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Episode 12: Where Does Amp Tone Come From (Ramen is Pretty Cool)
234 Plays1 month ago
Are 5U4 rectifier tubes any good? Are all guitar amps just gain staging an EQ? Is it okay to wear sweatpants to the post office? These are just some of the topics hosts Chris Benson of Benson Amps, Bryan Sours of Soursound Transformers, and Charles Henry of Silktone Amplifiers cover in this week's episode of Amplified Nonsense.
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
Introduction of Amplified Nonsense
00:00:07
Speaker
Welcome to Amplified Nonsense, a podcast about amplifiers that is driven by your random voicemail questions. Your hosts are Charles Henry Silk Tone, Chris Benson of Benson Amps, and Brian Sowers of Sour Sound Transformers. My name is Emily, I'm the producer of this podcast, and I'm just here to keep these three on track.
00:00:26
Speaker
And before I get into the episode, you can call in to 513-334-3803 and leave your own voicemail questions for our hosts. That's 513-334-3803.
00:00:37
Speaker
three three four three eight zero three You can also find that number in the show notes. It's time to turn it over to our hosts and get the show started.
Weather Talk and Workshop Fashion
00:00:47
Speaker
Hey, how y'all doing?
00:00:48
Speaker
Doing good. Good. It's kinda cold. I have a heater right up against my body right now, because it is very cold. And I've been drinking coffee all day, so I am like, got the shakes, and it's great. I've been drinking convenience store coffee, and it's it's pretty good. Is that because you're not in America still?
00:01:07
Speaker
That is because I'm not in America still. I drink convenience store coffee, and I wear a t-shirt outside, even though it's like 55 degrees. And everyone looks at me like I'm an insane person because they're like, how are you in a t-shirt?
00:01:18
Speaker
But it's pretty normal. That's how you live your life. Are you turning into a forever shorts person now? due No, dude, I don't wear shorts. I wouldn't. I mean, that's so rude.
00:01:32
Speaker
want to see anybody's legs and I'm not going to show anybody mine. I've got some shorts guys in the shop. there's nothing wrong with it. I love it. It's an endless source of joy for me. So, okay. So you have people that that come in and wear shorts in an an an environment that features, you know, solder amongst other things is is surprising to me, but that's fine. That's cool. But do any of them ever come in wearing sweatpants?
00:01:55
Speaker
I do. I was going to say I do that. Oh, my god I rock Crocs and sweatpants like almost every day in my shop. Okay. Crocs is a whole other thing, which Charles has influenced me, unfortunately, in this negative ah way. But yes, Crocs are are fantastic. i Yeah.
00:02:15
Speaker
What about when you go to the post office? Do you wear sweatpants at the post office? Why wouldn't you? It's Portland. if They're basically not even open usually. Do you dress up to go to the post office? i don't Why the post office? I'm not saying dress up, but do you dress down to go to the post office is my question.
00:02:32
Speaker
yeah Like, do you wear flip-flops and sweatpants to go to, you know, uh, doesn't have be post office, a grocery store, you know, or you got to run something to UPS. I don't know why I'm choosing shipping places. This is the description of my life. I don't change my outfit based on going out to run an errand. No.
00:02:53
Speaker
If I'm already in sweatpants, the post office is going to see me in sweatpants. Okay, that answers my question, but it also doesn't answer my question because my question wasn't do you dress up to go to the post office? It was if you find it acceptable to leave your house in sweatpants, which you have answered unequivocally, yes. Absolutely, yes.
00:03:13
Speaker
You heathen. Absolutely, yes. Even in Japan? No. No? No. no Absolutely not. Dude, the style and fashion out here, everybody looks amazing. It's insane. So no, I won't go that far. I feel way too ashamed of of my slobby self-presentation. Your American sweatpants standards? American sweatpants. I didn't even bring sweatpants. I mean, jammies, sweatpants, whatever, you know. Yeah, but I will rock just a t-shirt. And apparently that's pretty crazy.
00:03:51
Speaker
Yeah.
Challenges of Amplifier Production
00:03:55
Speaker
I was just listening to Chris's tap. I'm ashamed to say that i'm I've been doing CAD this whole time and I will now stop. it Now that we've dealt with the tapping, what CAD are you working on? do you want to talk about that?
