Groove Tubes is a logo. Groove Tube power tubes could anything…Russian, Chinese, or JJ. And…there was a time when the tubes could have been U.S. made.
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Clean Headroom
- Thread starter robinrockus
- Start date
Groove Tubes is a logo. Groove Tube power tubes could anything…Russian, Chinese, or JJ. And…there was a time when the tubes could have been U.S. made.
Tubes have always played a roll in the sound of an amp just like speakers and multiple other amplifier parts. The stated specs given for the base amplifier tells you what you'll get from the factory. As soon as you start swapping out parts you can change any amps tone. A tube swap can noticeably change an amps clean headroom. Go to a tube manufacturers site that offers multiple versions of a specific tube type and you'll find the folks that build the tubes will specifically state which version of their tube will give you a higher gain / amount of breakup and which version will stay cleaner longer as you dial up the volume knob.
Example ..... A '64 / '65 Fender Twin Reverb is famous for the amount of clean headroom it delivered just as the factory built it. A player desireing less clean headroom could alter that part of the amps tone just by swapping tubes and speakers from what Fender used originally to types that would breakup earlier. The Twin Reverb will still be a noticeably clean sounding amp in comparison to a Marshall from the same time frame but it will sound less clean and breakup quicker than the original Fender build.
JJs reputation was as a builder of "Rock" tubes and an amp using them never stayed as clean as it could with other tubes. In the last few years JJ has started doing exactly what I mentioned earlier by offering a few alternatives of the same tube type so a player wanting a cleaner tone would still buy from JJ rather than jumping ship to another brand.
www.jj-electronic.com
www.jj-electronic.com
I haven't used JJs in quite a while and when I did use their version of the 12AX7 it was always the ECC83S which produced a great "rock" tone. I stopped using them because of their short life span.
Example ..... A '64 / '65 Fender Twin Reverb is famous for the amount of clean headroom it delivered just as the factory built it. A player desireing less clean headroom could alter that part of the amps tone just by swapping tubes and speakers from what Fender used originally to types that would breakup earlier. The Twin Reverb will still be a noticeably clean sounding amp in comparison to a Marshall from the same time frame but it will sound less clean and breakup quicker than the original Fender build.
JJs reputation was as a builder of "Rock" tubes and an amp using them never stayed as clean as it could with other tubes. In the last few years JJ has started doing exactly what I mentioned earlier by offering a few alternatives of the same tube type so a player wanting a cleaner tone would still buy from JJ rather than jumping ship to another brand.
JJ Electronic - ECC83S - 12AX7, 7025
JJ Electronic - Vacuum tubes, Capacitors, Amplifiers
JJ Electronic - ECC83MG / 12AX7MG
JJ Electronic - Vacuum tubes, Capacitors, Amplifiers
I haven't used JJs in quite a while and when I did use their version of the 12AX7 it was always the ECC83S which produced a great "rock" tone. I stopped using them because of their short life span.
Mowgli
Tele-Holic
A longtime ago I read that “headroom” referred to the amount of distortion produced by “transient” high amplitude signals (commonly referred to as “signal spikes”).
Similarly, “increased headroom” meant less (or no) distortion in a circuit when compared to the original circuit that demonstrated more distortion with the same transient signal spikes.
With guitar the highest signal is almost always the initial part of the sound (a spike signal) with a very rapid decrease in amplitude; just examine the typical signal envelope and that becomes quite obvious.
My point? A clean sounding amp doesn’t necessarily mean that it has great headroom. An amp can sound perfectly clean and clear but an aggressive strum, especially with bass frequencies, can distort the signal; such an amp doesn’t typically meet the label of having high headroom despite being set up with clean settings on the clean channel. For example, my Vibrolux above 5 clips nicely with just a little push in the signal but below 4 I have to dig in aggressively to get that bite that appeals to my ears.
A lot of amp designers have clean channels with tons of headroom. Such amps are usually higher wattage amps because the trade off of an amp designed for high headroom usually means lower output volume. More power is needed to compensate for the decreased volume. This design is discussed elegantly in the old navy electronics manuals.
Furthermore, biasing, as mentioned above, is one of the things that needs to be examined when headroom is discussed since a less than optimal voltage swing can easily result in distortion. A tube change (and nothing else) involving both preamp and power amp tubes resulting in better clean tones and less distortion with aggressive picking/strumming almost certainly means the bias point has changed… but in what section?
