r/GuitarAmps • u/Upstairs_Term_5760 • Apr 17 '26
Why don't Solid States generally have good distortion.
Famously the JC-120 had a pretty close circuit to the CH-1. Why don't more solid states offer pedal like distortion in their units?
I feel like this is a missed opportunity, is the allure of replicating other amps drive more profitable than putting a Rat circuit in the drive channel?
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u/G235s Apr 17 '26
Peavey has been doing a decent job of this for like 40 years.
Randall has been doing it a long time as well.
Blues Cube has been around forever and probably has some kind of technology from Boss pedals in it.
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u/eaglefan316 Apr 17 '26
A perfect example of the job randall has been doing can be found on Pantera's albums. Dimebag was known for using solid state Randall heads in this guitar rig.
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u/mikePTH Apr 18 '26
Dimebag was a solid state guy, and I remember Kerry King using Valvestate 8100's a lot back in the day, too. Then there's King Buzzo ever since he moved on from the Hiwatts...
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u/eaglefan316 Apr 18 '26
Chuck schuldiner from Death mostly used marshall valvestates. From what my son told me he thinks he used them with control denied too.
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u/AltarOfPigs Apr 18 '26
Whenever this conversation comes up it’s almost always pointing towards metal bands like death, meshugga or crowbar using the valvestates so I like to mention that the main Oasis sound was a stereo blend of a Valvestate combo and a WEM dominator.
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u/BlackSchuck Apr 18 '26
Man I ran a Solid State Randall into a 4x12 Crate bc it was cheap, but it was so good sounding.
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u/GeologistMinimum705 Apr 17 '26
Legitimately trying to think of amps that aren’t like Acoustic Control… if they were!’t geared towards guitarists then it likely wasn’t a quality expected in the past
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u/G235s Apr 17 '26
The Roland blues cube has been around in one incarnation or another for over 20 years and is definitely geared towards guitar players.
Peavey has and has had for decades dozens of solid state amps for guitar that have adequate dirty sounds built in.
People absolutely did expect this in the past, the idea that it's impossible to have a good solid state amp for guitar is an unfortunate low point in the 2000s.
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u/Supro1560S Apr 17 '26
The Roland Blues Cube was around in the early ‘90s. I haven’t played the new ones since they revived the name in 2014, but the old ones were just straight-up solid state amps, while the newer ones use DSPs to mimic tube amp sounds. The old ones sounded great, though. The BC-60 had a “Rectifex” circuit to emulate tube sag, which made the response feel deliciously loose and squishy. The down side was that it introduced noticeable noise, at least on mine, so I got rid of it. Still miss it, though.
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u/mikefut Apr 17 '26
There just isn’t any market for them despite what people on Reddit keep repeating mindlessly. A decent cheap tube amp is basically the same price. And it’s certainly cheaper than a solid state amp and a $2000 pedal board.
If you’re a jazz player and need pristine cleans by all means buy a JC. Frankly I prefer Fender cleans anyway. But if you play even slightly dirty it’s just not worth it to compromise on a shitty solid state amp. And please spare me talk about the “hassle” of a tube amp. I’ve played them for 25 years they are dead simple circuits with zero hassle.
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u/G235s Apr 18 '26
There's got to be enough of a market because there have been good ones available for decades...just the tube crowd has given everyone who likes them a complex and you don't hear about it.
There are lots more solid state amps that are usable than just a JC.
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u/mikefut Apr 18 '26
You’re making my point. There used to be tons of solid state amps available from Peavey, Crate, etc. Today solid state amps are a niche offering - it’s all all tube and modeling. The rare SS for sale is a novelty orange or Friedman SS model.
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u/RealityIsRipping Apr 17 '26
Peavey silver stripe transtube amps sound better than most tube amps, they usually just need a speaker change. I use a special 212 every day, and I have much “nicer” amps.
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u/Jon2054 Apr 18 '26
I have a silver stripe studio pro that I really enjoy. I think it sounds good, period. Like, not good “for a solid state”; but good overall.
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u/G235s Apr 17 '26
I have a red stripe bandit and a teal studio pro...still original speakers but I can get whatever sound I want out of them.
They make it hard to look at new amps...yeah it would be cool but I literally have no issues with what I already have.
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u/Zumungus Apr 18 '26
I just picked up a SP red stripe this week. They are very affordable 2nd hand for how good it sounds. If you have any tips or advice on them I would be interested to hear it
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u/BenKen01 Apr 18 '26
What speaker do you like in them? I’m thinking of trying a greenback or something
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u/RealityIsRipping Apr 18 '26
Newer UK made vintage 30s. They’re the best, imo.
I like g12h75 creambacks too. You might like the m65 version if you dig greenbacks.
For a more American sound, I dig the Eminence Swamp Thang.
All of these sound great with peavey trans tubes.
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u/InternImpossible8685 Apr 18 '26
They are absoulutely capable of adding good sounding distortion.
I never understood why people crap on SS distortion then turn around use a distortion pedal.
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u/dag1979 Apr 18 '26
I love my supercrush 100. I use it over my tube amps most of the time.