00:04:09
Speaker
Yeah, man, i've been it's the 700 watt amp again. i did the entire wiring layout over the past week, and it's been so intense. I've been sending Sowers and Nightmare drawings.
00:04:22
Speaker
And now I have to update the chassis files to reflect all of the wiring decisions that I've made. And ah so I'm just kind of relocating holes and... Hopefully not like messing up my current computer model of the chassis. And man, it's been a lot of work, but we're, we're almost there. Nice. You're going to hit your deadline? I think so. Yeah. As long as I get the chassis ordered the next couple of days, I think we'll comfortably hit the deadline.
00:04:49
Speaker
Hell yeah. That'd be cool. Yeah. And I think I'm going to have one of my people actually do most of the wiring on it. So i my part in this is almost done other than having to like do some artwork and stuff like that.
00:05:03
Speaker
Is it going to be one of your shorts people? No. I'm going to Jason wired up who's a fashionable guy. He loves wiring up prototypes and makes good layout decisions too if given the freedom to.
00:05:16
Speaker
I think he sells like vintage clothes on the side or something. Really? i didn't know that. Yeah. Sweet. Yeah. He's like knows everything about like jackets and jeans and stuff. Yeah. He is awesome.
00:05:27
Speaker
Yeah. I talked to him this morning. He is solid. That's fun. I can't wait to hear it from over here from all the way over here. I'm still trying to get the transformers through VPI. I had had to email one guy um about an order. When was that? Was that Friday or Saturday? I emailed him and it was something that was going to ship Friday, if I remember correctly. And these these transformers are so big that it totally biffed the whole schedule for VPI for the week because you know I put one in and I'm like, I can't put anything else
00:06:04
Speaker
in a tank and I have two tanks and I actually have to use compound from the other tank just to make it work. It's just crazy. They're so, so big and just maneuvering them, letting alone, let alone putting them in the oven is just a ah task. It's is stupid, but. Yeah.
00:06:26
Speaker
I don't know if we should go into production with these. Well, I mean, are you announcing that going in or into production was even a possibility? I have thought about it, but yeah. yeah I just want to ah just want to get this one done and go from there.
00:06:44
Speaker
See how it goes, see what happens. Do custom order only or something. Maybe Jason will really enjoy it, or maybe he'll find a way to like speed up the process. I mean, you know how it goes. you know A lot of R&D and d and a lot of a lot of time and energy you know figuring everything out. But that just means that everything on the back end of it is usually easier and smoother and with less hiccups. And you know like i was I was texting Chris earlier, with how the interstage transformer works, how the output transformer works, there's a lot of phase considerations going on because
00:07:16
Speaker
you know We're splitting phase in the interstage transformer. The negative feedback is to the driver section, ah the the driver tube in the phase the interstage transformer.
00:07:27
Speaker
There's a lot of phase stuff going on. So we were, I was pretty adamant that we put just a pair of tubes in this thing when we turn it on and bring it up slow and test it because yeah, there's a lot of stuff to knock out. But once all it's done, i mean, it should be like wiring up a 700 watt amp, which I don't even know what that is. So...
00:07:48
Speaker
i I was going to not do a wiring layout and just kind of ah do it freehand, which ive which I'm not bad at. But after like four days of driving my software to come up with wiring layout stuff, that would have been impossible. That just wouldn't have happened. Hmm.
00:08:07
Speaker
It's just too much. It's too complicated. so yeah But hopefully that will make the wiring go a lot quicker. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, it's just it's just layers and layers of wire. There's like eight different layers of just like running wires around before you even like mount components. It's so ridiculous.
00:08:25
Speaker
Yeah, I always... um just trying to freehand it on the prototype. And then I make my wiring diagrams and adjust after the fact. But like the first go, I always just kind of like wired up. but But yeah, that sounds like a lot of wires.
00:08:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's totally insane. It's probably like four times more complicated than anything else I've ever laid out. Interesting. Why? Just because of the, all the transformers and the eight parallel tubes? Cause I would think, cause all the preamp section and stuff like that is all, is that pretty similar to your other stuff or?
