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Why Hybrid Tube/Solid State Guitar Amps Aren’t The Worst of Both Worlds

I’ve recently written about the differences between tube and solid state amps.

On a related topic, many guitar amp manufacturers are now selling hybrid tube/solid state amplifiers. Most guitarists look down at those with thinly veiled contempt. Basically, such amps are said to be the worst of both worlds.

I have to disagree. There are two types of such hybrid amps and both kind are perfectly suited for particular purposes.

The first is a tube pre-amp/solid state power amp. These are perfect for general purpose blues, rock, pop, country, jazz, etc. People who play such music want the gentle and subtle clipping offered from real tube preamps. Such a hybrid amp would give players the natural sound they want, with a lot of volume, at a much lower cost than a pure tube amp.

The second is a solid state preamp/tube power amp hybrid. These are perfect for hard rock players and metal heads. Such players don’t care about the subtle clipping offered by over-driven tube preamps. They get their clipping from distortion pedals. But they do want the mmph which can only be delivered by a 100 watt tube powered head. A 100 watt tube driven amp/half stack/full stack is loud to the extent that it actually pushes air. (Maybe that’s why metal heads usually wear so much hair spray?)

Now I’ll admit, in a perfect world, someone who wants a tube sound would be better off with a pure tube amp. However, we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in a world where we’re occasionally forced to make compromises. And a tube/solid state guitar amp is not a bad compromise to make if your funds are low and you get the one that suits your needs.

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Why Do Tube Amps Sound Louder Than Solid State Amps?

It’s a common belief among guitarists that tube amps are louder than solid state amps. I’ve seen little 30 watt tube amps blow away ginormous 100 watt solid state amps. This is not a myth, it’s a fact. Here’s why.

First, it must be pointed out that watts are watts. Tube wattage is not different from solid state wattage. It’s simply ohm’s law.

W = I2 x R

By any objective measure, 50 watts from a tube amp is identical to 50 watts from a solid state.

So why do tube amps sound louder?

It comes down to two things. How the wattage of amps are rated and how tube amps clip/distort differently from solid state amps.

An amplifier’s wattage rating is not a measurement of its maximum output. The wattage of an amplifier is rated at its highest output without clipping.*

Here’s a picture to show what clipping is:

As the wattage is increased, the amplifier reaches a threshold where the highest outputs are clipped off. This clipping causes distortion. In a PA system, it would suck. In a bass amp this would suck. But guitar players use this clipping to modify and add to their sound.

The next part of the puzzle is this: tube amps clip different than solid state amps.

Tube amps clip gradually as the wattage is increased while solid state amps remain clean until they’re suddenly very clipped/distorted.

The gradual clipping of a tube amp adds to the flavor of a guitar. A guitar player using a tube amp can play harder to get more clipping and play softer to play smoother. These subtle nuances add character to a player’s sound. The sudden massive clipping of a solid state simply sounds like shit. There are no subtle clipping nuances with a solid state amp, it’s either not clipped or fully clipped.

Based on the foregoing, manufacturers of solid state amps set their volume knobs to nearly 10 before the clipping starts. So to get a 50 watt solid state to full wattage, you have to turn it up nearly all the way.

Manufactures of tube amps know that guitar players want clipping, so they take that into consideration when they set their volume knobs. So a tube amp reaches its maximum wattage at a much lower volume setting. Probably 3/4 of the way up. Sure it’s clipping past that point, but it’s a warm and good sounding clipping.

So if you turn up a solid state and a tube amp to 10, the solid state is pushing its full 50 watts, and probably sounds like shit because that bad clipping would be starting (unless its a very high quality solid state amp such as a Fender or a Roland**). while the tube amp would be pushing more than 50 watts. The tube amp would be clipping, but it would be that good sounding clipping.

And of course a 50 watt tube amp set to 5 is putting out more watts than a 50 watt solid state amp set to 5.

I should point out that I’m not arguing that tube amps are “better” than solid state amps. I’ve owned plenty of solid state amps in my life and only a few tube amps. And furthermore, objectively speaking, solid state amps are cleaner and are less prone to clipping. However, subjectively people like the sound and warmth of tube amps more, despite their objective faults. Well, that’s not right. People like the sound and warmth of tube amps more because of those faults.

*This is how the wattage of quality amplifiers are rated. Measuring the maximum output including clipping is one way how low-quality amplifier manufacturer’s cheat. Another way they cheat is by measuring the peak and not the average (RMS) wattage. Thus you can find 2000 watt amplifiers for only 77 bucks on Amazon. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

** Speaking of high quality solid state amplifiers, back in the early 90s I used a Fender Princeton Chorus. It was only 50 watts, but it rocked. Actually, it was even less than 50 watts. It was actually two 25 watt amplifiers in stereo. So basically I was playing through two 25 watt amps each into its own 10″ speaker.

But it was loud. Not as loud as the singer’s tube Fender Twin (which I think was rated at 25 watts), but plenty loud enough. I never had any problems at any show we played.

Generally speaking, the vast majority of tube amps are of a high quality. There simply is not a market for low quality tube amps.

However, the vast majority of solid state amps sold are of a lower quality. A 25 watt Crate solid state from the 80s would never have been loud enough to play in a band. I know because I used an 80′s built 75 watt Crate 2×12 combo in the early 90s and it was not loud enough. (Luckily some one gave it to me for free.)

So if two guitar players are in a room, one with a tube amp and one with a solid state amp, statistically speaking, the tube amp is going to be of a much higher quality than the solid state. As I explained above, that’s going make the differences in volume much more apparent.

However, if the solid state was a Fender or a Roland, there would be no discussion of, “Why is your little amp so much louder than mine?”

