilla that would be grateful for you. to hold yeah on the curve Yes, I think historic Montevilla would love some of that copper. But it's right next to the station.
00:05:09
Speaker
Yeah. Again, nah, no, we got to just do that ourselves. Can you recycle it for money somewhere or no? Oh, hell yeah. a little bit insider info. So like i order spools of wire and they're usually like 10 pound spools, sometimes 15 pounds, 16 pounds. It depends on the size and just depends on the the supplier and the vendor and all that.
00:05:28
Speaker
Yeah, 17 pounds spool? No. So, like, you'll get it. Okay, like, this one company just loves to ship stuff terribly. And so I'll get a spool sometimes, and it'll be, like, small wire, and it will have gotten dropped and, like, dented. And you can't use it, because if you're pulling the wire off and... You know, the installation's ruined. I mean, it's not magnet wire. It's just, you know, solid copper wire at that point. So that doesn't work, right?
00:05:51
Speaker
So you'll call up a company and you'll be like, hey, you know, someone didn't pack this right. It got damaged in shipping, you know, or it got damaged or it was loaded on the spool wrong or something. And they'll be like, oh, just scrap it. like they won't even give you your money back. They just tell you to scrap it and they give you a scrap fee. So they give you like a third of what you paid for it, which is ridiculous. But they expect you to go recycle it. But now we're in this juncture where I talked to one recycler and and they were like, this is the, we were paying the highest amount for copper that we've ever paid ever in history.
00:06:24
Speaker
I'm like, what? I have like tubs and tubs of of wire. Cause I mean, we start winding stuff and you have clippings or, you know, again, there's times when, you know, it just didn't get set up right, you know? So we have to test wind it. And yeah.
00:06:37
Speaker
So I was thinking about this the other day, you said they're paying the highest price they've ever paid for copper. Does that ever bug you guys when people do that? Or like people drive that point home, like, Oh, stocks are at an all time high or like blah, blah, blah is the highest ever. It's like, well, yeah, it's,
00:06:53
Speaker
It's the future. Like if we're further in time than we ever have been, most things grow up. What do you mean the best price ever? Like, i don't know. No, it's not a good thing. It's not a good thing at all. I mean, realize that this also means that like, you know, the people who want to buy your amps are paying more money.
00:07:07
Speaker
Right. You know, the people that want to buy my transformers are paying more money. The cost of everything is so, so much higher. The minimum order quantities are so much higher. Like, nah, nah, nah. This is, that's not a good thing. It's not a good thing at all. I know. I'm just saying it's never shocking to me. Like people use it as like a marketing thing sometimes. And it's like, well, yeah, of course they are. It's, ah, nevermind.
00:07:29
Speaker
Magnet wire used to be cheap. Yeah. And now... It's not cheap. Did you ever check out that Magwire from Taiwan? Yeah, it's real expensive. Is it? Yeah. yeah it's It's too expensive. I can't deal with that.
00:07:44
Speaker
Even from Taiwan? Dude, that place is great. That's one of the only places in the world that does um OCC copper, the continuous cast stuff. I don't think you guys want to pay for that in your output transformers. No, thank you. I'd be down
Understanding Amplifier Headroom
00:07:56
Speaker
to try it.
00:07:57
Speaker
Yeah. All right. Cool. Send me the wire. Yeah. Maybe I'll send you some OCC silver. No, no silver. Dude, it's different. It's different than other silver. Like most silver I hear sounds like garbage. I don't i don't like silver or even like gold wire. I think it sounds weird. Copper has like a musicality to it that I like in hi-fi stuff and guitar. I've never tried different shit in guitar stuff, but in hi-fi stuff, I like copper way better. But this OCC stuff, it's like the way it works is like...
00:08:26
Speaker
Like typically in like one foot of a conductor, copper, silver or whatever, there's like tens of thousands of tiny little copper strands like all melded together. But in continuous cast copper, I think the way they cast it is like one mile of copper is like one single copper crystal. And then the same with silver. I've heard some of the OCC silver stuff before. I used it in like an auto former set up for one of my hi-fi amps for a volume control. Oh, like one of Dave's, one Slagle's? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:08:54
Speaker
And then all the, just like all the signal wiring is the OCC stuff. And I actually built two, was for a customer and I built one with that and then one with just regular copper. And it was a pretty big difference. Yeah. I mean, if you want to pay for it, let's try it.