In other words, if there’s no “control” in the experiment to determine which variable caused what effect/change then we are flying blindly.
If you have the time, reinstall the original tubes, make note of settings, try to play a song with a reproducible amplitude. Then repeat everything at the same settings after swapping ONE TUBE AT A TIME.” Only then can you make more sense out of the sound improvement absent putting the puppy on a lab bench with a signal generator, a DMM and an oscilloscope.
Similarly, “increased headroom” meant less (or no) distortion in a circuit when compared to the original circuit that demonstrated more distortion with the same transient signal spikes.
With guitar the highest signal is almost always the initial part of the sound (a spike signal) with a very rapid decrease in amplitude; just examine the typical signal envelope and that becomes quite obvious.
My point? A clean sounding amp doesn’t necessarily mean that it has great headroom. An amp can sound perfectly clean and clear but an aggressive strum, especially with bass frequencies, can distort the signal; such an amp doesn’t typically meet the label of having high headroom despite being set up with clean settings on the clean channel. For example, my Vibrolux above 5 clips nicely with just a little push in the signal but below 4 I have to dig in aggressively to get that bite that appeals to my ears.
A lot of amp designers have clean channels with tons of headroom. Such amps are usually higher wattage amps because the trade off of an amp designed for high headroom usually means lower output volume. More power is needed to compensate for the decreased volume. This design is discussed elegantly in the old navy electronics manuals.
Furthermore, biasing, as mentioned above, is one of the things that needs to be examined when headroom is discussed since a less than optimal voltage swing can easily result in distortion. A tube change (and nothing else) involving both preamp and power amp tubes resulting in better clean tones and less distortion with aggressive picking/strumming almost certainly means the bias point has changed… but in what section?
In other words, if there’s no “control” in the experiment to determine which variable caused what effect/change then we are flying blindly.
If you have the time, reinstall the original tubes, make note of settings, try to play a song with a reproducible amplitude. Then repeat everything at the same settings after swapping ONE TUBE AT A TIME.” Only then can you make more sense out of the sound improvement absent putting the puppy on a lab bench with a signal generator, a DMM and an oscilloscope.
Brent Hutto
Tele-Afflicted
I don't have a tube amp but use the "clean channel" on a Katana which is presumably designed to behave more or less like a tube or solid state analog amp.
I've noticed the "especially with bass frequencies" part. That seems to be what happens when I turn the Gain knob up high enough to emulate a low-headroom amp. There's almost no amount of digging in on single-note lines up on the top three strings that will generate any audible distortion (maybe just a hint if I squint my ears just right) but give the open 5th or 6th strings a solid punch with the pick and everything takes on a gritty character.
Then I can turn the Gain down to like 15 or 20 (out of 100) and no matter how hard I want to strum an open E-minor chord there's nothing but clean-clean comes out.
A similar thing happens with overdrive pedals, which I've just begun experimenting with. It's easy to make a drive pedal clip with bass notes (or chords containing bass notes) but unless I crank the Gain way up it'll still have some "clean headroom" for single-note in the upper registers. Maybe I just haven't learned the tricks yet but it seem hard to find a balance where there's some grit or distortion on upper-register melodies but without it becomes a heavily distorted mess when you bring in some lower notes and chords.
Mowgli
Tele-Holic
One more thing that demonstrates the age gap and how that affects perspective on this subject.
OGs like me played a lot of SF twins and Music Man HD-130 amps in the 70s and 80s; before the days of modern sound reinforcement. Leo Fender and Tommy Walker (TW - the real designer of MM amps) wanted a “Twin killer” and the MM amps were designed to be louder and cleaner with higher headroom than the Twins. So those of us who played a lot of clean music back then became used to playing these loud high wattage amps with Mastr Vols on 10 and Ch vols between 1.5 - 3/4 with No distortion at really high volumes. Even the transient spikes were clean.
Most younger players don’t have this experience. So I understand why this subject can be confusing since most low wattage amps that sound clean in the bedroom or den can easily distort when played at performance levels.
OGs like me played a lot of SF twins and Music Man HD-130 amps in the 70s and 80s; before the days of modern sound reinforcement. Leo Fender and Tommy Walker (TW - the real designer of MM amps) wanted a “Twin killer” and the MM amps were designed to be louder and cleaner with higher headroom than the Twins. So those of us who played a lot of clean music back then became used to playing these loud high wattage amps with Mastr Vols on 10 and Ch vols between 1.5 - 3/4 with No distortion at really high volumes. Even the transient spikes were clean.