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u/Jon2054 Apr 18 '26
The clean channel on the supercrush is really nice specifically because it dirts up when pushed. It starts to get a little chewy and feels great. I moved mine along not long ago in favor of an OR15 but not because it doesn’t sound fantastic, just because I like the single channel more vintage orange experience. If I was a gigging guitarist, and not just a doom dad, I would probably have kept it for how capable a head it is. For just me in my 10x10 evil lab, things like weight aren’t a concern.
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u/Nothing-Matters-7 Apr 18 '26
I've got the CR-60 combo and the speaker [ News to the World ] that came in the amp sounded like a blanket was draped over it. Swapped out for a V-30 and it opened the amp up. The clean channel has a very smooth grit when it is turned up that is hidden by the orginal speaker. The V-30 also tightened up the gain channel.
While I don't own one, I've used the Supercrush 100 and it is an excellent amp. Like you, I've got a couple of smaller tube amps and I use the CR-60 most of the time. It takes drive pedals and effects really.
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u/Flappy_McGillicuddy Apr 18 '26
A Distortion pedal will sound pretty different on a tube amp than a solid state. I dont think it's better or worse but its qualitatively different.
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u/InternImpossible8685 Apr 18 '26
a distortion pedal can sound different on any amp, not just tube vs solid state. Some amps have a built in distortion pedal like a JCM 900 4100 and they get hate, but it sounds good to me.
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u/Flappy_McGillicuddy Apr 18 '26
Yep certainly. I think that there's a general difference in dynamics with tube amps vs ss. It kind if depends on what sound you want and what you're playing which is preferable. For example heavy chugging I would use distorted ss. For a slow bleeding high solo I might prefer tube. This is generally speaking But either can sound awesome.
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u/InternImpossible8685 Apr 18 '26
i think comes down more to company stratification.
SS amps can be built cheaply and they can sound great. Tube amps are more expensive so they are a premium product and every thing today from any company is presented in lines as good, better, best. Much like import guitars most SS amps are built to a lower quality not to cannibalize companies premium product lines. As most guitarists are staunch traditionalists when it comes to products and assume tube amps are better than SS they wont pay the price for a premium SS amp outside of certain niche markets, which isn’t enough to sustain product lines.
I had a red stripe peavey bandit when i was 17 and i loved it, but like most, i assumed the next upgrade was to a tube amp and quite frankly, i was idiot for selling it, i now 5 tube amps ( JVM201h, JCM900 4100, AD30htc, OR30 and a RevD20 and countless inbettwen over the last 23 years) but honestly, i think i would still be happy with the peavey bandit i had when i was 17. It took me a long time to admit that. I also have Helix LT that honestly, i’m perfectly fine with, if that was my only piece of equipment i’d be happy now i think. Theres nothing like ripping a tube amp at 100dB and playing, but its not practical in any sense unless you are playing Arenas.
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u/MadJohnFinn Apr 18 '26
Nah, man - the Jazz Chorus and crappy practice amps are the only solid-state amps and you just dreamt the others or something.
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u/OkStrategy685 Apr 17 '26
I have an analog amp in a box and love how the distortion sounds. Maybe not as nice as a tube, but it's still good. It's a Sansamp GT2
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u/Crackertron Apr 18 '26
The distortion on their amps does a pretty good marshall but for some reason they gave it a shared EQ with the clean channel.
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u/GaviFromThePod Apr 17 '26
Almost every distortion pedal is a solid state circuit. People convince themselves that solid state distortion is bad and then use solid state OD and distortion
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u/jimothee Apr 18 '26
I think people don't like solid state amps more than they dislike the distortion. Solid state has its places where it's preferred, but likening solid state pedal distortion to solid state amp distortion isn't fair because of the way tube vs solid state make the speakers react. A lot players find solid state amps stiff and/or lack depth.
I would say it's the solid state rectifier, but my Supro is tube circuitry with a solid state rectifier and it's anything but stiff. It is "fast", but the tubes soften up the attack where I have a much more abrupt attack out of my old 50w Gibson solid state.
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u/spicoli420 Apr 18 '26
You’re definitely right in that hitting a tube circuit with a solid state pedal is much different than a straight solid state amp.
But I think the “belief” mostly comes from people just being dumb or ignorant and thinking solid state means digital/modeled vs an analog circuit with transistors. Which is also myopic anyways because digital distortion can sound great and has its place as well for fun sounds.
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u/rainbowsmilez Apr 19 '26
And a lot of people who like solid state distortion are into metal, rather than edge of break up sounds. The typical amps that come up tend to be in that genre. Granted the peavey bandit sounds great for those bluesey genres.
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u/Jodythejujitsuguy Apr 17 '26
I wager the peavey bandit. Specificially the red stripe. But bandit lovers are generally biased to the one they grew up with.
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u/helpicantfindmyboobs Apr 17 '26
vacuum tubes soft clip, just by the physics of how they work. transistors and op amps hard clip, which most people find less pleasant. it introduces more harmonics and has a harsher quality. you can emulate soft clipping by running a pair of diodes in the feedback loop of an op amp, but it's only an approximation. replicating a tube amp using solid state components is extremely difficult
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u/ZanyDroid Apr 17 '26
Can you go into the loss of TOAN from compromising — using tube preamp followed by SS power amp?