00:09:07
Speaker
If i find someone that wants to try one out, if anyone wants the first OCC silver transformer guitar amp, hit me up. Yeah.
00:09:19
Speaker
Yo. I think we'd have to, but how much do you have to buy for for like a single output transformer? Oh, I don't know what minimum water quantity from that place in Taiwan was, but I mean, my assumption is they want to sell you at least 50 or 100 pounds. Wow, 50 or 100? Yeah, which I mean like, you know, wire wire doesn't weigh that much in a standard, like in one of your output transformers or anything like that. You know, ah that being said, you know, the the Babylon transformer, output transformer, like paper and wire alone, that transformer weighed like eight pounds or something. I mean, it was ridiculous. So like, Obviously, there are exceptions to that. and We'll do a run of 10. Yeah, that's what we're doing. We're going to do 10 800-watt amps where every single conductor is silver. There we go. I was talking Babylon, but...
00:10:06
Speaker
the you So 800 watt, okay, Chris, so we're making 800 watt Silk Tone amps. We'll do a, we'll just do 10, I wanna do 10 Planet Queens with with the OCC Silver, I think that'd be rad. Like, does anybody know any like super rich people that can just pay for us to try this stuff out? Yeah, seriously. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, internet?
00:10:26
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, seriously. do a podcast just so we can like pimp out our ideas and have people pay us. and There we go. Who wants to fund this? Let's do, and then let's do some auto auto former volume controls as well. Yeah. yeah It's like shark tank with no feedback. Yeah. i was going to say, it's like, we should change the name to like venture capital nonsense or something like that. yeah Then we can do, we can get you to start making new capacitors to transformers and capacitors and Yeah, I mean, i i should convince Jupiter to to send me one of their hand winders to screw around with. That would be fun.
00:11:00
Speaker
Oh my goodness. That'd be awesome. Yeah. I mean, that that would be awesome. But also, as Chris said earlier, when I get some free time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That doesn't exist.
00:11:12
Speaker
That's a figment of reality. i I'd like to try to make a capacitor with Jolly Rancher wrappers as the dielectric. oh What do you think? Yeah. I mean, super vintage sounding. That waxed paper.
00:11:25
Speaker
Yeah. I've heard there's ah there's a thing. no, Jolly Rancher. You're thinking Tootsie Roll. Yeah, i was just going to say Tootsie Roll would sound better probably. Oh, Jolly Rancher is more of a film. Okay, so that would be a film foil cap, not a not a paper foil cap. Yeah.
00:11:39
Speaker
Okay. Well, film, I mean, it can be thinner. So in theory, you'd have less leakage between both sides. No, do the Tootsie Roll and keep some chocolate in there. Oh, yeah.
00:11:49
Speaker
Oh, well, chocolate is the ultimate dielectric. I mean, that's that's the tone. Sounds way sweeter. Yeah, dissipation factor is really low with chocolate, just so you know. I don't have a lot of time, but I would definitely try that if I had the means.
00:12:03
Speaker
Who's got the money? Let's go. Let's do this. Let's do it. All right. Well, let's get into our question today.
00:12:11
Speaker
Yes. Good evening or good morning or good day. to you all. ah My question for you is when it comes to really getting the full value, i think would be the right term, the full value of quality components, you know, with see you guys specifically with transformers and builds and parts and all that, is louder always better?
00:12:37
Speaker
Well, I know Brian's going to have a lot for this. um Louder's always better. Yeah, my answer is just yes. Yeah, really. it yeah It is. It's always better. it's yeah you I've seen so arguments online about how like the volume will change the sound, and there is science behind that. I forget the name of the... Was it like the Munson curve or something, or is that some other curve? Fletcher-Munson curve. Yeah, the Fletcher-Munson curve where when...
00:13:02
Speaker
volume goes up, your perception of of the frequencies adjust to it and everything like that. But even like like with my um my attenuator, for instance, I spent a lot of time making sure that my attenuator was like frequency perfect. Like it sounds the same at 25 watts as it does at one watt. If you throw a mic on it and match levels, it's pretty close, but it sounds way better at 25 watts. Even though it's the same, it's putting out the same sound, it's just more enjoyable in person at 25 watts. If you're recording, it's the same, whatever, the level doesn't matter. But when you're in the room, at least me, sound is physical, it resonates with you. And like the louder it gets, the more it's going to move your body.
