Tube distortion question/comment

[Dankerella]

OK, so I'm looking at Musician's Friend at Peavey's post-5150 amp heads with like 6 12AX7s for producing gobs and gobs of gain, which is fine. However, when I use my little Ibanez Tube King (that has one 12AX7) with an amp with one 12AX7, I can get a very tubey, overdriven metal sound. Why doesn't Peavey (or another company) simply put a Tube King type circuit in their amps for the gain? I guess the fact there's a ton of op-amps in the Tube King makes it not-so-tubey, and traditionalists would not tend to like that in an amp head, but would rather the distortion come from a half dozen tubes. Sounds pretty similar to me though! You just don't see many one preamp tube high gain heads that also have power tubes.

 

[TwilightOdyssey]

Re: Tube distortion question/comment

Because, it's different strokes for different folks.

Although my Rivera has 5 preamp tubes, I usually only set the gain for 5 and use and OD pedal to drive it into distortion.

There is a difference in the type of gain you get by overdriving 1, 2, or 4 tubes.

Oh, also ...
Many amps that only use 1 tube also have a solid state gain stage in there as well, which to many people sounds WORSE than multiple tubes.