00:08:57
Speaker
Yeah. The preamp I'm sticking in this, I decided to just stick a Chimera preamp in there to start okay and to go from there. Yeah. um Which is, you know, that, that simple, that took me like an hour,
00:09:08
Speaker
right um but the rest of it so there's like power supply stuff yeah there's like yeah the power supply stuff is completely insane especially uh the standby and the on switch even because there's so many transformers right um and then like even just today we realized that you could potentially turn the filaments on and the high voltage on independently and we hadn't accounted for that so I had to like move wire in the layout and i I figured that out just looking at the wires it wasn't even the schematic I was like oh no like that that looks funny to me and then I started thinking about it so it's just stuff like that. It might be worthwhile to do a like a stepped switch system
00:09:56
Speaker
or unless you're already doing it, where you have to turn on, like you should have potentially separate switches for filament and high voltage, and you can't turn the high voltage on without turning the filament on first.
00:10:08
Speaker
Well, that's exactly exactly what we did. Yeah, that's what chris chris chris that was his solution today. and oh yeah yeah and the way I mean, the way it works is there's two power transformers, and so all of the high voltage and the bias is derived from one transformer. And then all of the heaters are derived from another transformer. So way the way I thought about it was like the power switch is the heaters and the standby switch is everything else. yeah And my approach was that, and this is going to sound completely ridiculous, was that why would anyone ever turn the standby switch on without turning the power switch on? Which, as everybody here knows, guitar players will do strange things. So...
00:10:53
Speaker
I don't know, man. I turned the standby switch on first and it just sounds really bad. yeah Yeah. In this case, it would like create ball lightning or something. yeah Who the hell knows?
00:11:08
Speaker
We should dive into standby switches sometime and how they're usually stupid and redundant. but um maybe not today. Says the guy who only uses tube rectifiers. I know, right? No, not on my little ones. I use, they are necessary on solid state rectifiers. That's for sure. But it's another one of those things where it's like, yeah, you know that. You know about what the slow warmup time coefficient is in a 5AR4, but you know, A, you don't always use a 5AR4. I mean, some other people, and I think you pretty much only use 5AR4s when you use a tube rectifier, but
00:11:42
Speaker
other people use different stuff and you know yeah i think only the 5u4 is like instant on but yeah yeah but man can't i don't know the last time someone did a new design using a 5u4 because every nose designer
Debate on Amp Tone Origins
00:11:59
Speaker
i know absolutely hates those tubes Well, it's such an awful sounding rectifier, too. Oh, gosh. I was talking about this with with Eddie over at Eurotubes the other day. Oh, yeah. Eddie hates those. Yeah, I hate them, too. I mean, like... They're terrible. They fail. yeah they're just They just don't sound good. And this is another one of those things, too, where...
00:12:19
Speaker
and it could spiral into an interesting conversation because you know the internet will tell you it's a it's a rectifier tube it's not in the signal path it makes no difference whatever or it's a class a amp where the load current doesn't change so the rectifier tube doesn't make a difference but i will call bolt on that any day of the week And I don't even need technical information to to quantify that because anyone with ah with a using their ears to do you know to work on this type of equipment will know that when you put a 5U fork in, it usually sounds muddy and, I don't know, indiscriminate. you know There's just like no detail in anything.
00:13:01
Speaker
Well, I think that goes in pretty well to our first question.
00:13:07
Speaker
ah guys. This is Scott Evans. I'm a recording engineer down in San Francisco. No, wait, I'm starting again. Hey, guys. It's Scott Evans. Brian knows me. I'm a recording engineer down in Oakland.
00:13:19
Speaker
I want to know what you guys think about the Jim Lil video that he did a few years ago. Was it called, like, Where Did the Tone Come From in a Guitar Amplifier or something like that?
00:13:30
Speaker
My studio partner, Jack Shirley, was standing in my control room this morning being like, I just watched that video and you know, maybe it's just that simple. It's just the order of the game stages and the, you know, where the EQ goes.
00:13:44
Speaker
And I'm like, no, man, I think it's more complicated than that. And he was just like, well, I got to sound the same. And so I couldn't argue it enough. And I just, I know Sowers will go in on this. So let's hear this.