00:13:51
Speaker
And that's what I enjoy about it. Like I like playing bassy and bassy. with a lot of distortion. And when it's, when it's rumbling me and rumbling the room, that's what I'm enjoying it the best. And it's, I think going to sound better. Yeah. I mean, I definitely, okay. I jumped at the question was just like, you know, hell yeah, make it louder, you know, and be done with it. But the reality is, is that the question is much more nuanced. And the question was asked a little bit more specific to components. Whereas like, you know, transformer specifically louder is not always better. You know, there are times when you want more loss in a transformer, more, insertion loss in the primary or you know lower quality core material. I mean, just look at like all the classic British amps that people adore, not with the HiWatt excluded from that. But like all of those have like the crappiest core material. And that kind of ties into our headroom question too, because it's like... It depends what you're after, I guess. If it if you're after the cleanest tone, then then no. The louder you get, the less headroom you have. And typically, the further you the closer you get to the clipping point of the tube, the more distortion you have. like A lot of people in in hi-fi or otherwise say like the first watt sounds best.
00:15:03
Speaker
So you make a 100-watt amp just to get that first watt super clean because there's really minimal distortion. So if that's what you're doing... argue against that because that difference is so ridiculous that like, you know, unless it's a single ended amp, the amount of, uh, core distortion that you're going to have at one watt with a hundred watt output transformer versus, you know, 20 Watts with a hundred watt output transformer is so incredibly different. You know, the permeability, of the core material would be so much more because the flux density went up. There is a point where it doesn't work, where I think that you know you you can make things sound anemic or thin or just weird in general. you know A yeah thousand watt speaker with a five watt amp on it just sounds strange. you know Yeah, ah all the amps that market that I think sound clinical and weird and dumb. So yeah yes yeah so again, I guess it's just what you're after. But simple answer, yes.
00:15:54
Speaker
This really does dovetail very well into the headroom question because we're like kind of talking about three different things. We are. But maybe maybe we could hear that question. And I have a ah unified theory of headroom that I'd like to present.
00:16:11
Speaker
OK, well, here's that question. Can you all explain what's actually going on when you are changing the headroom is's available on an amp? I know what it is, but like how does it actually work and what are you actually altering and what actually happens when you're increasing or decreasing headroom in various stages of an amp signal?
00:16:37
Speaker
All right. So great question. We get headroom questions all the time in the emails. And I always have to try to figure out exactly what they're asking. And it could be one of three different, completely different things. I mean, this is what I call them, but I don't know what anyone else calls them. So the first one's input headroom.
00:16:58
Speaker
which is how much signal can the input of a device handle before that input starts to distort. And that's only the input. has nothing to do with the output. So it's like that first preamp stage or FET or op amp stage How much signal can that handle? Because a lot of people will be like, well, I ran this pedal into this other pedal, and i know this other pedal has lower input headroom.
00:17:23
Speaker
And it starts to distort in a weird way where it doesn't with other pedals, and that's like an input headroom difference. So it has nothing to do with the output of the that. has to do with the output of the device before it and how much input headroom it has. And then the second one i would call control headroom, which is...
00:17:40
Speaker
you know Everyone knows a deluxe reverb is supposed to start clipping around 4 on the knob, but you can just design a deluxe reverb that that sounds exactly like a deluxe reverb where it starts clipping at 7 or 2 or 8 or 10, and the only difference is where that knob is. You just you can put resistive dividers in or whatever, and you can change where it starts to distort. And so I call that control headroom.
00:18:06
Speaker
because it's completely divorced from the output and the input headroom. It just has to do with you know what number do you want to see when you put the knob in a certain place. And then the last one is just output headroom or volume. like How much power is the thing capable of? like What is its actual output, its ability to drive a speaker? And they're three completely different things, and people I don't think people are are really aware of that.
00:18:28
Speaker
ah what what you What do you guys think? is that Is that accurate? That's pretty good summation for like, I think for what most customers asked and what the idea of a headroom most people have. Yeah, I think that's a pretty good way to summarize it for people. It's really the the annoying one for me is the control headroom thing where like, you'll have something that works totally the same. And like, but I want it to be a two. It's like, too bad. like it's not like it's You get the same range, but it's just a little bit different of a taper or something like that. yeah like like The Monarch will distort at 2.5, and a half and i do that so i can like I do that on purpose.