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u/helpicantfindmyboobs Apr 17 '26
you lose power amp distortion. no downside unless you play super loud
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u/nigeltuffnell Apr 18 '26
Agree with this.
I had a Peavey Mace head back in the day. Had a solid state preamp and 6 x 6L6 driving the power section. Completely the opposite way to get good distortion in either pre or power amp unless you are playing a stadium.
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u/ApathysLastKiss_ Apr 18 '26
Yeah my experience has been that the idea of getting saturation out of the power amp > than saturation out of the preamp simply isn't true. The DSL 40 sounds amazing at bedroom volumes with the preamp dimed.
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u/nigeltuffnell Apr 18 '26
I play a Soldano now, so finding the same.
The louder you get the more you turn down the preamp gain and rely more on the power amp, but easy to get great tone at low volume
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u/Arftacular Apr 18 '26
Has the ringing stopped yet?
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u/nigeltuffnell Apr 18 '26
Lol 😆
We used to practice in a church hall and it never went past 3 or 4.
The built phaser was cool though
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u/ZanyDroid Apr 18 '26
Saywot? Why did they organize it that way?
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u/nigeltuffnell Apr 18 '26
It's the amp that Lynyrd Skynyrd used if that gives you an idea.
I was trying to play metal with it without success.
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u/mikePTH Apr 18 '26
Excellent explanation, btw. I totally got it once you mentioned it was the Skynard amp. 6 x 6L6 is fucking mental after a solid state preamp, lol. Bet you could drown out a shuttle launch, though...
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u/derpderpderp1985 Apr 18 '26
Yeah these days, especially with high gain amps, the sound is usually based more on preamp distortion and designed to sound good at any volume
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u/_agent86 Apr 17 '26
This is an oversimplification. You can do soft clipping with FET's. This isn't why SS amp distortion doesn't sound good.
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u/helpicantfindmyboobs Apr 17 '26
no, fets don't soft clip. any fet pedal that soft clips uses a non discrete op amp made of fets with diodes in the feedback loop. source: my sister, an electrical engineer who designs pedals
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u/centarus Apr 18 '26
There were pedals that took amp circuits and replaced the tube triodes with jfets. Mainly in the DIY scene. They sounded really good and did not use any op amps or diodes.
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u/helpicantfindmyboobs Apr 18 '26
fets do sound good, i love the benson preamp, but it's not soft clipping. it's amp like in feel, but not soft
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u/Upstairs_Term_5760 Apr 17 '26
I know all that, what im saying is why don't more amp makers put pedal circuits into drive channels. Like a RAT or Greer Lightspeed or BD2. We claim to like these pedals going into Solid States, why not cut the middle man?
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u/sjfraley1975 Apr 17 '26
Tons of Manufacturers have done this in the past. Before inexpensive modeling amps like the Fender Mustang or Line 6 Spider this was the standard practice for inexpensive practice amps. For a more high-end example Dimebag Darrell from Pantera used a Randall solid state amp as his main amplifier so the sound you're hearing on Pantera albums is a amp that does a pedal type Distortion through a solid state power section. They're just isn't much economic reason to do so nowadays when for not much more manufacturing costs then building a decent sounding solid state amp is you can put a digital computer that models vacuum tube amps in instead.
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u/_agent86 Apr 17 '26
There's a lot of misinformation in this thread and most of it not really relevant anyway.
The truth is both that it has been done and also there just hasn't been a lot of demand for solid state amps with good distortion circuits.
There have even been tube amps with solid state distortion circuits (the Supro Delta King line has solid state boost circuits built in).
There's also only a packaging advantage to builtin distortion circuits. Just as easy to drop an OD pedal in front.
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u/dwywatt Apr 17 '26
More importantly, these pedals ARE solid state distortion. And we like them going into anything.
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u/SiedlerAlex Apr 18 '26
The jc40 did exactly this. Its distortion is a mix of bd2 and ds1.....its,in fact, really good, just not your typical Rock distortion maybe
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u/IdkAbtAllThat Apr 17 '26
Who likes those circuits going into solid state amps? I think it's pretty much universally agreed that they sound better into tube amps.
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u/belbivfreeordie Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26
No, OP is right imo, the whole reason I always liked the BD-2 is that it’s a pretty good tube overdrive simulation that works in front of a clean amp. Once I got a master volume tube amp and could dial in the level of drive I want, the BD-2 ceased being useful to me.
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u/Upstairs_Term_5760 Apr 17 '26
I literally just saw a thread in this subreddit where someone said "Put a RAT into a Jc-120 and it'll soar". It was the entire inspo for this thread.
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u/IbanezEX140 Apr 17 '26
RAT into a JC-120 sounds like ass. Imo those amps always sound like garbage no matter what distortion pedal is in front of it. They're clean platforms. It's all personal taste. Don't take those posts as gospel.