00:13:56
Speaker
Thank you.
00:13:59
Speaker
No, wow. No pressure. Thanks, Scott. ah ah Do we want to tackle this? I vote no. I don't i don't like that guy, the Jim Little guy.
00:14:11
Speaker
Oh, I thought you meant Scott. he's Scott's cool. I don't know anything about this Jim Little. I've watched the video. Yeah, I've watched it. I won't be nice if we talk about it. so I mean, we don't have to be nice.
00:14:24
Speaker
you want me to go to the next question? I can just go to the next question. Yeah, yeah, next question. mr Sorry, Scott. Okay, this is take two of my voicemail because I don't think the first one was very good.
00:14:36
Speaker
Hey, guys. It's Scott Evans down in Oakland. ah My studio partner, Jack, was talking to this morning about the Jim Lil videos, specifically the one that's called something like, where does the tone come from in a guitar amplifier? And it's where he like...
00:14:51
Speaker
Oh, that's a terrible title. Solid state tone stacks EQ curves and boost stages and reorders them and is able to replicate like every classic amps guitar tone.
00:15:02
Speaker
And Jack was kind of on team like, i don't know, man, maybe it's this simple. And I was on team. This is good content, but I think it's more complicated than this. And if there's anybody to talk about this, it's got to be you three. So I'd like to hear what you think about those videos.
00:15:19
Speaker
Thanks.
00:15:22
Speaker
Okay, let's do it. Okay. ki can can i Can I start? Do it. yeah You can try. Okay. What we were just talking about with... We we all kind of hate 5U4s, and it seems to be pretty ubiquitous. And that's because we've all heard them subjectively.
00:15:42
Speaker
So what Brian was saying... was even though you can't really quantify it, and technically it might have characteristics between like a five y three and a five a or four it's a completely different animal that we don't like because we've just had a lot of personal experience you know rolling this type of tube. So to to basically... i feel like what you're paying for when you when you get a Benson or a Silktone or Sauer's Transformer
00:16:13
Speaker
is you know not just the ah some of the parts, but also our our personal experience in making choices to get something to sound the way we want it based on, you know i I'm not even going to say thousands of hours, because it's probably even more than that, in terms of experience, as well as obsession, like almost a religious fervor of getting a good sound and to have that kind of boiled down to to have that um reduced to, oh, it's just you know a handful of distortion pedals with different EQ curves. and I don't know.
00:16:50
Speaker
but that's I feel like whoever made that video, I forget the guy's name, but I feel like that's just a disingenuous take and it's good like marketing clickbait, I guess is what the children call it. yeah That's the word I was looking for. i was looking for somebody to say clickbait because it it feels...
00:17:07
Speaker
like click bait like it's and it's in a way it's disrespectful too to exactly what you just said like calling shade on someone's you know personal experience and like you said it's like we've been obsessing about this i mean all of us i mean cumulatively for way too long you know but i mean we've all got decades into this at this point i do want to say there are technical reasons why 5u4 sounds like butthole Oh, yeah. Well, I didn't say there weren't. But you're not going to find them. It's stuck in my head. like It's like, oh, my God, there's there's there's cumulative charge losses and conduction period and forward impedance. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. no no no no
00:17:45
Speaker
We got to focus on this this question that Scott has brought to the table. but But my point is you're not going to find those on like the AMP Garage or yeah like you know yeah the Hoffman Forum or something. like the yeah People just aren't going to talk about them.