Most younger players don’t have this experience. So I understand why this subject can be confusing since most low wattage amps that sound clean in the bedroom or den can easily distort when played at performance levels.
Mowgli
Tele-Holic
You illustrated perfectly the point I was trying to convey. Thank you.
Is the Katana a modeling amp? Forgive my ignorance; I’ve never played one but heard mostly good things about them.
Brent Hutto
Tele-Afflicted
Yes, it A-to-D converts the incoming guitar signal and does everything digitally. So it has channels like "clean", "crunch", etc. that emulate sort of generic amps of different types. Doesn't have any explicit models for "Clean Twin" or "EVH Green" or anything like that but you can download presets that are (so I'm told) reasonably close to various well known amps. Then it D-to-A converts the output through a class AB solid state power amp into a 12" speaker.
I just use that "clean" channel and turn knobs until it sounds good. If I set the Gain below about 20-ish it stays clean-clean no matter what, sort of like a Twin or something not turned up real high. Or I can crank the Gain to 90 or 100 and it starts crossing over into almost crunchy stuff. I usually just leave it about 70 for an all-purpose sound and then plug in an overdrive pedal (although it also has digital emulations of various drive/distortion/boost effects you can dial up).
Supposedly if you set Katan's Gain to around 13, Volume to 100, Bass 90, Treble 70 and turn the Mid down to 30-40 the result is a scooped, extremely clean high-headroom sound that many people think is in the ballpark of a Twin Reverb running middling Volume setting. I don't know how accurate that is.
The main feature of Katana is you can turn it down to 0.5W, adjust Master Volume to taste and still utilize the full range of Gain/Volume/Tone settings on the various channels. I run mine at 0.5W with Master Volume about halfway in my music room and it's plenty loud for my tinnitus-afflicted ears (peaking just over 80dB and averaging in the 60's with my handheld SPL meter).
So the amp with greater headroom puts out more watts?
Mowgli
Tele-Holic
Not necessarily.
Well that is a great non-answer. How about this, I take it that an amp that has more headroom (more watts than a steady state power output the amp can put out) will be louder with no audible distortion than one with less headroom?
Open to anyone.
northernguitar
Poster Extraordinaire
Heckuva lotta psychoacoustics affecting folks hearing big changes in tube swaps, especially power tubes.
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Mowgli
Tele-Holic
I apologize for not responding more extensively. I was in a hurry and gave a quick response before dealing with more pressing matters. I have a little time now.
I will have to look for and through my old Navy electronics texts to cite a credible reference. Right now that’s low on my priority list. I’ll try to find it this weekend.
I do recall having a similar discussion with Andy Fuchs about 6 years ago; I had noticed that when I played through one of his ODS amps the switching from the rock setting to the jazz setting seemed to decrease the available volume but markedly increased the headroom. In other words, I could achieve greater volume with the rock setting at the expense of decreased headroom and vice versa. Since I had reread that portion of the Navy manual to refresh my memory on a different subject but reread other sections it was fresh in my memory at the time when I asked Andy about the details. He kindly confirmed that my understanding (what the Navy manual discussed) was correct and this explained the volume/headroom changes in the ODS amp when rock and jazz settings were changed. In essence he held my hand and reaffirmed my knowledge; having a master Amp Designer and Builder like Andy confirm your knowledge-based understanding and experience is nice.
Which brings me to speculate that a 100 watt ODS amp on the rock setting will probably not have as much headroom as a 50 or 75 watt ODS amp on the jazz setting given equal amplitude signal inputs.
I would also speculate that a 100 watt ODS amp on the jazz setting would not be as loud as a 50 watt ODS amp on the rock setting.
I used to have a professor in graduate school who would ask our small class questions; he would pick students to answer and then immediately follow up with “But what if…” as if the initial answer didn’t address the unknown ensuing “But what if…” He seemed to relish in this parlor game of dismissing a proper answer to a question with his absolute authority to change the question as if the follow up question should have been anticipated. This and his condescending attitude present with every “But what if…”irritated several of us as we complained to each other after the first class.
