solid state in jazz

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gerardotejada

New member
I have noticed that the jazz guitar players dont tend to use tubes (with a few exeptions concerning fender amps), some of the better guitarist like larry corryel, Pat Metheny, mike stern, Holdworth etc... prefer solid state amps like Polytones, Rolands, Henriksen Jazzamp, Jazzkats, Evans Amps, .

I´ve never had the well known facination with tubes, I like a good hybrid (vox valvetronix) and I hate digital (aka line 6 amps) but I dont worship tubes, I found its tone unique though.

this post is an apologuie for the solid state, it seems that tubes aren´t infalible. I am intrigued, maybe one of these days I get one of that for a clean tone and buy some floor distortion to compensate
 
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Re: solid state in jazz

Hames Jetfield said:
I'm pretty sure just about all Mesa/Boogies are tube.
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my mistake the information was given to me by my cousin that has a Mesa (he doesnt know his amp) I just realize of my error looking in the mesa website. Im also not shure about the evans amps to be solid state, but in any case I would fix it
 
Re: solid state in jazz

If clean headroom is what you need? S.S. amps are just fine. I can dial up my tone in just about any half way descent S.S. amp no problem. What I have a hard time getting from a S.S. is Dynamic's! When I'm playing a good tube amp, The harder I attack the guitar, The more signal enters the amp causing the Tubes (also known as valves) to open up and compress the signal. This makes you louder ,And adds some round wave overdrive to your tone. When you back off... you clean back up again. This is why tubes are so popular with the Blues Guy's and Rockers.
 
Re: solid state in jazz

when you play in nyc and take cabs everywhere carrying around a fender twin isnt an option. ss amps can be lighter, smaller, and like kmc said can have lots of clean headroom which is what most jazz cats want.

every boogie ive ever seen has been a tube amp, not sure if they have every made a ss amp.
 
Re: solid state in jazz

so the overdrive is what makes a tube amp.
but, a tube amp and a solid state can give the same clea tone? if the answer is yes then how do we explain the preference for the solid state in jazz guitar, I lately have been asking me that all I need is a cool good clean cause I been working almost only with fuzz boxes or floor distortions (big muff, pro co rat, colorsound tonebender, visual sound jekyll & hyde) I know I know is to much.

in any case the question here I think is mainly for the clean tones, we all agree that the solid state distorion lack the "colour" of an overdrived tube
 
Re: solid state in jazz

no, a tube amp sounds different than a ss amp clean. a part of the reason the jazzers like them is the size and weight but also most jazz guys are getting lots of the tone from the guitar and want a fairly uncolored tone from the amp which some good solid state amps give
 
Re: solid state in jazz

jeremy said:
when you play in nyc and take cabs everywhere carrying around a fender twin isnt an option. ss amps can be lighter, smaller, and like kmc said can have lots of clean headroom which is what most jazz cats want.

every boogie ive ever seen has been a tube amp, not sure if they have every made a ss amp.
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I use to play at my cousin's open jam every tues. night in the Hell's kitchen area. I can promise you that even a Princeton is to much to lug around when your running for the Subway!:eyecrazy: After a few trips to city, With my Strat in a backpack gigbag,And my Princeton... I had no Issue's using the house amp.
Which happen to be a S.S. red knob Princeton 65!
 
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Re: solid state in jazz

jeremy said:
no, a tube amp sounds different than a ss amp clean. a part of the reason the jazzers like them is the size and weight but also most jazz guys are getting lots of the tone from the guitar and want a fairly uncolored tone from the amp which some good solid state amps give
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you should explain more, because is important to say the "how and why" of that diferance
 
Re: solid state in jazz

jeremy said:
no, a tube amp sounds different than a ss amp clean. a part of it is the size and weight but also most jazz guys are getting lots of the tone from the guitar and want a fairly uncolored tone from the amp
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+1 guitarest originally didnt use amps, so they had the tone of the guitar that just translates over to more modern jazz with amps
 