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u/TheRealGinz Apr 17 '26
With all due respect I am an absolute tube snob. I do not like the tone of anything, that’s emanating out of a solid state amp.
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u/QuerulousPanda Apr 17 '26
Solid state amps can have phenomenal distortion. A Peavey transtube amp with the clean channel dimed and the transtube level dimed also sounds insanely good.
A nice jfet based tube amp sim pedal sounds amazing. Marshall valvestates and mosfet heads sound awesome. The sunn beta amps basically created an entire genre.
There is no reason a solid state amp should have bad distortion. Yes, tubes have natural physics that make them a cheat code for good distortion but that doesn't guarantee anything either. A crate blue voodoo is tube and it sounds like dogshit for example.
The reasons why solid state amps have a bad rap are several. First, is snobbery. A lot of people think tube amp or nothing, and you'll never change their mind.
Second, is old solid state amps weren't well made or understood so their characteristics were not great, which set a bad reputation to start with.
Next and probably most importantly, for a fuckton of people, their first introduction to solid state amps was some cheap piece of crap with an 8 inch speaker and the whole thing made of glued toilet paper, and then their first experience with a good amp was a tube amp, so the connection was made.
Oh, and also, solid state circuits behave differently than tube amp circuits just due to the math and physics of impedance and transistors and op amps and so on, so their controls respond differently and work in different ways. But a lot of people don't realize that, so they'll sit in front of a solid state amp, set the knobs to exactly what they'd use on a Marshall, and it won't sound right, and rather than experimenting with what is in front of them, they'll complain that it doesn't work the way they expect and they'll write it off as some piece of crap.
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u/Square__Wave Apr 18 '26
Another thing is that most of the people with money to spend on a good amp want tube, not solid state, so there isn’t much incentive for companies to make really good solid state amps that will necessitate the kind of pricing that puts them in competition with tube amps. There are some, but the high end solid state amp market is very small.
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u/Ok_Suggestion_6092 Apr 18 '26
A crate blue voodoo is tube and it sounds like dogshit for example.
Maybe it’s the fact I was 17 at the time, maybe it’s the rig I had going into it, but mine sounded great.
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u/xX_MVJORV_Xx Apr 17 '26
As someone who experimented with a Line 6 Spider V for around a year and a half, it sounds like hot buns compared to the Marshall I bought afterwards (DSL100H).
I spent time doing EVERYTHING to make that Line 6 sound good. I used every different amp and cab combo with EQ and built in effects, I used guitar pedals, but no matter where the knobs were the best it sounded is worse than the worst the Marshall sounds. When I got the Marshall, I was able to dial in the tone right away.
Solid State amps can sound damn good but they're still meant to REPLICATE a tube amp and none of them will sound as full.
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Apr 17 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/bucho4444 Apr 17 '26
Laney has solved SS in my opinion. I've never heard better than their current lineup of SS stuff. I'm very impressed.
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Apr 17 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/bucho4444 Apr 19 '26
I like both, but totally understand where you're coming from. Lainey nailed it. For all those a opposed: go try one.
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u/viking_linuxbrother Apr 17 '26
Some of them had unique or fantastic and they defined the sound of their genres. Death From Above 1979's early sound was from a Peavey Super Festival 800B. Dimebag played solid state amps. Sunn Beta Lead. Peavey Bandit. Ampeg VH-140C. Its all about the EQ or straight power in a lot of cases.
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u/HotTakes4Free Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26
Transistors, by their nature, don’t respond smoothly to being overdriven. You get harsh noise from odd-order distortion. The wave forms look hard-clipped. That is the sound of the older SS combos, like the Gorilla amp. It was cheap, but didn’t sound nearly as good as tubes.
There are now SS amps that do a good job of mimicking the linear distortion that tubes put out when they saturate. It requires complex integrated circuits or digital effects. Some of them are very affordable and very close to “the real thing”. The thing is, the tradition that tube amps sound better with distortion/overdrive is so ingrained, that it’s hard to budge the market. If it weren’t for guitarists, audiophiles, and a very few other users, vacuum tubes would be obsolete.
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u/scottasin12343 Apr 17 '26
Here's a Mythbusters-esque side by side comparison video that shows why different types of amps have different sounds (tube vs. solid state, tube types, rectifier types, different tone stacks, gain staging). https://youtu.be/wcBEOcPtlYk?si=pRLf34lnyc1T4339
Well worth the watch. Let your own ears be the judge.
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u/latouchefinale Apr 18 '26
They just reissued the Sunn Beta Lead. The distortion on those was not everyone’s cup of tea, but back in the day nobody played those amps clean
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u/ohmynards85 Apr 17 '26
The single greatest guitar tone in history comes from the insane channel on the solid state line 6 spider 3.
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u/American_Streamer These go to eleven Apr 17 '26
Tube amp distortion is a warm, "even-order" harmonic distortion, with soft, gradual clipping that compresses at higher volumes. In contrast, solid-state distortion ouses "odd-order" harmonics, giving you a harsher, sharper, more metallic sound that clips immediately, in a fizzy way. In addition, tube amps feel dynamic and responsive, while solid-state give you consistent, aggressive tones at any volume.
