[Amps] Western Electric

[Kim Elmore]

Well... Maybe.

I've read that tube amps are "better" because when they're over driven, 
they don't clip as "hard" as solid state amps. After some thought, I've 
concluded that it's not an inherent characteristic of vacuum tubes that 
causes this: the "soft" clipping is due to the inherently limited 
frequency response of the output transformer. Clipping introduces all 
sorts of extra frequencies required to create the square wave part of, 
say, a clipped sine wave. A transformer cannot pass the required high 
frequency components required to create the sharp corners. The output 
transformer acts as a band-pass filter: it can't pass extremely low 
frequencies nor can it pass extremely high ones. Solid state amps have 
no output transformer and so pass whatever frequencies the device can 
handle and they can likely go much higher that 20 kHz. Thus, we see 
sharp, square corners on clipped output form solid state amps that we 
will never see from vacuum tube amps all because of the output transformer.

Kim N5OP

On 3/25/2022 11:39 AM, BILL KENNAMER wrote:
>   This is true. Tube amps and vinyl do sound better. Also, Tube guitar amplifiers sound better, and a Hammond B3 sounds better than an XK-3 (but it's hundreds of pounds heavier).
> K5FUV
>
>      On Friday, March 25, 2022, 11:05:06 AM CDT, Mark - N5OT<r-emails at n5ot.com>  wrote:
>   
>   Roger.  From what I understand, vinyl records played through a tube
> amplifier sound better (technical term).
>
> 73 - Mark N5OT
>
>
> On 3/24/2022 8:54 PM, Anthony R. Gold wrote:
>> On Wed, 23 Mar 2022 23:24:11 -0500, you wrote:
>>
>>> So, someone needs to explain to me again what's so magical about the
>>> WE91B because I simply don't get it.
>> It glows in the dark.
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