Referring to post #8, You have heard class a amps. Fender Champ and Supro are 2 examples.
I can't name which artists used those amps, but I'm sure you've heard them if you're more than 12 years old.
I suspect you are going in very much over your head, but even if you fail, you will learn a lot.
Good luck.
Nigel: Cracken mentioned a distortion pedal and a Celestion speaker in this thread, both of which are popular with guitar players. These things lead me to the idea that cracken is thinking about guitar applications. Cracken also said he has not heard a class a amplifier. I believe he has, but doesn't know it. I know of a few guitar amps that were class a, but they all used valves. I can not think of a class a transistor amp that was used for guitars, so I could only refer him to valve amps if he wants to hear an example of class a amplifiers.
If you know of a class a transistor guitar amp, I would like to have that information, and cracken could go listen to a class a amplifier for his own education. Please enlighten us.
what are class A,Class B ,Class AB etc
and it's pretty pointless listening to a class A valve amp, because it's highly distorted and low quality anyway.
sonuv said:what are class A,Class B ,Class AB etc
And it is that very distortion characteristic that blues and rock guitarists are after.
Some old geezers who played electric guitars in 1959 liked the sound from the only available amplifiers (with vacuum tubes) that was played on "horrible-sounding" speakers of the day. The old geezers had their high frequency hearing destroyed by loud sounds from guns of recent war. So they couldn't hear the awful distortion that was produced.And it is that very distortion characteristic that blues and rock guitarists are after.
Why do Brits call a vacuum tube a "valve"? A valve is mechanical.
Maybe a "valve" in Britain has no vacuum?
A transistor is also a "valve". Maybe the Brits should have called it a Valve II or a "faucet". The American actress??Actually the British valve nomenclature better describes how a valve operates.
Why do Brits call a vacuum tube a "valve"? A valve is mechanical.
Maybe a "valve" in Britain has no vacuum?
I suspected there are no class A transistor guitar amps because it's so counter intuitive to an engineering brain to try to dissipate that much power from a transistor when it's so much easier and cheaper to build a class AB...but I wasn't sure. (Thanks Nigel.) Besides, the distortion from a class A transistor amp would be so harsh that even a guitar player wouldn't like it!
Meanwhile, I have emailed a musician friend asking for names of popular songs and artists that used class A amps so that cracken might realize he has heard class A amps, or go look up a few songs and educate his ear. I believe that cracken will benefit from knowing what to expect from a class A amp before he tries to build one. That is why I would bother to make this effort.
In push-pull valve guitar amplifiers (any decent size valve amp) it's normal to use different anode loads in the phase splitter, this adds loads of extra distortion, over and above that inherent in the valves.
Distortion is high frequency harmonics. But most guitar musicians are deaf to high frequencies.Nigel: I was referring to the guitarists habit of driving every amplifier into distortion mode. If they do this with a class A transistor amp, I'm sure they wouldn't like the sound.
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