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Line 6 Spider II 112 Guitar Amplifier

I recently bought a used Line 6 Spider II 112 guitar amplifier. I can’t describe it more awesomely than Line 6 does itself:

Spider II 112 packs 12 insane amp models, 7 psychotic effects, and 75-watts of juice into one powerful and destructive combo. Now take a look inside the twisted mind of an amp with nothing to lose.
* 12 amp models that deliver a complete range from Clean to Insane
* 7 Smart Control effects (up to 3 simultaneous) including Tape Echo, standard Delay, Sweep Echo (all w/Tap Tempo), Chorus/Flanger, Phaser, Tremolo and Reverb
* 4 User-programmable channels
* Built-in front panel Tuner
* Enough power to kill pesky Chupacabras and Evil Payasos

Hemingway would have been proud of such understated subtlety.

If you can’t tell from the insane and utterly twisted description, dude, it’s a 75 watt amp driving a 12 inch 8 ohm Celestion speaker. And despite being relatively small, it’s loud with killer bass/bottom. Very fricken loud.

It’s one of those newfangled digital modeling guitar amplifiers. Basically by using digital technology it can make your guitar sound like a “’68 Marshall,” “’60s Fender amps,” or even “crisp, amazing clean tones all the way to warm jazz tones.”

I’ll get this out of the way. I’m not a tube snob. I’ve had two tube amps in my guitar playing past, but I prefer solid state amps because they’re more reliable. With tube amps, not only are you never certain they are going to work. You are never certain how they are going to sound. Different weather conditions, e.g., humidity, made them sound different from show to show.

I’ll admit that ideally tube amps sound better than solid state amps. I’d certainly rather use tube amps in the studio. But for day-to-day use I’m a solid state kind of guy.

With that out of the way I’ll say this. There is no fricken way this amp could be mistaken for a tube amp. I’ve played through Marshalls and extensively through a Fender Twin, there is no way this one sounds as either. Sure, they sound like them, but in the same way that Bon Jovi sounds like hard rock without being hard rock. The amp only offers approximations of those other amps.

Even the “insane” setting (yes, there really is an insane setting) sounds pristine, polished, clean. If that makes any sense.

The main problem I have with such built in effects is that there is little chance of a guitar player coming up with his or her own sound. Marshalls were like blank canvasses. Hendrix made them sound different from Townshend, who made them sound different from Iommi, etc., etc..

But if three different players chose the “’68 Marshall” setting on their Line 6 amps, they’re going to sound the same. Such built in effects, or “models” as they’re apparently called now, do not expand a guitarist’s pallet, they ironically narrow it.

Anyway, enough of me bitching. The amp has a built in headphone/output jack that actually works. The output is a nice touch. I used to have a similar output in a small Fender amp I used. You can just plug it directly into the P.A. system if you’re playing a show and you don’t have to worry about your own volume.

I said it before, the amp is loud. And I’m shocked at how low the bass is. It actually moves furniture without being muddy or distorting in a bad way.

It has built in vibrato like the Fender amps it’s supposed to approximate. I’ve never liked vibrato.

It has a nice sounding reverb setting, which I do like. You don’t realize how dry a guitar sounds until you take away the slight reverb.

It has a delay/tape loop effect. I’ll never use that. It’s something that sounds good until I actually try to use it in a song. Then it’s just annoying. But it does sound good if you need that sort of thing.

It also has Chorus/Flanger and Phaser. I used to use Chorus quite a bit back in the 90s. I’m not sure anyone still does. It sounds dated to me. But all of them sound good if you do want them.

It has a built in tuner. It automatically turns off the amp when you’re tuning so no one can hear you tune. It’s a nice touch. But if that’s what a new player learns to tune on, s/he’ll never really learn to tune as s/he’ll never hear when it’s right. That’s just a minor complaint about young whippersnappers, not about the amp, though. Clearly, the amp has to go off when you tune.

You can buy separate foot pedal/controllers for about 100 bucks. Some offer a wah pedal, but from what I’ve read and hear, it’s not very good. Some give you a foot controlled volume pedal, which is a great idea. You can also chose from between 4 preset settings set via the settings on your amp’s setting knobs.

The foot controllers with my Crate, Peavey, Fender, and Carvin amps only gave me two options, distorted and less distorted/clean. Having four would be pretty handy. I definitely could have used that in a band I was in called Worrystone. I’d have to go from a Telecaster twang, to a powerful crunch, to clean funk all in the same song.

No guitar amplifier review would be complete without the ultimate test. I have an original Gibson EB3 bass. It has a “number 1″ setting which makes a normal bass sound about an octave lower. Think 808 bass. A quality amp should be able to endure the number 1 setting without distorting or crapping out. The Spider II did admirably. It filled the house with a low throbbing noise which made the dog and cats run in to see what the frick was going on.

Overall it’s a pretty damn good amp and I got it for an amazing price. I almost sort of thought it might have been stolen because the guy was so eager to sell it so cheap. But he knew too much about how to work it to have just stolen it.

Since I haven’t really played guitar since the 90s, the company Line 6 is completely new to me. In a way the company is similar to Peavey’s 80′s attempt to appeal to metal heads. The pristine cleanness of the amp also reminds me of Roland amps.

All and all I’m glad I bought it. I only wish I had a band to try it out in.

Update 07-23-10: I recently bought a Line 6 FBV Express MkII 4-button Foot Controller for my Spider II. As I wrote above, the amp has four models you can preset, which could be really handy. It also includes a foot pedal which could be used for either volume control or wah. Both work well. Lastly, you can control the built in tuner with the FBV Express MkII, which would be handy to quickly and discretely tune in a live situation.

Unfortunately I had to buy the FBV Express MkII brand new, so it doubled the price of my amp. I justified the purchase by recognizing that five different pedals, including a wah, would have cost a heck of a lot more.

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