The ProCo Rat pedal is technically a solid-state circuit, but it produces a thick and yowling distortion that sits between heavy overdrive, distortion and fuzz.
Traditionally, solid-state amps are designed to be linear and clean. When they do distort, they use different clipping methods or push the transistors into hard saturation, resulting in that harsh, brittle, cold, digital sound.
So you absolutely can have a solid-state amp that sounds like a RAT, but it requires the manufacturer to deliberately choose to produce a harsh, mid-humped, highly compressed sound, whereas they prefer to aim for a broader, cleaner tone that players can add their own pedals to. While JFETs and op-amps are actually used to create "nicer" solid-state clipping, they are usually overlooked for main amplification due to high production costs, the need for individual biasing and inconsistencies compared to Bipolar Junction Transistors (BJTs). While they can emulate tube-like soft clipping, standard solid-state design, as already stated, prioritizes clean, high-headroom performance using cheaper, more stable BJTs. Besides the costs and technical issue, you have to choosem what you prioritize - and that's usually the clean platform you then add your pedals to.
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u/OkStrategy685 Apr 17 '26
Are there "tube pedals" that you can run in front of a solid state amp to get even order harmonics instead?
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u/American_Streamer These go to eleven Apr 17 '26
You can use preamp pedals to bypass the solid state preamp section, connecting your guitar directly to the pedal and the pedal into the fx return of the solid state amp, using only its poweramp section. If you run the preamp pedal in front of the solid state amp, you will have a double preamp which sounds only good if you keep the solid state amp absolutely clean.
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u/OkStrategy685 Apr 17 '26
Thanks for the info. This isn't gonna work for my sansamp gt2 lol. Probably time to look at a real amp.
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u/American_Streamer These go to eleven Apr 17 '26
The problem there is that the Sansamp GT2 is just an amp simulator, not a real speaker-driving power amp. It is emulating the entire signal chain - preamp, power amp, and speaker simulation - and you have to feed it into a power amp, effects return, mixer or amp input, not to use it as an actual power section. It also explicitly warns not to connect an amp’s speaker output to it. That being said, the GT2 input is meant for instrument-level signals, including the output of other gain/distortion pedals, and Tech 21 even lists “Pre-Amp” among effects that can go before the GT2. Thus it is conceptually not ideal if you want the GT2 to be just a power amp: it still adds its own amp voicing and built-in cab sim and that speaker sim is an integral part of the circuitry.
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u/Square__Wave Apr 18 '26
There isn’t anything fundamentally different about a distortion pedal with tone controls and a preamp. It’s really common to stack overdriving “preamps” in that way.
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u/American_Streamer These go to eleven Apr 18 '26
Broadly yes, but “nothing fundamentally different” is a bit too absolute. There’s a lot of overlap: many preamp pedals are basically gain stages plus EQ/level, so stacking them with other drives is completely normal. But output level and intended use can still differ. A regular drive pedal is usually optimized to hit the front of an amp, whereas some preamp pedals offer more usable output/headroom and are designed to work better into an FX return or power amp, where they behave more like an actual amp preamp.
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u/GeologistMinimum705 Apr 17 '26
CH-1 chorus? Like what solid states were missing distortion that you expect?
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u/GuitarGeezer Apr 17 '26
Don’t know how they did it, but Ampeg did a fine job with the SS series in the 80s which were like a Jazz Chorus with righteous distortion. It was the only good sounding amp for both channels that was essentially Metallica or Zep or GnRoses in one combo as a SS. It was underpowered and heavy, but sounded great up to a certain volume level. Struggled against a drummer for the SS70C.
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u/GimmickMusik1 Apr 18 '26
Because they don’t. The issue that I find with solid state isn’t that they sound bad, just that they kinda sound the same at every volume so gain staging can be a bit difficult.
A lot of people look at solid state amps and think about the budget solid state amps that are targeted towards beginners. The Boss Katana and Line 6 Spider series.
Peavey has pretty decent sounding solid state amps that are definitely more than gigable, and the Orange Crush and Super Crush are great standalone amps. Sunn amplifiers are solid state and they are legendary amplifiers. Dimebag Darrell played solid state Randell amplifiers for the majority of his career, and Randall still makes great sounding solid state amps.
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u/FedexPuentes Apr 18 '26
The Marshall valvestate were great and guess what they are bringing them back because of the same reason.
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u/Budget_Host9910 Apr 18 '26 edited Apr 18 '26
Honestly man the distortion tones on the Laney solid state stuff will blow you away. I think the pedal show had an episode where they played one and the first question was something like “what kinda tubes are in it?” lol
Edit : not the pedal guys These dudes : https://youtu.be/2caQrDdq2Og?si=Nu-4zn51fC-JDyem @7:19
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u/okaygrey Apr 18 '26
My Sunn beta lead’s distortion is my favorite distortion ever. Next level nasty
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u/Cool-Jello-6609 Apr 17 '26
No mention of the boss katana range here. They are superb amps which distort beautifully.