00:19:05
Speaker
like that That's just where it starts to clip on most guitars. But I did that so 10 is more distorted, weight fuzzier than like you know a deluxe reverb or whatever, because it's kind of made to distort.
00:19:19
Speaker
Yeah, I do that with my my fuzz and my overdrive. like And maybe you guys can fill me in, but I don't see a point in a volume control going less than Unity, really, like in a lot of scenarios, or like much less than Unity. So everyone...
00:19:35
Speaker
I guess the standard is kind of just to tune your volume to where Unity is at noon. And apparently it bugs people a lot if if if Unity is below noon. But Unity on my like fuzz and my overdrive is around like nine o'clock.
00:19:49
Speaker
Because like you said, I want people to be able to get more. Like who who wants to go below Unity with a fuzz or a drive? Like I like using those things to really push an amp.
00:20:00
Speaker
So the more you the more control you have, in the upper registers, I see as a better thing. Like you can still get it quiet. You just go below nine o'clock. But yeah, a lot of people are like, wow, it's too loud. And I'm like, we'll just turn it down to nine. And they're like, well, I don't want to have a set that low. And I'm like, what do you mean? Well, there is a thing too, where especially like in distortion pedals, where there's like the reactance of the... I mean, it depends on how the output section is designed. Is the the actual output level control buffered? Is there a stage after it? All that sort of thing. But there is a thing where... like You know my pedals. They're they're low impedance. Well, it's it's basically the interplay of the reactance of the pot. So there's a thing that happens. like I agree with you. like Below Unity is kind of weird. There are times when I do that. like
00:20:49
Speaker
Sometimes if I'm like playing something and I'm bored and no one else is around and I don't want to blast my ears, I'll like dime out a distortion pedal and then turn the volume up. you know, bedroom level, just I can play like squealy pinch harmonics and crap like that without like hurting my ears. I mean, it's it's stupid. You would never use it live. You would never record with it. It's dumb, but it's fun and I enjoy it.
00:21:11
Speaker
And, but there's a thing that happens when you start like rolling below unity anyway, where you get this like reactance issue where things like sound thinner and then buzzier in a weird way. I think with high-value pots and stuff, yeah. But if you're but I'm only using 25k pots in there, so it's like... Yeah. i I'm actually struggling with that on a new fuzz oh yeah that I'm designing. So this is like the first dirt that we've been doing that actually does have a low source impedance.
00:21:44
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Because all of my other stuff has been you know the standard 100K potentiometer on the output, right which which I actually love. I really like it. I like that it has a little bit of roll off to it. I like that you can add source impedance to something because it it'll hit a fuzz.
00:22:05
Speaker
or whatever, like certain pedals downstream actually want a higher source impedance, or I think they do. Like, I think they sound better sometimes. But this new pedal, I'm actually like using ah an output buffer to drive the line. And i've I've kind of like decided everything I'm doing from now on is going to have that, but I'm not sure I like it.
00:22:24
Speaker
I'm trying to, it like kind of does too good a job driving a line and you get some brightness from the next device if you don't have that roll-off or you know resistance in series. i was just going to say, add some build-out resistance to it. That way you get your input impedance slash ah input capacitance and cable capacitance to kind of balance the top end for you, which gets tough because if you do that, then when someone uses 6-foot cable versus a 20-foot cable, it'll sound totally different.
00:22:58
Speaker
Well, yeah. it's a I mean, at that point, like why not just have a pot on the output? Because it's the same thing. And it's less parts. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. i don't I don't like the idea of a pot driving an output.
00:23:11
Speaker
ah Again, because of that reactance issue. I don't like it from an engineering perspective, but from like from my own personal preferences, I like it. Are you a guitar player? guess I didn't know that Oh my god.
00:23:25
Speaker
Back to the headroom thing, I was thinking too, like, It's also like, you know, typically the typical definition of headroom is just how much signal a stage can take before distorting. But ah like Chris was saying, there's input stages, there's output stages. Like, is it the headroom of the whole amp or is it the headroom of an individual stage? Like some amps are voiced where the preamp distorts and the power amp has maximum headroom. So you get all the preamp distortion and everything. Or some amps are voiced where the power section will start breaking up first. I like voicing mine closer to that because I really like power tube distortion. And then, yeah, like the input headroom, like you were talking about, Chris, like how much input headroom does something have? When you're looking at the whole, it's like something can have a ton of input headroom, but you're still going to get distortion before you break up that stage or.