After this happened repeatedly to all of us I grew tired of the “gotcha game.” He asked me to answer a question during the 2nd or 3rd class (this was over 3 decades ago; I can’t recall which class exactly). I said I “couldn’t answer because I didn’t know what the follow up ‘But what if x or y occurs question’ is going to be so it would be improper to provide an answer to an incomplete question.” There was a moment of silence (a couple classmates smirked) and he was suddenly thrown off his game. He asked me a more detailed question and he proceeded to disregard the answer and asked others to answer. They basically repeated my answer. Since this was his MO he kept up with the “But what if…” BS because he was a rigid teacher who never considered any other method.
Some forms of pedagogy simply aren’t effective if they serve to stroke the egos of the instructor or presumed expert instead of making genuine efforts to inform the students. Food for thought.
I taught Instrument Technology courses in college, the first year had common courses for Electronics and Electrical Technology. I was lucky that the Instrumentation course was in high demand and you needed a high grade point average to be accepted in it. I graduated the course myself, first day I said to the students, "I know this is a hard course but you all can make it through if you try, don't bother complaining as when I took the course I sat right there.", pointing at a chair in the front. It was my first year teaching the course, I was the repair tech and lab assistant for the department before jumping in to the deep end of the teaching pool. I also told them at times I will forget a word and get stuck, when I ask, if anyone knows the right term speak up to get us going again.
And weeks later I was teaching PID (Proportion Integral, Derivative) controllers, we started them off with pneumatic controllers as mechanical systems seem to be easier to understand rather than the electrical controllers. They are also almost bulletproof and hard to blow up, unlike electronic controllers. I was explaining the functions of the pneumatic controller with a drawing of the guts on the white board (I love all the colored markers). Explaining the PID operations I pointed to a part and said, "I forgot the name, could someone help me out here?" and everyone thought it was a question to see if they were paying attention. No one wanted to answer (it was under a month into the course) in case they got it wrong, I said I was stuck, someone said "Bellows?", and I repeated bellows and continued teaching from that point. They all realized that minute that I was serious, I did forget the name of the bellows even though I was using the term five minutes before. At that point they all realized I was serious about needing a helping hand at times and that any one of them answering a question wrong will not have me think any worse of them. Ir really helped in having a good rapport back and forth between us.
Later on in the year one of the instructors was teaching them chemistry and I prepared some equipment in an adjoining room. I went to see how they were doing, took a peek through the window in the door, noticed a drawing posted on it (we had all kinds of industrial information posted all over any free space). It was a caricature of me with Instructor of the Month written on the bottom. They took to calling me Uncle Xxxxx during the year as I was unlike any other instructor they had. I would tell tell them, "that was how a text book tells you how to solve this, now I'll tell you how we do it in industry." One of the Electrical instructors asked me if he could install some software on the computers in the room I was teaching in, I said go ahead. After class was over he said I sure have a different style of teaching, when the class started I made a funny about the topic, the guys took it and ran with it, we were joking back and forth, then I reeled them back in and continued teaching.
I tried to make the material interesting, usually having a real life example to explain the material. I did take courses in teaching, most of it was not useful. I took the approach of, this the type of things they would be given to do out in industry and I was just teaching them how to solve problems and teaching them the tools to do it. The instructor that I learned from had the general outline of a lab explained, there was a list of the manuals of the equipment we were going to use. In our library (we had five rooms off each other that was our area, class, labs, storage of manuals, equipment...) they looked up the manual, looked at the specifications, how to use the equipment, drew up a schematic of the lab and went from there. When we got stuck we could ask the instructor how to go about it but it was expected that we at least try to figure it out. It was frustrating for the students the first few week but from then on they knew they had available to them what they needed to do the lab. In contrast one of the Electrical instructors (who was a great instructor, honed his material over the years) had labs written out with blank sections where we were to enter our findings, it was hard to get lost in them. (so where am I going with this?)
One instructor had to fly out for a funeral and asked me if I can watch over his digital communications class. Don't worry about it, they have the lab printed up and they just have to follow instructions. The Electrical class was the first group I had, I had questions, "How do I do this, why is this not working.... ... only a few of them listened to what I said, that the program has to be run in a DOS shell (OK this was 20 years ago) and most of them just took the lab and just wanted to fill in the blank areas without really understanding what they were doing. The next class was our guys (no women in the classes, had one when I went through the course but she dropped out) and I told them the same thing, here is the lab, to do it you need to follow the instructions on the board. I did not have to hold any of their hands, they were used to figuring things out for themselves and if given, how to follow instructions.
