Guitar Time

Why Tubes Sound Better

Jul 17, 2009 tubes
Posted by freddy1955

.

 There is something about the sound quality that tube guitar amplifers have.  What is it?

 The first triode tube, the Audion, was patented by Lee DeForest in 1907.

Tubes were widely used in consumer electronics until around 1960, when transistor radios and transistor stereos started becoming popular.

The transition from tubes to transistor consumer electronics was not a smooth one.  Early solid state stereos has excessive cross-talk, the low rated distortion levels sounded too distorted, and consumers complained about “brittle’ sound.

But solid state electronics were lighter, smaller, and less expensive to manufacture.  And there were no tubes to replace.  The advantages of transistors were too powerful to ignore.

In the early 1960’s there was a huge shift towards solid state electronic circuits.  Companies like Vox Amplification actually stopped making tube guitar amps and shifted their production entirely to transistor guitar amplifiers.

But, if you play electric guitar today you probably own a tube guitar amplifier, or wish you had one.  There is something about the sound quality that tube guitar amplifers have.  What is it?

When playing music, musical instruments produce harmonics.  Harmonics are multiples of a frequency.  For example, high “A”  is 440 Hz (cycles per second).  880 Hz is the 2nd harmonic (2 x 440 Hz = 880Hz) and 1,420 Hz is the 3rd harmonic (3 x 440 Hz = 1,420 Hz).  Harmonics are part of what makes music sound good, and why people will pay a fortune for a great guitar.

When used in amplifiers, tubes produce even numbered harmonics (especially 2nd order harmonics) while transistors produce more odd numbered harmonics (including 7th, 9th, and 11th order harmonics).  This is the root cause of why people prefer the sound of a tube guitar amplifier.

Odd numbered harmonics sound false to the human ear.  In particular, the distortion within those odd order harmonics has an ‘icepick in the ear’ quality people don’t like. It’s the distorted 2nd order harmonics that help create the tube crunch we love to hear.

We can be happy that technology has produced consumer electronics that help us learn and enjoy music.

Still, with all this great technology, tube guitar amplifiers are here to stay.