00:24:17
Speaker
if the power amp is distorting and it's voiced that way, but then the input finally clips, it starts sounding weird, like with certain pedals. And yeah, it's interesting to think about how like, it's really difficult to account for what pedals other people are going to use it with. So like when I voice my stuff, I use a few common things, but like I just voice my pedal alone most of the time. And if it works with other stuff, cool.
00:24:43
Speaker
um I make sure it's not weird with a lot of, you know, standards and stuff, but, but yeah, there's no telling like how much the, the last, like what guitar they're going to be using, you know, like you said, a deluxe reverb set to break up at four, like, but with what pickups. So it's so hard. And I approach headroom in an amp,
00:25:01
Speaker
just based on my goals of like how much clean signal does the previous stage have before the next stage starts breaking up? I mean, that's, that's design, man. It's all about the headroom through every single
Component Influence on Amplifier Performance
00:25:14
Speaker
stage. And then on top of that, it's like, how symmetrical is it? Like,
00:25:18
Speaker
How are you filtering it? Like that's literally just what design is. That's what gain staging is. Yeah. And, but the, the question about headroom was more like what is actually happening when you change headroom and stuff. And from a design perspective, like sometimes for instance, I'll look at a power stage and i'm like, when do my KT 60 stitches start distorting? Okay, cool. Now how far away is the driver stage from distorting? Sometimes it's way too far away. There's way too much headroom in that driver stage. So I want it to clip a little more. So I'll add a little,
00:25:48
Speaker
you know, add a little more signal to it. So they start clipping around the same time and then you have this really cool harmonic balance. So, which is cool. Yeah. It's interesting. And there's a lot of different kind of definitions for it. It's not a standard question. Like there's no like one answer. And I think, I think sometimes like, don't know, I definitely, when we do this podcast, we'll get a question and like,
00:26:09
Speaker
I just want to have a specific answer and have everything be very like question, succinct answer. You know, the the answer is this, you know, X equals five or something. And and the reality is is, you know, it's never that way in audio, but it's really never that way, especially with this sort of stuff. So it's funny to like to hear your guys' perspective on it. You know, Charles talking about like,
00:26:30
Speaker
setting up certain stages to clip at the same time as others. Because I would do that too. I'd always set it up like power tubes, clip first, phase inverter just after that. Or power tubes, then speaker or around that point, both. And then the phase inverter after. But again, always the phase inverter after.
00:26:48
Speaker
That was always my whole thing. Because I always wanted dynamic control. like I wanted to be able to like you know gain the amp up and have it... you know like shred or just sound awesome in general but like rolling back the guitar volume to be able to control that was always number one thing but then you know you brought up pickups as well which i do want to say that chris hey you're you're you're uh three position take on headroom is is awesome. And I think covers. think that's an awesome way to describe. to It covers the entire landscape. um Even if like i would use different terminologies, it covers the entire landscape. Yeah, what terminology would you use? Because this is just what I've used to describe it my own practice. And if never you never see stuff like this on forums. And it's that's why everyone's confused about what headroom is. So how would how would you put it?
00:27:35
Speaker
I mean, like the input headroom makes perfect sense, you know, first stage, how fast is that clip? Because I get, you know, especially with tube stuff, we're biasing down negative, right? So if the AC pulls a grid up to zero, we're clipping because at that point, you know, the tube is effectively saturated. And if it's a peak,
00:27:51
Speaker
ah then obviously it's only happening on the peak. And if the bulk of the signal is pushing it to zero volts, well, there you go. The whole thing is just clipped to hell. But so yeah, input headroom makes total sense. I always called it like the control headroom is what you said. And I thought about that from the perspective of relative headroom, because it's relative to what signal's going in on the input and it's relative to how the control is. I'm not saying you're wrong. I just wanna, this is very opinion stuff.