00:17:59
Speaker
That kind of lines up my whole issue with that video. It's not even like a taking offense thing. I'm not like, oh, I'm offended as a designer because it makes me think sometimes, like sometimes I'm sure we've all had imposter syndrome where it's like, wait, them it like, does it matter what I'm doing here? Like, am I just hearing things? Like, am I, it it makes me think of like that, that story I heard about, like the crazy art critics that, um that, you know, dive into,
00:18:26
Speaker
a painting and what, you know, what the artist was thinking and what they did and blah, blah, blah. And then it turns out it was just a monkey that drew it and everything they said was bullshit. And I'm like, okay, like, am I just like, am I just talking out of my ass sometimes? Like, does this actually make a difference? Like, am I hearing differences? And then I actually like listened with my ears again and realized,
00:18:46
Speaker
but Yeah, it does all matter. But
Live Sound vs Recorded Sound
00:18:51
Speaker
yeah, I just think that dude diminishes it. Like it's not just about the recorded sound, which is the only thing his video puts forward. And even his video sounds different. The clips where he the clips that he presents and where he's like, look, it sounds exactly the same. No, it doesn't. Like maybe if you listen through laptop speakers and like you don't have a discerning ear, but You play that through good monitors or like a good system and the differences are night and day. So it's just a bad presentation all around, which is offensive. And it only attacks recorded sound, which is a lot harder to discern. Like I will admit that
00:19:35
Speaker
It is a lot harder to tell the difference between like a modeled sound, like through ah a neural or or ah or a fractal or, you know, whatever, versus a real amp recorded sound. It's a lot harder to tell through the recording.
00:19:50
Speaker
than it is in person. In person, it is night and day. It's so easy. It's so easy to tell the difference. Everything is different, especially if you're the one playing. Like, it doesn't talk about the feel of an amp, which is, I think, the biggest...
00:20:06
Speaker
thing about the 5U4 and like the forward impedance like you said Brian even power supply like we we obsess over stuff so much and I think the power supply is like one of the most important parts of an amplifier because it it affects the whole response and your enjoyment that you get from playing it the feel is so important in playing an amp I think And changing rectifiers, like the sound is different, but I think the feel is a lot more noticeable. And like like Brian, when we've done my amps, how many chokes do I have you send me? Because we try different
00:20:48
Speaker
in the choke because it makes a huge... talking about DCR for for you, it was about inductance. you know Too much inductance just made the feel sluggish.
00:20:58
Speaker
And too little is is is strident and overly strident. and But DCR was huge. Yeah, DCR for sure. As soon as we go super low DCR, you get below a certain resistance level.
00:21:11
Speaker
hard resistance in a choke and your ant becomes so fast and responsive, which sometimes is cool. I think it's really cool for cleans. And then for distortion, I don't quite like it as much. So then we went back to like, ah, okay. Like the inductance is cool, but give me at least over like a hundred ohms DCR. And then that was like the magic touch and it made it smoother and just more enjoyable. So it's important to clarify the, these are the class A amps. This is the stuff where like, You know, again, the internet or your electrical engineering professor would tell you it does not matter because it is a static system operating at 95% load current at all times. But horse s***, use your ears. Horse s***, use your ears. You know, it becomes really obvious.
00:21:54
Speaker
But and that's the other thing too, like, you know, thinking about this this question too. And i think I think you said something that made me think about this, but it also has to do with what Chris said. Like, we all have...
Nuances in Amp Design
00:22:05
Speaker
skills. you know So like Scott and I mean, Jack Shirley's done some like awesome records that I've really loved and and Scott has too. and But those guys, like you know they're professional engineers who have been doing this stuff for a long time and part of their skill set is just like us. Part of our skill set is the ability to use our ears and actually discern what we're hearing. you know ah we have We have the task, I mean, so do they actually.
00:22:30
Speaker
about trying to connect like the piece of equipment or the, the capacitor you've chosen here or the rectifier tube you've chosen or the, the turns in your output transformer or your installation. We have to connect all of those things to something that's going to change that experience at our ears, but at the heart of it, um, you know, it, it is that skill or skill to be able to, to clinically listen and discern things. And I mean, I, I, like,
00:22:59
Speaker
my own personal experience, I I've had a lot of opportunities to revoice amps. I just did this like a month ago, 55 watt amp I made back in like I can't even remember, I don't know, 2011 or something, 2012. And I hated it. It was awful. Like the low mids were just like, I mean, it did cool stuff, but that's it. It was like a trick amp. You would do this and it did this, you would do this and it did that.
00:23:24
Speaker
And the low mids were just like stacking up on itself. And so, you know, I had redesigned the output transformer for it. I, at the time I didn't make my own. I used a Mercury and well, really really don't like it. It sounds terrible. And I had designed something a couple of years back for that amp and put that in there and changed some caps and all these things. and And you know, my ears are just so much more mature than they were at the time that I made that amp that I was able to achieve the sound that I wanted out of it. And to further answer this question, I changed absolutely nothing in the EQ, not a damn thing.