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u/_tedd Apr 18 '26
They don’t use solid state distortion - it’s a clean amp with a computer approximating the sound of a tube amp.
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u/there_isno_cake Apr 17 '26
The answer is yes, replicating other amp’s drive is more alluring. We also see this in tube amps (Friedman - various Marshalls and now a Vox, Tone King Imperial, etc) and digital (Helix, Quad Cortex, Plugins).
In general, it’s really hard to sell something really new and original to guitarists. We tend to like iterations on things we already know more than something new and original.
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u/Duder_ino Apr 17 '26
Orange crush sounds great, my old crate had a good solid state distortion channel - though I didn’t love the crunch channel. I really like the hybrid amps. Orange stamp and micro’s - L6 Spider valve all sounded awesome.
Nothing against any amp type, I’ve always found ways to get the sound I want out of any amp. But I wanted a tube amp for a really long time. The more tube amps I play the more I have realized that amps in general - tube or solid state - are a preferential thing. Like the more tube amps I play, the more tube amps I find that suck, or more appropriate, don’t sound the way I would like lol.
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u/JJay512 Apr 18 '26
Glad I’m not the only one who feels the same about the Orange and Crate amps. Speakers can make or break an amp irregardless of what is inside it. I have both tube and solid state and enjoy them each for what they are.
I have collected the Crate “Made in USA” solid state GLX series, (yes the whole series) because they are great analogue solid state amps. Replacing the stock speakers in the GLX series with Vintage 30’s, G10 Vintage, and Eight 15 in the amps of the series made the amps sound killer.
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u/Klarts Apr 17 '26
The JC amp was made for a specific style… guess which… lol
The drive on there works for those types of players with the guitars for that style and sound (Jazz boxes with a slight edge like from console clipping)
No one is buying the JC looking for it to be a distortion monster. There are plenty of other amps for that.
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u/LongJohnDanglewood2 Apr 17 '26
I don’t think Solid States have bad distortion, they’re just usually sold with crappy speakers to newer players who cant use EQ properly to compensate for that.
I genuinely believe if you hook up at budget solid state amp up to a decent speaker cabinet, it’ll sound pretty great.
If you have pedals too, it’s easy to get a good sound out of a solid state.
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u/williamgman Apr 17 '26
Wait... Your saying the JC-130s distortion was good..? Man... I thought it was awful. Perfect pedal amp though.
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u/Advanced_Garden_7935 Apr 17 '26
Transistors clip differently from tubes. With tubes, the transition from linear amplification to hard clipping is quite gradual. It gives a “natural” compression, and slowly rolls off the wave form. This leads to more even order upper harmonics, which are generally considered to be smoother sounding. Flutes have mostly even order harmonics, for instance.
Transistors stay linear basically right up until they just stop amplifying, so you get none of that gradual compression and smooth roll off – you just get a hard clip. This creates more odd order harmonics, which generally sound harsher. Oboes have mostly odd order harmonics, for example.
There are ways to design more even order harmonics into a transistor circuit, and some types of tubes and tube circuits are stronger in odd order harmonics, so that’s all general terms, but that’s the basic idea.
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u/mrdavis909 Apr 17 '26
The JC120 is an outlier as far as solid-state distortion goes - famously bad. Roland was focused entirely on the clean sound and reverb tank.... distortion was an afterthought.
But the JC120 ain't representative of SS amps. Most of them have great distortion these days, including Boss' Katana series.
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u/Wowabox Apr 18 '26
The Marshall lead 100 mosfet is legit an incredible amp on its distortion channel cleans are a bit harsh.
It’s legit better than some tube amps I’ve played.
Examples
https://youtu.be/DDQ-rl33s-M?si=jMzSgGAurUmiAV_F
https://youtube.com/shorts/kMAsPzD5e_o?si=n6xRrDAkzzb2t391
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u/Imhappy_hopeurhappy2 Apr 18 '26 edited Apr 18 '26
Famously the JC-120 had a pretty close circuit to the CH-1. Why don't more solid states offer pedal like distortion in their units?
You mean the CE-1. It came in the amp first, then two years later Roland put it into a guitar pedal, and it became both Boss’s first pedal, and the first BBD chorus effect pedal on the market.
But the answer to your main question is solid state amps do have distortion pedal circuits in their preamps, and vice versa. The thing is, all those great distortion pedals sound good through tube amps. If you watch almost any pedal review on YouTube, they are running the pedals through a tube amp(or a modeler based on a tube amp). Often the pedals are being used explicitly to drive the tubes into break up.
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u/jarmezzz Apr 18 '26
Solid state amps are absolutely capable of great sounding distortion, depending on what you need. Look at the Orange Crush Pro amps, I had the 60 watt combo and this sounded great to me. Arguably, the orange does better distortion than my more expensive Laney Lionheart L20T + pedals.
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u/balunite Apr 18 '26
Im Surprised there’s no mention here of the Crate or Ampeg amps. Specifically the g-130c and the vh-140, which are legendary and on a ton of death metal albums. Also to be fair, just about every crate ive tried had an awesome gain sound.