Yeah, I sometimes ramble on. Getting to the point, the previous instructor and myself had the same view of what kind of student we want graduating the course. One that was useful out in industry. I got sidelined when he retired, they took some Electronic instructors and had them teach the course. They wanted all the instructors to have degrees, something that I did not have. But they wanted me to teach the Electronic instructors how to teach the material. If things go well when the instructor position got posted they will keep it in mind. Yeah right. I told them if I was not made a full time instructor I will be gone before September. I started my next job Sept 3.
We all had a few bad teachers. The class I taught were real peeved that I would not be there for their next year, they had some of the instructors in their first year courses and knew that they did not know the material. One of them asked me, "Why are we teaching them about valves?" Because they are used in industry and we have to know which ones to use where, how to design with them, how they fail and how they are serviced. The same goes for all the other sensors and actuators that get hooked up to a control system. But hey, at least they all had degrees. Our students were in big demand as they were able to be useful on day one where others need to have their hand held for the first year.
So here I am, as well as a handful of others wanting people to understand how our amps work. That they do behave according to physics, that on a basic level our amps are not magical and (as in this thread) headroom does have a relation to watts. When I read "I changed the tubes and got a massive amount of headroom." I think, "I'm a little skeptical about that." But I was taught how to design a transistor amplifier in my first year at school. Different than tubes but same idea goes. The output stage has a driver stage before it that will have the headroom to drive the output stage to full output. And the stage before the driver has enough headroom to drive that stage to full output, and the preceding stage has enough headroom... . If you increase the gain of a stage, say a 12AX7 in the first hole rather than a 12AY7, you only need an input signal half the voltage to drive the output to full output. The volume control only needs to be at 3 rather than 4 to have the output driven fully. Changing any of the signal tubes will not give the output more or less headroom. An amp like the Deluxe is only going to put out 15-20W clean (depending on the model) and even changing the output tubes are not going to change that all that much. And doubling or cutting the power in half is only 3 dB change, not all that noticeable. And the power has to come from somewhere, the power supply will not have been designed to put out twice the clean power as compared to the amp from factory.
Now the 'but'. Even new, some tubes will have more distortion than others. It has been said tubes were in decline after the 50's as, for one example, the grid wire spacing was less exact which resulted in greater distortion. Same with some output tubes, with the screen wires not aligned with the grid wires resulting in greater distortion and more screen wire heating and the bad things that goes with it (thinking the EL34 here, hopefully memory is correct). But this is generally under 5%, it is the hifi guys that really try to wallow around in the sub 1% THD range. Oh ***, look at the time.
And weeks later I was teaching PID (Proportion Integral, Derivative) controllers, we started them off with pneumatic controllers as mechanical systems seem to be easier to understand rather than the electrical controllers. They are also almost bulletproof and hard to blow up, unlike electronic controllers. I was explaining the functions of the pneumatic controller with a drawing of the guts on the white board (I love all the colored markers). Explaining the PID operations I pointed to a part and said, "I forgot the name, could someone help me out here?" and everyone thought it was a question to see if they were paying attention. No one wanted to answer (it was under a month into the course) in case they got it wrong, I said I was stuck, someone said "Bellows?", and I repeated bellows and continued teaching from that point. They all realized that minute that I was serious, I did forget the name of the bellows even though I was using the term five minutes before. At that point they all realized I was serious about needing a helping hand at times and that any one of them answering a question wrong will not have me think any worse of them. Ir really helped in having a good rapport back and forth between us.
Later on in the year one of the instructors was teaching them chemistry and I prepared some equipment in an adjoining room. I went to see how they were doing, took a peek through the window in the door, noticed a drawing posted on it (we had all kinds of industrial information posted all over any free space). It was a caricature of me with Instructor of the Month written on the bottom. They took to calling me Uncle Xxxxx during the year as I was unlike any other instructor they had. I would tell tell them, "that was how a text book tells you how to solve this, now I'll tell you how we do it in industry." One of the Electrical instructors asked me if he could install some software on the computers in the room I was teaching in, I said go ahead. After class was over he said I sure have a different style of teaching, when the class started I made a funny about the topic, the guys took it and ran with it, we were joking back and forth, then I reeled them back in and continued teaching.
