[sdiy] tube preamp and fx chain

[Antti Huovilainen]

On Sun, 25 Jun 2006, René Schmitz wrote:

> Yes, but this depends largely on how much current the pickup can supply 
> without going into the knees.

Which is my original point: The grid presents a non-linear impedance to 
pickup and this may be the reason for avoiding buffers between guitar and 
amp.

> current, it'll continue to operate linearly. Infact there are a lot of 
> circuits where they purposely push the grid to positive voltages, but this is

AFAIK some high power bass guitar amplifiers also do this.

> (And if they really were after distortion, they wouldn't have bothered with 
> pure class A operation, now would they? :)

I don't think anyone could claim that Marshall for example designed the 
circuits using any known electrical engineering principles in mind :).
>From what I've seen, it's pretty much pure "let's copy circuit X and tweak 
it semi-randomly until it sounds good". As my electroacoustics course 
lecturer put it, "instrument amplifiers are sound generating devices, not 
sound reproducing devices".

Antti

"No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow"
   -- Lt. Cmdr. Ivanova