Re: solid state in jazz

NoOnesFang13 said:
+1 guitarest originally didnt use amps, so they had the tone of the guitar that just translates over to more modern jazz with amps
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Charlie Christian practically invented the amplified guitar with his playing on the electric spanish (es-150) and Wes Montgomery refused to play unpluged, for him the guitar and the amp made one instrument, what you are saying could apply for Django and Eddi Lang, but not for the bebop post-Charlie Christian jazz guitar
 
Re: solid state in jazz

So Tube Clean or Sold State Clean?
Pros an Cons of the two and the reason for the preference of solid state in contemporary jazz
 
Re: solid state in jazz

As many have said in this thread thus far, the amount of clean headroom and the fact there is a pretty "plain" (i don't mean that in a bad way) clean tone which you get from SS amps is what jazzers like Alden, Hall, Benson, Metheny etc prefer SS amps. No breakup. That's probably the only reason (nowadays- i think they have someone to carry their equipment for them..... Ha ha).

Holdsworth has used many different amps throughout his career though- tube and SS. He uses the Hughes and Kettner Tri-Amp and Zentera amps nowadays but has also used a Yamaha DG80 modelling amp, Vox AC30, Mesa Dual Recto, a Carvin keyboard amp & a Johnson JM (i think). But he has weird rigs. It's not just the guitar into the amp, there are sometimes 1 pre-amp into a different power-amp into a hotplate etc.
 
Re: solid state in jazz

gerardotejada said:
So Tube Clean or Sold State Clean?
Pros an Cons of the two and the reason for the preference of solid state in contemporary jazz
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For pure jazz like Jim Hall, then get a Gibson ES guitar and run it into a SS amp with a lot of headroom (100w or so- many of the Polyton Mini-Brutes are 110w).

For a more "modern" sounding jazz tone with a bit of colour and the potential to have a rawer "broken up" sound, then run a humbucker equipped electric guitar into a Cornford-style amp. You can get some great cleans from a Cornford.

Having said that, Jim Hall played a Gibson GA50 (tubey) for years but retired it when it became too fragile to tour with.
 
Re: solid state in jazz

I´ve never heared about cornford and jeremy said something about size and weight afecting the sound that I dont understand.

any way I remembered seeing a jazz/blues player in a night club that played in a Roland JC120 (or a smaller jc60) with a proco rat and a ibanez tubescreamer, and let me tell you that the sound cuality was awsome, a good clean warm sound.

If you can get the same quality from a tube amp, why staying with a SS?

they already have some one to carry their equipment (I imagine the good old Scofield cant carry his own amp without help)
 
Re: solid state in jazz

the size and weight issue isnt about sound, its about portability, tube amps are HEAVY and your typical jazzer isnt going to carry something big, bulky and heavy around with them. especially if they are gigging in nyc. in most cases the big name jazz cats dont carry amps with them, they use what is provided for them. tube amps tend to have more tonal variation between units, one silverface twin doesnt sound like the next, ss amps tend to be more consistant.

why would someone use a rat and tubescreamer for a clean sound? i dont understand that.
 
Re: solid state in jazz

jeremy said:
the size and weight issue isnt about sound, its about portability, tube amps are HEAVY and your typical jazzer isnt going to carry something big, bulky and heavy around with them. especially if they are gigging in nyc. in most cases the big name jazz cats dont carry amps with them, they use what is provided for them. tube amps tend to have more tonal variation between units, one silverface twin doesnt sound like the next, ss amps tend to be more consistant.

why would someone use a rat and tubescreamer for a clean sound? i dont understand that.
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hahaha, of course, of course, you cant use an amp that you cant carry with you! (buying a car would help but of course they are still paying that gibson L-5)

let me explain this, I talked a little with the jazz/bluesman and he sayed that the only thing he needed for an amp was a good clean and a good reverb, he doesnt care about distortion (in his own words the distortion of his amp sounded like a "duck fart") but of course you cant play da blues without that steely rotten sound, so he conected the rat and the tube screamer with a little distortion for that "touch"
in other words he get the clean jazzy sound from the amp and the overdrived blues sound from the "floor"