00:28:18
Speaker
Um, because with that, uh, you know, you could have a linear pot in there that has a ton of signal going out of it on one or two. You could have, you know, an old J taper, which I can't stand those things. If you get like mid seventies fenders that like clip at weird points on the control, ditch those pots and just put some real logarithmic pots in it. Then you get real, uh, uh, logarithmic pots. And then you could take,
00:28:43
Speaker
ah linear pots and put shunts around them in order to tailor and that taper you know and and it's all about how we hear too because we don't hear linear we hear logarithmically so again you know what two is on a dial it it it's like it's well it's relative you know And then output headroom, yeah, it's it's exactly what you described in my in my mind. And it's how hard can you hit the output section before it starts to clip or more to the point, how much output yeah how much output comes out of it? How much power yeah does it push until it clips? But um yeah, but going through all of this too, it's it's like...
00:29:27
Speaker
you can massage all of this in any way. Like I was just doing this this thing with um ah John from EAE, and which I'm not supposed to talk about, so I'm not gonna talk about it. But one of the things about John is that he loves those Travis Bean guitars.
00:29:42
Speaker
And my God, those things put out like five volts RMS or something crazy like that. Like there's such high output and having to to design a tube stage that sounds like alive and open with like a vintage, like Les Paul style humbucker pickup. And then that massive monstrosity of magnet and wire is like, no dude, that's, that's modes. Like you have to have switches to do that type of crap, you know? and Yeah, like you know what I always voiced amps with two guitars, a Telecaster and this 84 Les Paul, like the Studio Standard with the Shaw humbuckers, which I realize now are actually kind of low output. But ah anyway, i'm I'm getting off the beaten path here. And then either there's the whole component aspect of it too. Having an output transformer that saturates early, that's smaller than what you would normally do for that power. you know What does it do to the sound? These are all like choices. Right, you have you have headroom in different frequencies. like You'll have totally clean highs, and then your low end has no headroom at all and will totally distort first and sound... you know So there's relative headroom, there's there's reactive headroom, there's component-level headroom, there's you know ah the sectionalized headroom, input section, preamp, phase inverter, output...
00:31:04
Speaker
It's just so much stuff. And I think that... but There's also, like, headroom in a weird way, like you were talking about with... ah Well, you're not going to... I'm probably saying this wrong, but you're not going to, like, get on the right side of the BH curve in a transformer unless you're loud enough. So you almost have headroom that's quiet.
00:31:22
Speaker
It's like, well, yeah, this this thing, like, you don't want it to be any quieter than this or it's going to sound weird. And that's, you know, so headroom's a limit. That's a limit... That's a lower limit.
00:31:33
Speaker
And that happens with tubes too. Like if you've got like a self-biased stage and it's designed to take, you know, it has enough headroom to take like 10 volts or something on the input and you're giving it like, you know,
00:31:47
Speaker
a quarter of a volt or something, like it's not going to sound good. It's going to sound anemic and weird. You know, output tubes are the same way. I mean, that's one of the things like you guys are are mostly into cathode bias.
00:31:59
Speaker
So, you know, it's like you've biased to the whole thing up. So it sounds like for lack of better words and not to sound ridiculous, but like hot and juicy.
00:32:13
Speaker
I knew that would sound totally ridiculous. That would the end of the episode. Hot and juicy. And that's it. Hard cut. I just imagine the next time we record this, Chris is going to come on the video with a shirt in bubble font that's like puffy puffy paint and it just says hot, juicy. No, I'm going to get sweatpants with that across the back. Hot and juicy. I think if you have juicy, I think if you have the word juicy go across buns, it's probably copyright infringement. Just to put that out there. Yeah, probably. I wanted to add too that like with pedals, it's a little bit of a different approach for me because there's, there's more distortion sounds that I don't like in like transistors and, um, options and stuff. So it's a little harder. And like, that's why with my overdrive,
00:33:00
Speaker
Like I have some diodes in there for sure, but before the diodes, like again, if your input headroom is too high, you're going to start driving the the other components. And all of the distortion is controlled basically by the the two first JFETs in my overdrive. I don't really like amp clipping, so I powered my op amp up to like 30 volts just to have a way higher headroom so it doesn't clip before JFETs, or the JFETs can't really make it clip. Yep, I'm doing that this design right now.
00:33:30
Speaker
Oh, cool. Way bigger rails. Yeah, way bigger rails. For the utility stuff. And then the stuff I actually want to clip is all running at nine volt. Yeah, exactly. That's what I did in in the overdrive. Which is ah actually a really great answer of the question that was posed about components in headroom. Is that power supply voltages?
00:33:48
Speaker
yeah I mean, you're effectively using a like linearly designed power supply, not a linear power supply, but a linear like dropping, voltage dropping power supply to not only continually filter the power supply, but also set yeah um output limits.