I tried to make the material interesting, usually having a real life example to explain the material. I did take courses in teaching, most of it was not useful. I took the approach of, this the type of things they would be given to do out in industry and I was just teaching them how to solve problems and teaching them the tools to do it. The instructor that I learned from had the general outline of a lab explained, there was a list of the manuals of the equipment we were going to use. In our library (we had five rooms off each other that was our area, class, labs, storage of manuals, equipment...) they looked up the manual, looked at the specifications, how to use the equipment, drew up a schematic of the lab and went from there. When we got stuck we could ask the instructor how to go about it but it was expected that we at least try to figure it out. It was frustrating for the students the first few week but from then on they knew they had available to them what they needed to do the lab. In contrast one of the Electrical instructors (who was a great instructor, honed his material over the years) had labs written out with blank sections where we were to enter our findings, it was hard to get lost in them. (so where am I going with this?)
One instructor had to fly out for a funeral and asked me if I can watch over his digital communications class. Don't worry about it, they have the lab printed up and they just have to follow instructions. The Electrical class was the first group I had, I had questions, "How do I do this, why is this not working.... ... only a few of them listened to what I said, that the program has to be run in a DOS shell (OK this was 20 years ago) and most of them just took the lab and just wanted to fill in the blank areas without really understanding what they were doing. The next class was our guys (no women in the classes, had one when I went through the course but she dropped out) and I told them the same thing, here is the lab, to do it you need to follow the instructions on the board. I did not have to hold any of their hands, they were used to figuring things out for themselves and if given, how to follow instructions.
Yeah, I sometimes ramble on. Getting to the point, the previous instructor and myself had the same view of what kind of student we want graduating the course. One that was useful out in industry. I got sidelined when he retired, they took some Electronic instructors and had them teach the course. They wanted all the instructors to have degrees, something that I did not have. But they wanted me to teach the Electronic instructors how to teach the material. If things go well when the instructor position got posted they will keep it in mind. Yeah right. I told them if I was not made a full time instructor I will be gone before September. I started my next job Sept 3.
We all had a few bad teachers. The class I taught were real peeved that I would not be there for their next year, they had some of the instructors in their first year courses and knew that they did not know the material. One of them asked me, "Why are we teaching them about valves?" Because they are used in industry and we have to know which ones to use where, how to design with them, how they fail and how they are serviced. The same goes for all the other sensors and actuators that get hooked up to a control system. But hey, at least they all had degrees. Our students were in big demand as they were able to be useful on day one where others need to have their hand held for the first year.
So here I am, as well as a handful of others wanting people to understand how our amps work. That they do behave according to physics, that on a basic level our amps are not magical and (as in this thread) headroom does have a relation to watts. When I read "I changed the tubes and got a massive amount of headroom." I think, "I'm a little skeptical about that." But I was taught how to design a transistor amplifier in my first year at school. Different than tubes but same idea goes. The output stage has a driver stage before it that will have the headroom to drive the output stage to full output. And the stage before the driver has enough headroom to drive that stage to full output, and the preceding stage has enough headroom... . If you increase the gain of a stage, say a 12AX7 in the first hole rather than a 12AY7, you only need an input signal half the voltage to drive the output to full output. The volume control only needs to be at 3 rather than 4 to have the output driven fully. Changing any of the signal tubes will not give the output more or less headroom. An amp like the Deluxe is only going to put out 15-20W clean (depending on the model) and even changing the output tubes are not going to change that all that much. And doubling or cutting the power in half is only 3 dB change, not all that noticeable. And the power has to come from somewhere, the power supply will not have been designed to put out twice the clean power as compared to the amp from factory.
Now the 'but'. Even new, some tubes will have more distortion than others. It has been said tubes were in decline after the 50's as, for one example, the grid wire spacing was less exact which resulted in greater distortion. Same with some output tubes, with the screen wires not aligned with the grid wires resulting in greater distortion and more screen wire heating and the bad things that goes with it (thinking the EL34 here, hopefully memory is correct). But this is generally under 5%, it is the hifi guys that really try to wallow around in the sub 1% THD range. Oh ***, look at the time.
jemboism
NEW MEMBER!
I came here accidentally looking for references to amps with high headroom. Crikey ! There's an awful lot of confusion here over what is a very simple principle. From the Fender website:
"Headroom is simply a term used to denote and describe how much power your amp can provide before the sound starts to break up and distort."
There you go, that should sort things out !
"Headroom is simply a term used to denote and describe how much power your amp can provide before the sound starts to break up and distort."
There you go, that should sort things out !
bebopbrain
Tele-Holic
And the wattage rating is also how much power your amp can provide before the sound starts to break. How about that.