00:24:01
Speaker
And we could get Mike who owns that thing on the on the line right now. And he would tell you it is night and fricking day. what that amp sounds like now the the top end uh how much more it's open and this this like lack of congestion it has now it's faster yet i changed nothing in the power supply it's uh more articulate and no eq was changed whatsoever in fact I felt that the treble control was always very lacking, right? Yet changing a few select coupling caps, and again, the major thing being this output transformer design, which is totally different than what was in there, changed the entire thing. Yeah, it's it is it is ah disrespectful and reductive.
00:24:48
Speaker
to say that everything that we do is is really just ah an equalization selection. that's That's not it. I mean... Like ah you could you could tear apart every part of the amp. it Doesn't matter what it is. If it's ah if it's an amplification stage or a series stage of some sort, there's ah there's a transfer curve. Is that the word i'm trying to use? Transfer function. You know you have an input and an output, and you have a percentage of deviation from what's going in to what's coming out.
00:25:19
Speaker
And there's a distortion characteristic associated with that and distortion, not like fuzz, but distortion, like change in the input and everything, every single cap, every resistor, you know, a transformer, a tube, different tubes, different brands of tubes, they all are going to have different transfer characteristics.
00:25:38
Speaker
And so I'm, I'm ranting. I'm, I think i'm I'm actually offended and I didn't realize it until now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm mad. I think what it comes down to also is like, like I, like I touched on a bit, like when it comes to the recorded sound, it's a little bit different. they' That's so lossy. Recorded sound is still so lossy.
00:26:00
Speaker
It's never going to sound like it does in the room. And I, and that's as much as I hate this video and that guy. I don't hate the guy, but I do hate the video. I think he's such a. Oh, wow. Are you sure? Are you sure you want that? You called him a car horn? Yeah, I called him a car horn. He could be a really nice guy. You never know. You could have a beer with him and find out brother from another mother. I mean, come on, man. The whole thing. Oh, but I don't know. I'm just a blah, blah, blah, blah. Like 17 times through the video. But don't ask me. I'm just a simple recording engineer. Oh, but don't ask. Oh, shut the up, dude.
00:26:41
Speaker
Oh, it drives me crazy. i see what you've done scott you see the drama you've caused yeah uh but anyway in the video's defense yeah it only tackles recorded sound it doesn't mention it anything about how the amp feels or anything so really it comes down to what is important to you and if the end result is all you give a about and you already have songs that you need to record I think you can get close with some of the options these days. Like even like the Benson plugin, it's good. It's great. You know, and is it as good as Benson amp? Would I rather play that than a Benson amp? No, but when you're listening to the recording in a mix and everything, it's going to be a lot harder to tell whether it's the plugin,
00:27:27
Speaker
or it's the real amp. I will admit that. But that's not fun. And that's not what's fun about amps. That's not why I like tube amps. Nobody's going to be as inspired playing a plug-in as they are standing in front of a chimera. Agreed.
00:27:41
Speaker
Yeah. You know, you're not going to play as cool music. You're not going to create cool s***. if you're not inspired and being in front of a tube amp where it's responsive and you can feel it and it interacts with you you can physically feel the sound waves you're going to create better so that's what's important and that's what's lost in that video and that's why i think it's diminishing and i don't like it Well, that's the thing. I mean, like, you know, Chris chris touched on this, like at the at the end of the day, like when you're buying, you know, a Silk Tone, when you're buying a Benson, you know, you're you're you're not just buying like the piece of equipment. You're buying, yeah, the the experience ah that the the, you know, you or either one of you or the builder, it doesn't, not just your brands, but other brands too. Mm-hmm.
00:28:29
Speaker
But none of them are as good as yours, obviously. But ah yeah but you know you're buying you're you're buying that skill set of ear. You're buying that skill set to take that vision that's in in their head and connect it to what the equipment actually is. And you're buying i mean that vision. I've always kind of thought about it that way, that good gear...