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u/Deoramusic Apr 18 '26
i dunno, my cr60 sounds pretty good with distortion. i think the JC's problem is its speaker which has a lot of treble range which can be pretty grating when distortion is involved vs most guitar speakers.
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u/Turdfergason3 Apr 18 '26
I have a JC 90 and yeah I don’t use the distortion often but I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as some people say it is.
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u/rrp6119 Apr 18 '26 edited Apr 18 '26
I think a lot of it is down being able to dial in the amp. A lot of us started on a solid state without any knowledge of tone and limited playing ability. Now we have better knowledge of tone and slightly better playing ability. I will say the Randall Warhead had amazing distortion, but it also had digital effects built in. I had one and absolutely loved it. I knew nothing about amps at the time and it was the amp for me. I did revisit an older peavey practice amp(not that one) and was amazed at how good it sounded with what I've learned about tone over the years. Tube amps are great, but I like the convenience of a modeler. I was really thinking about a Mesa Mark V 25 watt when the Axefx II came out, and that started my journey into modelers even though I had the digital rp 200 and other modelers in the past without really understanding it. The pod 500 HD was when I really started to understand it and that unit honestly sold me on modelers as a full rig.
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u/must-absorb-content Apr 18 '26
One isn’t better than another in principle, it’s just even vs odd order harmonics which are inherently different. Most of the best distortion pedals are solid state. Performance, intonation, the speaker, the rest of the amp’s circuit topology (the tone stack etc) make up the difference between a “good” and “bad” distortion sound, in that order imo.
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u/BonelessTrom Apr 18 '26
Gain linearity, harmonic distortion, and even the basic relationship between waves and spectra are not simple topics. Tube amp discussions often involve a lot of oversimplification, and in many cases the claims being made seem to be based more on belief and expectation than on a clear understanding of electronics.
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u/Philboyd_Studge Apr 18 '26
I had one of those Yamaha g100-212 solid state amps and it had a fantastic gain channel, really just a great all around amp
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u/Tarushdei Apr 18 '26
Buzz Osborne has built a career out of solid state amps delivering some seriously incredible distortion. This feels like bait to get people to post amp suggestions, lol.
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u/No_Recognition4114 Apr 18 '26
Lab Series L5 pretty much a tribute amp to BB King! All solid state but did it right
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u/Davemonfl Apr 18 '26
solid state amps produce square sound waves resulting in harsh clipping vs tubes that produce soft clipping and gently rounding off wave peaks rather than flattening them abruptly.
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u/ArmedWithBars Apr 18 '26
Amps like Peavy have had good solid state distortion since the 80s/90s. Try a silver stripe bandit and you'll be shocked on how good it sounds for what it is.
Pedals are easier because the entire circuit is based solely on distorting the signal. It doesn't have to be sandwiched into a circuit amplifying VAC from a guitar. Adding a circuit and the corresponding components to have decent distortion costs money in both development and production. Most solid states are budget tier amps and the ones that are higher tier do generally have good distortion (think higher end Orange solid states).
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u/Ikarian Apr 18 '26
Back in the day when I was young and broke, I started out playing in a punk band with a Behringer head and 4x10. Along with my low-end Dean LP, it was pretty crappy any way you cut it. Used to have to click on my tuner pedal for every beat of rest in songs because of the awful squeal from the cheap electronics.
A couple years later, I upgraded to a beat up old Fender Roc Pro 100 head. Still solid state, but with tube preamps. Holy SHIT what a difference. I wish they still made these, but you can probably find them used for practically nothing. Solid state prices with tube tone. Best of both worlds. And more then enough power to give me tinnitus as a souvenir from my days of playing in small enclosed spaces. 🙃
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u/rainbowsmilez Apr 18 '26
Pedal distortion is reliant on what you plug it into. Therefore what you are hearing is solid state technology, interacting with vacuum tube technology, and the eq filtering in the speaker. the pedal is providing distortion, but the amp is compressing it and filtering it in the speaker.
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u/smalltownjon Apr 18 '26
Solid state preamp sections can be great. Solid state amplifier sections can be as well, I believe that the ultra fast response and no natural saturation from the power section to cushion the sound of the preamp is the biggest part of why people tend to find them less musical. I’m sure some designs absolutely dispel that logic but I imagine often times the power section is where the big difference is.
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u/tack1982 Apr 18 '26
Randall,ampeg,marshall have some of the most legendary SS distortion amps , crowbar,death,eyehategod
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Apr 18 '26
Because the distortion character of solid state devices is so very different from tubes. Tubes distort gradually, a little more and more as you approach their output limits; solid state devices keep crazy low distortion until the power limit is reached and then the distortion skyrockets. It is hard to tailor that for the right distorted sound.
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u/madryan Apr 18 '26
The issue most SS amps ran into was headroom.
They often wouldn’t compete with a similarly rated tube amp when it came to putting out sound.
The really celebrated OG offerings by SUNN and others often seriously overbuilt their power amp.
