Currently in modern music, the amplifier has changed to suit the music, the musician, and the venue. Although the days of the Marshall stack have simmered to a light roar, musicians are still drawn to its soundscape and textures. Amplifiers have gone through many changes, they have started as clean thin sounding perky little things and have grown into hot thermionic tube nasty devils, snarling dogs and groovy warm sounding monuments of sound. The 70's have not helped amps by going the way of the transistor amplifier.  In the music industry it is very important that the amplifiers sound great. The transistor amps lost headroom and clipped their output, and basically sucked. Tube amps have returned stronger than ever, and have helped keep music, especially rock and roll, on the right track. These days, recordists and guitarists doing small tight gigs have relied on smaller tube amps to bring the sound. The major problem with music today is that venues are not setup to handle bands anymore.  They build the stage area to handle two people singing solo acoustic sets, not bands with four are more people.  This causes more problems than anyone needs to deal with. Bands need room to perform. The band needs to be up slightly above the crowd. The drummer needs a slight more height. The amps that are beginning to improve a bands sound in such small venues is the 15 to 25 watt amps.  These smaller tube amps employ all tube wiring and point to point components to keep the signal pure. They also keep the sound right, the slightly overdriven, compressed, tight sound that every guitarist looks for in an amp.

 The lower wattage amps let you get all the creative sounds that the old bands had, but with a much more tolerable volume. You can crank them up easily and get the distortion you need. Or you can get the crystal clear, clean tones some bands need. Some of the newer amp companies have integrated digital effects (they call it amp modeling) in front of a typical tube preamp stage and sometimes a tube output. This is ok if you need to emulate some other person's sound (if you're a cover band). Most guitarists like to find their own sound and use the amp to create the tone, but you can go the cookie cutter style and get the digital clones.

 The cons of getting a small tube amp are usually that they are mass produced in a factory that employs workers that have no idea what they are building, circuit boards are sometimes built for them by even another company that make large batches of boards and components that are not necessarily tested. Lastly, the smaller amps use cheap tubes made in China, and have small 10" speakers mounted in a tiny cabinet or worse, in a combo with the amp.

 The pros of getting a small tube amp are that if you buy one, get one that is point to point wired, and built by the company at hand. Make sure the company uses good quality components and transformers. Point to point means that every wire is soldered from component to component, either directly(which is a little messier) or by use of a tag board (a fiber board that resistors and capacitors are mounted to and wired directly with each other). This is the quality that you need to have in a tube amplifier. Also these amps are usually checked many times throughout the build time. You know you're getting something good. You may pay a little more for this amp, but it will be the top of the line.

 To me, the better amps to own are the head and seperate cabinet. It  seems that most (combo) amps that have the built in speakers are poor on actual sound quality as the onboard speaker will have a smaller area to be housed. Sometimes even having an open back, which looses a lot of punch and resonance to the wind. The speakers and cabinet are overlooked far too much by guitarists. The cabinet must be as well made as the amp itself. Don't forget,     your sound is important,  isn't it ?     

JDF 2010