00:28:50
Speaker
Good gear works, it inspires, it connects with you in a way. I mean, an amplifier can connect with you just like a good guitar can, inspires you to to play something that you wouldn't necessarily have normally gravitated to playing, and then gets the f*** out of the way and lets you have fun. The best determination of a good piece of gear, amplifier, or guitar, or transformer, whatever, is is it puts a smile on your face.
00:29:16
Speaker
And it it doesn't obstruct it. As you said, Charles, it inspires. Yeah, i think I think the inspiring thing is the most important, to me at least. And being in the room is a big part of that, you're right. Like the feel, the connectivity. I mean, yeah you know it's not just rectifier tubes. Silicon diodes, you know different different diodes have different switching characteristics. That will change the low frequency response, the transient response. I mean, it's huge. It's huge. That's the other the other video. Did you guys see the other video he did on speaker cobs? Pisses me off even more. Have you guys watched that one? Oh, God. Yeah, that was crazy. Oh my God. It's insane. I haven't. what Can you give me the the the summary?
00:29:54
Speaker
He said that speaker cabs don't matter at all. He close mics the same exact speaker through the whole video. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. So his whole video is like, oh, speaker cabs don't matter. Baffles don't matter. I'm busting this myth. like So he builds a cab out of styrofoam and mount mounts a speaker in it. And he's claiming that the response is exactly the same as like...
00:30:19
Speaker
a pine cab. That's ridiculous. Dude, it's so offensive. Like, does he have any concept of like pressure building? Like you have a sealed cabinet, you build pressure inside of it. It exerts pressure in opposite of the pressure generated by the speaker. It exerts on the speaker. Like it's just like some basic ass physics. close mics the whole thing he close mics the whole thing and plays the recordings back and of course all you're hearing is the speaker cone you're close micing it you're not hearing the room you're not hearing the cab you're not hearing the response and the thing to me is he doesn't know how to read charts but he used rew he used room eq wizard to to show measurements for all this and he's like look it's exactly the same and there's three to six db bumps all over the thing but he has his smoothing turned on and he has it zoomed in so it looks like it's close to the same but in reality there's six dB bumps everywhere which is enormous! It's an enormous difference! How about you back your mic off a foot and then let's see what it sounds like. Listen to what you've done to Charles, Scott. Jesus Christ, I love that guy.
00:31:26
Speaker
but know Let's draw rules. so Yeah, he's great. He's he's awesome. um I have some funny stories about him. And and both both of you guys, and maybe Emily's heard some about this, but like my like obsession with this whole concept of these automated testing systems, you guys have seen the photos of all the test equipment I've been buying over the years and like the little like menus and code that I've been doing to to run all this stuff. So I have all these, like based in Python, these testing systems and all that. Scott is the reason why I know anything about that.
00:31:59
Speaker
Really? Oh, wow. It was his idea. a couple of years ago, he he had this idea because I was saying how how I didn't have any money for ah you know better testing, better test equipment. i mean, this stuff is so expensive.
00:32:14
Speaker
And you know I wanted to do stuff faster, do it in production. And he was a programmer. He worked ah for Adobe for a long time before he left for the glitz and glamour of being an alternative. I'll just call him a new metal engineer. Yeah.
Programming in Amp Design
00:32:29
Speaker
But um he had, yeah, he was like, you know, you control like test equipment with Python. And I was like, wait, from the computer, the code?
00:32:39
Speaker
And he was like, yeah, man, here's some videos, figure some out. Python's easy. And the whole thing started with him with this is like. That's super cool. I think it was more than a couple of years ago because it was probably like in, oh, I don't know, 2021 something.
00:32:59
Speaker
It was a long time ago, but that's that whole thing for me, which like you guys, and so everyone else out there knows, like I text these, these guys about this stuff constantly. And yeah, that all started with him. That was, that was his idea.
00:33:14
Speaker
And I've just been like, you know, riffing on that, that whole concept for years now. And, you know, finally I'm, I'm doing it. um Do you know where he's at in Oakland, where his studio is?