00:34:05
Speaker
You know, if I've got one stage that has a 300 volt supply, i mean, assuming they're biased about the same, you know, 300 volt supply and the other one's got 150 volt supply. Well, I mean, your supply is the max amount of output you're gonna be able to have because all amplification really is, it's just modulating power supply voltages anyhow.
00:34:22
Speaker
Which is why when people say that power transformers or power supply components don't matter in their amp, my jaw goes to the floor and I start hitting myself on that side of my head because just why do people say such ridiculous, hot and
Innovative Amplifier Designs
00:34:36
Speaker
juicy things like that? was just going to say that's a hot juicy thing. The the the Vincent amp, i don't I don't know if you've played one, Charles. Brian, I know you've played them. So that's running EL84 driving output transformer in the preamp of it.
00:34:52
Speaker
Yeah, cool. And that EL84, actually dropped the voltage down to, i think, 150. Yeah. m just to make that you know about one watt, but that node is only going to that EL84. So everything before it in the preamp is running off like 320, something like that. And so you're able to like absolutely kill the EL84. And then i I don't have to have like a massive like load resistor on the other side of the output transformer because it's really only putting out about one watt. Right. Yeah, that's awesome.
00:35:24
Speaker
And it's class A too, so it's steady state effectively. So the voltage at the supply is always the same. Well, the supply is ah being regulated by that 6L6. Oh, I forgot. Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, you've got your your fancy tube regulator system. Yep, yep. Which is way sweeter than like just a couple of baking resistors. and might Yeah, that's that's super cool. That's a good way to do it. I'm doing the same in my ah Planet Queen that I'm just about done with. like we did the We used interstage transformer.
00:35:54
Speaker
um driving the power tubes. So it's four kt six six ah power tubes, but then the driver stage, rather than a normal phase inverter, we did a interstage transformer and we're loading the tube like a little single-ended output tube. So you can beat the hell out of that driver tube and it's same, it it does around, don't remember the measured output on it, but it's pretty, yeah, we set a pretty low voltage. It's a little triode tube. We use the ECC99 and it makes for a really, really, really cool
00:36:26
Speaker
a master volume controller because like you're essentially because I mean you guys know I like single ended amp distortion a lot and um my kind of approach to getting getting that into a way higher powered amp was to have a very controllable low wattage single ended amplifier um that you can beat the hell out of and get that huge you know single ended distortion and then have that controllable with a post um, interstage transformer master volume.
00:36:57
Speaker
So yeah, that's basically how the Vincent is, except not interstage. That's rad. So how do you split the Vincent? So you go, you have a little output transformer and then it goes into a phase inverter. No. So that preamp runs into the front end. Cause this was, it was inspired by running my little Vinny that was patted down on the output.
00:37:18
Speaker
into a Chimera. And i remember I was like hanging out with the Ronin guys and they were like, this is like the most insane sound. um I was like, yeah, it sounds insane. So i made it I wanted to make that channel switchable. So the the idea with the Vincent is it's basically an EL34 driven Chimera.
00:37:37
Speaker
okay Just like our volume treble bass. It'll clip at two and a half like a Monarch because it's basically double Monarch. right um But then when you hit a foot switch, it switches the entire Vinny before that.
00:37:52
Speaker
Oh, gotcha. Okay. And so the the volume, the the gain is actually the volume of the Vinny before that. Cool. And then there's a level to normalize, you know, the ah the master volume essentially going into the Chimera. So it basically looks like an overdrive pedal, except it's like a a whole single-ended amp.
00:38:09
Speaker
And then the effects loop... which is the only app I have with an effects loop because ah it's the only one that makes sense with it because you can apply effects to the distortion if you want. It's inserted in between the Vinny and the Chimera front end. So you can like put delay on your dirt if you want to. i don't i don't personally like that sound, but people like to do it. That's how I tell people because effects loops are a whole other conversation, but that's the whole episode. Haven't we already done that? Probably.
00:38:40
Speaker
Talked nothing but trash. Yeah, I can trash on effects loops for a few hours. Isn't that what we do? we just trash toss? That's what I tell people um with the with the little Micronaut. I tell them the same thing. Like, if you want an effects loop, just throw a Micronaut in front of your amp and throw modulation in between it. yeah A lot of people use it that way, and it's it's pretty fun.
