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Re: Retrovalves Review
your like me in away of chasing tone and you tried the digital stuff and messed with enough tubes to know if these are legit. I think you know what your doing and have a good ear for it, really like to hear some miced sound samples sometime
Originally posted by USAPatriot
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"Better" is pretty much subjective in the case of tone though. The volume boost is "better" in the context that I've been playing but I've not even come close to opening up the master volume on either channel. When I do so, will it still be "better"? I won't know until I try it. Overall I tend to believe that you don't get something for nothing and the positives could in some way be negated under some circumstances. The RV's really ARE different and that's something that many players are going to be attracted to, most especially you add in the bonus of a tube that will outlast mos vacuum tubes, not get blown into microphonics by a static discharge or a crappy ballast on a florescent light, nor snap, crackle and pop when the air is too dry or there's a thunderstorm 20 miles away, etc.
The bottom line for me is that as a lifelong tubehead, I've chased tone like everyone else, never satisfied for very long and have also done the digital modeling bit and found it sterile. I can't sense any natural dynamics in the digital devices (which are present in even the worst tube amps) yet thus far, those dynamics seem to exist in the RV's. It may be that running 5 of them would remove all the preamp dynamics, leaving only the power amp dynamics to add that tube quality...I don't know.
It may be enough that (in the case of the 22H), that running two RV's in each channel and tubes in the remaining sockets will be the best of both worlds...great tone, some boosts here and there, the natural dynamics of the remaining 3 tubes plus the longevity of the RV's will be JUST the thing to satisfy my constant gassing. The character of these RV's is such that you can mellow out even the OD channel or overdrive the crunch channel which of course means that the OD would be driven even harder. I pushed the OD over all the way this afternoon and just hit chords and let them ring until they died out...the sustain was VERY long and the character of each had that natural difference...different oscillations going on, faster or slower, more or fewer...that we expect from tube amps, and that was just with the blue in V4. The master volume was down...we're still living in an apartment, afterall...but it was loud enough to start the feedback going when I hit hard enough, so, cool for me.
Maybe what intrigues me most...and I'm cognizant of the fact that I have yet to test drive a red or the amber properly...are the possibilities that the RV's represent versus the money we've all invested in pedals and pedalboards especially. I guess the retail price fora pack of 3, one of each, is about $100, which is less than many of us have paid for a lot of our pedals...especially if we've been buying BOSS. How many OD/DS pedals have we owned and how much did we pay altogether? In some cases, thousands of dollars over the years and we STILL are eager to try something different.
In their own way, the RV's are right up our alley. They feed the fever of our gas and give us something that's actually new and different too. Some people will like it and adopt it. Some will hate it. Some won't even try. I was pretty close to being in that latter category simply because I'm a tube-bigot and tried the digital stuff and hated it. I own a GT-10 and use it just for the effects. The preamps blow. I'm just too old to hate something just because it's not what I love and here's a curious thing: I'm dying to know what's under the hood! At some point I will surely take a peek but will not be taking photos much less posting them. I figure if Doug wanted that info out there, he would have posted photos himself and while someone will probably post some eventually, it won't be me that will be doing it...but I GOTTA SEE! lol. I think people that play guitar are curious by nature so these RV's appeal to me in that sense. My wish to write a bunch of reviews is due to the fact that a whole bunch of people are also curious. If these make our world a little bit of a better place, I'm all for it. -Rod-
The bottom line for me is that as a lifelong tubehead, I've chased tone like everyone else, never satisfied for very long and have also done the digital modeling bit and found it sterile. I can't sense any natural dynamics in the digital devices (which are present in even the worst tube amps) yet thus far, those dynamics seem to exist in the RV's. It may be that running 5 of them would remove all the preamp dynamics, leaving only the power amp dynamics to add that tube quality...I don't know.
It may be enough that (in the case of the 22H), that running two RV's in each channel and tubes in the remaining sockets will be the best of both worlds...great tone, some boosts here and there, the natural dynamics of the remaining 3 tubes plus the longevity of the RV's will be JUST the thing to satisfy my constant gassing. The character of these RV's is such that you can mellow out even the OD channel or overdrive the crunch channel which of course means that the OD would be driven even harder. I pushed the OD over all the way this afternoon and just hit chords and let them ring until they died out...the sustain was VERY long and the character of each had that natural difference...different oscillations going on, faster or slower, more or fewer...that we expect from tube amps, and that was just with the blue in V4. The master volume was down...we're still living in an apartment, afterall...but it was loud enough to start the feedback going when I hit hard enough, so, cool for me.
Maybe what intrigues me most...and I'm cognizant of the fact that I have yet to test drive a red or the amber properly...are the possibilities that the RV's represent versus the money we've all invested in pedals and pedalboards especially. I guess the retail price fora pack of 3, one of each, is about $100, which is less than many of us have paid for a lot of our pedals...especially if we've been buying BOSS. How many OD/DS pedals have we owned and how much did we pay altogether? In some cases, thousands of dollars over the years and we STILL are eager to try something different.
In their own way, the RV's are right up our alley. They feed the fever of our gas and give us something that's actually new and different too. Some people will like it and adopt it. Some will hate it. Some won't even try. I was pretty close to being in that latter category simply because I'm a tube-bigot and tried the digital stuff and hated it. I own a GT-10 and use it just for the effects. The preamps blow. I'm just too old to hate something just because it's not what I love and here's a curious thing: I'm dying to know what's under the hood! At some point I will surely take a peek but will not be taking photos much less posting them. I figure if Doug wanted that info out there, he would have posted photos himself and while someone will probably post some eventually, it won't be me that will be doing it...but I GOTTA SEE! lol. I think people that play guitar are curious by nature so these RV's appeal to me in that sense. My wish to write a bunch of reviews is due to the fact that a whole bunch of people are also curious. If these make our world a little bit of a better place, I'm all for it. -Rod-
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