I started thinking of the point of having a tube amp if you are getting the distortion from other than the tubes, then I realized that most of the jazz guitarist don use distortion and also dont use tubes

this is how I thing this works:
jazz guitarist play the best clean tones----> jazz guitarist play in SS----> SS have good Cleans ----> SS Have the best Cleans?

and if you are using not using the distortion from the amp, you are using only the clean chanel, then the best option is a SS, in other words Tubes arent infalible (like I said in the first post)

for jazz players or for people that like his distortion to come from a stompbox theres no big difference between a Tube amp and a Solid state
 
Re: solid state in jazz

i would contend that a good bf fender twin sounds better clean than any polytone ive ever played and ive played a number of them, im not a serious contemporary jazz guitarist but i would say that a good tube amp almost always sounds better, even clean, than a good ss amp.

i know lots of (non-jazzer) people who use pedals to get their distortion and loathe ss amps so i would take that part out of your last statement so it would read "for jazz players there is no big difference between a tube amp and solid state" which may be fairly accurate
 
Re: solid state in jazz

jeremy said:
when you play in nyc and take cabs everywhere carrying around a fender twin isnt an option. ss amps can be lighter, smaller, and like kmc said can have lots of clean headroom which is what most jazz cats want.

every boogie ive ever seen has been a tube amp, not sure if they have every made a ss amp.
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That's it.

Also, most jazz players are not so concerned with the adolescent fantasies most of us have. They don't tend to fantasize about standing in front of a Marshall stack with our pants blowing in the breeze from the sheer volume and posing.

Most jazz musicians are purer musicians than most of us, IMO, and the reasons they play has more to do with creating music and less to do with image and teen age fantasy stuff.

So a light weight, great sounding solid state amp that gives them the tone and the convenience of handling is all they need.

Lew
 
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Re: solid state in jazz

It's all about tone and tone comes from the individuals fingers and ears and their ability to control their equipment.

For instance, while executing hammer ons, pull offs and slides and such, a player can coax various frequencies and harmonics out of their equipment. The experienced player may also learn to control the color and the mood of their playing by using their ears to instinctively learn to take advantage of subtleties like the decay of their reverb for example. Once a player learns to control these subtleties then their playing will ascend to new levels. I mean there is nothing like listening to a live player whose tone is so sweet that he/she sounds like he/she is in the studio rather than being live.

Metheny is a master at this! He seldom uses bends when he's playing clean but he can still make his guitar sound as if it's weeping. A clean solid state can do that type of tone all day long. But all of those glorious wave shifting harmonics start to fade once you push a solid state into distortion. What you end up with at that point is a mere fuzz box. Tube amps on the other hand can keep all of these subtleties far into tube saturation. Think Santana Europa or Samba Pa Ti from back in the 70's! That sound was slightly over- driven but full of tonal complexity!

Both types of amps have their advantages and disadvantages. For example solid state amps w/ hi wattage will give you lots of clean headroom for clean jazz. The problem with clean jazz guitar tone however is that the music often ends up being too freaking subdued and "quiet stormish" because hollow bodies feed back like crazy at high volumes. This forces the rest of the band to quiet down so as to not drown the guitar out. The solution is use a semi hollowbody w/ a center block or (my favorite) use a Les Paul!

Tube amps as I mentioned can still give you tonal complexity into distortion and at high volumes. There's nothing "quiet stormish" about hi octane tube tone! This allows the guitarist to be more like Coltrane and McCoy and less like Wes and Wynton! Not very many use hollow bodies in this environment so feedback is less of an issue and in some cases feed back is desired! :chairfall The problem is that when one is playing clean jazz then they have to worry about distortion kicking in too early if the ensemble volume is high! The solution get enough wattage in a tube amp so that you can maximize the headroom required for cleans at higher volumes and use a switch to select lower headroom gain channels. But cleans on a tube amp can be just as sweet as solid state as long as there are no headroom issues!
 
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