00:38:59
Speaker
Perfect. So yeah, it's perfect. But yeah, that's cool. That's a cool approach. Yeah. Mine is more baked in where like, it's just, yeah. Rather than the phase inverter stage, I changed it to like a little single ended output transformer on it. Also a cool idea. i like that. It sounds rad. It sounds pretty good. I'm pretty into it.
00:39:14
Speaker
you know Yours has a complete separate winding for the phase inverter off, not the speaker. I'm not explaining that very well. Maybe should try that again.
00:39:27
Speaker
Oh, you mean, oh, yeah. You're talking about the the interstate transformer design, Brian? Well, yeah, with that one, that's a little different because you have an isolated speaker winding and then you've got your, you know, what's effectively your your voltage winding in the secondary to feed, that's your phase inverted winding, for lack of a better word. We approached the same as like the Micronaut output transformer line-out, but made it by Phylar to be able to do a push-pull stage. So um you have the speaker, because we wanted to load that like a single-ended amp, we're loading it down to 8 ohms with a little reactive load to load the driver to, but then...
00:40:04
Speaker
the voltage winding, yeah, powers the... Yeah, you still needed a center tap, you know, balanced winding, yeah. Right, especially to be able to get the master volume control. And then we were able to do really low impedance master volume so it doesn't sound like trash when you turn it down. And that ties into the, you know, is louder better thing. Master volumes typically sound like garbage because people use high impedance pots after high impedance stages. And when you, you know, if you crank your master volume on most amps, it's going to sound way better than...
00:40:35
Speaker
keeping your master down because you're getting so much treble roll off and just other reactive elements in there but we did our interstage with super low impedance so anywhere you have that master volume you're getting like the same kind of reactivity it's a little bit different but it sounds great everywhere like even it's the best sounding master volume i've ever heard you can keep it super low and still get that just yeah huge amp sound The ah Babylon technically has some single-ended clipping in it, which is pretty funny. That's rad.
00:41:06
Speaker
Because that's that's driven by a single-ended tube, you know, one one tube driving the interstage transformer. And ah we got it pretty close to the rails, so you're getting a little bit of that single-ended squish on one side. You can barely see it on the scope, but it's there. It's kind of fun.
00:41:23
Speaker
but That's one of those things where it's so loud in the room that, like, you don't hear it over the the walls rattling apart. Yeah, I got a funny story about that, actually. let me let me look Jim from Reverb texted me and said Paul Reed Smith was playing the Babylon all the way up.
00:41:40
Speaker
And Jim said he wouldn't stop talking about how incredible it sounded and kept saying, these guys really know their s***. um Which is, I was like, yeah, we do, man.
00:41:54
Speaker
Speaking of loud volume, holy shit. I just got back from the Osaka Sound Macy and it's like, it was louder than NAMM. There's like no volume control on the amps and everyone was like ripping. It it was awesome. But it was like, our booth was right across from the Two Rock booth and everything. And there's a bunch of other amps. And it's it's one of the loudest environments I think I've been in. And I even had like your plugs for a little bit of it. But the whole, for like two days after that,
00:42:23
Speaker
I'd be like walking down the street. And if I stopped walking, I'd feel like I fell in an elevator because my equilibrium was so. Um, yeah that a revenue. Yes.
00:42:34
Speaker
Not, not two days after we we did, we have talked about how the Babylon made you feel weird for about three or four hours. Well, there was the the gear show that me and Chris did where we set our amps up next to each other, except, uh, my entire rig was tuned.
00:42:50
Speaker
ah seven hertz off from Chris's. We've talked about that. And ah it literally like destroyed my... I don't know, my like ability to exist in this world.
00:43:03
Speaker
Yeah. You, you and I went to get a beer afterwards. Uh, yeah. or je Several. Yeah.
Closing Remarks and Listener Encouragement
00:43:10
Speaker
It was pretty, it was hard. It was was really hard. Yeah.
00:43:14
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this episode of amplified nonsense. Our goal is to release a new episode every other week. So please subscribe wherever you listen. If you have a question for Brian, Charles, and Chris about amps, pop culture, or relationships, please call five one three three three four three eight zero three and leave a voicemail.
00:43:36
Speaker
If you enjoyed this episode of Amplified Nonsense, please leave a rating and review. Thanks again, and we'll see you soon.