00:33:25
Speaker
I'm not sure. It's called Anti-Sleep. anti-sleep I'm probably saying that wrong. He did this pedal that was the KWB Plus, I think is what it was, which was like a recreation, I think, of an MXR Distortion Plus, but it was broken. Oh, sweet. Cool. He sent me one and he baked a loaf of bread and sent me a loaf of bread with it, but FedEx lost it. So what I got was like basically stale bread, but it was still delicious.
00:33:52
Speaker
Damn, that's cool. Yeah. Good guy, but terrible question. Why did you do this to us? so Do we want a ah cool down? I'll talk about ah actually saw a cool guitar show recently. I ah surprisingly normally hate guitar-based bands.
00:34:13
Speaker
Like... Not guitar-based bands. I love guitar. It's great. But like guitar heroes and stuff, dude, I don't enjoy those shows. When it's just like, here, watch me play guitar for two hours, like and it's just all guitar-oriented, it's usually so boring. I like bands, you know? But i saw um this dude Duran play out here. i got invited to the show, and I went and checked it out, and I didn't know what to expect. I'd never heard him. Everyone told me he's like one of the best guitarists in Japan. it He's been around a while. And was like, all right, cool. I'll go check it out. I was kind of blown away. he it was so good. he was so good. It reminded me of like ah like if Jack White was still good. and That was ah Whoa. So there'll be no, there's there's no, uh, there'll never be a third, third man silk tone collaboration. I shoot myself in the foot there, dude. I love, i love the white stripes so much. I love the white stripes that inspired me to play so much guitar and really shaped my kind of tonal preferences. I, I like probably have been the most inspired by Jack White's guitar tone.
00:35:21
Speaker
That's a really good recovery, dude. I love it to death. I don't like the modern stuff. i I just don't. But this dude reminded me of like Jack White meets Rage Against the Machine kind of.
00:35:34
Speaker
And it was really interesting. His band fucking fucking rocked. The bassist was rad. She ripped like fuzzy bass on ah on a few tracks. The drummer was cool. It was just an awesome show. I haven't seen an awesome guitar oriented show like that in such a long time. It was it was really cool and kind of reminded me like how cool it can be. Cool.
00:35:55
Speaker
That's awesome. Yeah. I think ah I like when you see a good show. i you know i get inspired by a lot of things, but I definitely get inspired by good shows. And you like go home and you know you're trying like you kind of wind down and you're like trying to go to bed or something and you're like laying in bed and then all of a sudden you're like,
00:36:12
Speaker
oh, if I use this DC power supply, I can distort that transformer in a weird way. Like that's kind of how my brain works, you know? But ah that's one thing I do like about like guitar bands, guitar shows is for some reason, it's very inspiring to me to see just like straight up riffing. And then I just like, you know, come up with crazy ideas for ridiculous stuff, like starting a transformer company or something, you know?
00:36:39
Speaker
And yeah. You're obviously liking it out there in Japan. Oh yeah, dude. It's, it's rad. I'm, I, I think I'm going to be here for quite a while. I'm, I'm, I'm honestly like trying to figure out right now how to move a lot of the business over here. And, uh, I don't think I want to go home. It's, uh, I've made a lot of friends. I've,
00:37:02
Speaker
I've met some cool people. um don't know what you said about Jack White. I don't know if they're going to let you come home. It just happens out here. like i just I go to a random bar in like after a show in like a little music neighborhood, and I just like meet industry people and get invited to picnics with famous French models. It's strange. Oh, man. That stuff happens in Portland all the time. Yeah, it just doesn't happen outside of Sacramento. That's all, dude. Maybe that's what it is. But I don't know. I think, like, honestly, when I'm at home, like, I work a lot. i I do everything I need to do, but I don't socialize at all. Like, I just stay in my house. I don't want to go out. I'm not interested in meeting anyone. But around here, like, I want to be part of life and, like, part of the activity. And I i haven't felt that way in a really, really, really long time. So kind of leaning into it. That's awesome.
00:37:53
Speaker
Plus, you know, ramen's pretty good. 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 513-334-3803 three three four three eight zero three and leave a voicemail.
00:38:18
Speaker
If you enjoyed this episode of Amplified Nonsense, please leave a rating and review. Thanks again, and we'll see you soon.