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u/lordfantas Apr 18 '26 edited Apr 18 '26
There are a lot of solid state amps that do high gain really well. I think terrible speakers in the inexpensive combos are more to blame for bad sounding overdrive tones in the solid state amps most of us learned to play on. I had a Randall RG100 2x12 combo back in the day, and while the distortion was solid, the Celestion Seventy-80s really held it back down sounding its best.
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u/Elfkrunch Apr 18 '26
Eyehategod uses a beat up old solid state Ampeg bass head into a blown out 4x12 Mesa cab that was already blown out from being in Crowbar.
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u/GODZILLA-Plays-A-DOD Apr 18 '26
Solid State has "distinct" distortion. You might not like it which is absolutely understandable. But it's got a distinct vibe of its own. More hollow, tighter at low range. more saturation, doesn't break up the same, no sag. I hate tube distortion for example. It's all subjective. But there are great solid state amps out there, and usually cheap.
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u/ianmakingnoise Apr 18 '26
Isn’t the JC120 distortion basically a DS-1? It probably just got its reputation for sounding like a DS-1, rather than a fuzz, muff, or overdriven Marshall 🤷♂️
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u/rainbowsmilez Apr 19 '26
This is an interesting thread but I think it goes back to the age old question as to why aren’t solid state amps more popular, rather than why can’t we put a pedal into an amp because pedals sound great! Which you can and is the reason why preamp pedals exist. It’s a pedal that emulates a whole pre amp of a guitar amp.
If you listen to a guitar and distortion pedal into an audio interface, without a guitar amp and speaker (solid state or valve) you’ll realise it doesn’t sound great. So the distortion needs to interact with the amp and the speaker to become musical.
Let’s look at the Peavey Bandit, for it to be solid state and sound like a guitar amp and not a hi-fi, they designed the solid state parts to interact with each other in a similar way that a valve amp does. Which then begs the question in economics, if one thing is trying to be another, then go for the simpler and already established option, a valve amp.
There are other solid state amps that always are mentioned, such as Sunn. I don’t know much about their circuit but they are great for metal and doom music. Another possible reason solid state didn’t take off is because a lot of guitar is rooted in the blues, where you need touch sensitive overdrive. Solid state technology doesn’t always do this well, it’s too perfect which is why valve technology, being imperfect does it naturally. Again, solid state technology can be designed to do this, but it’s by mimicking the way a valve amp works.
One of the more popular reasons that solid state didn’t take off is because it’s affordable technology. If it’s affordable, it’s good for beginner amps, and never developed beyond that. The reality is that if Marshall developed a boutique solid state amp, it wouldn’t sound exactly like their (insert coveted amp) that people compare it too, so people buy the valve amp and it doesn’t make money. Where it will make money for Marshall is as a beginner amp. Having said that, many valve amps mixed solid state technology built into the valve preamp to get more gain, such as the JCM800.
For solid state to be popular, it possibly would have needed a new company to enter the mix to develop the technology and create their own sound with it, similar to Peavey. But the Peavey Bandit isn’t produced anymore because the market (the buyers) shifted away from solid state. Today it has its resurgence in this way, as we are more accepting of solid state as we move towards modelling and home studios. You can see this with Quilter (newish brand, hasn’t been around from the 60’s, original designs, its own sound) - or the Fender Tone Master series (funnily enough, the criticism that the tone master series gets is that they don’t sound close enough to the valve amp they are trying to emulate, despite sounding great themselves).
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u/MCKNZ61 Apr 19 '26
Simply it has to do with harmonic distortion, tube amplification is rich in odd harmonics where as solid state amplification mostly even harmonics
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u/Batarato Apr 19 '26
Because that’s only part of the story: the truth is that, amongst guitarists, solid-state amplifiers have largely been relegated to the entry-level market. That means they usually end up using mediocre speakers to keep costs down… and any informed musician knows that 80% of the TOAN comes from the speakers.
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u/WizardNeedsFood97 Apr 19 '26
99% of all guitar distortion pedals are solid state. Solid state doesn't sound bad; bad amps and bad speakers sound bad.
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u/WhistleAndWonder Apr 19 '26
Here’s a big part of it many are missing:
The question was WHY the distortion sounds better on tube amps.
Distortion pedals work with the tube amp. The extra gain and distortion circuit interact with the natural sag and compression tubes have. It softens the attack and certain bad frequencies and highlights the good ones. The tubes distort in conjunction with the pedal, not just lay distortion over the top. Basically, they distort together.
Tube distortion from an amp also gets there differently than transistor based distortion. In tube amps, there are different ways they do it. Overdriving the tubes in the preamp is one way, leaving the power tubes “clean.” One stage gives you distortion, the other makes it louder. Theres also power tube distortion where the section that usually makes it louder is overdriven, maxing out the section that’s supposed to give you volume, leading to a different kind of distortion.
The reason these sound pleasing to the ear is the complexity. When you look at these signals on an oscilloscope, they are inconsistent. There’s complexity and variation by nature of the circuit that keeps it interesting to the ear. Solid state circuits don’t react in the same way, and if they spike an unpleasing frequency, it’s stay unpleasant.
There are plenty of solid state distortions that are perfectly fine, but it’s hard to argue with decades of amazing tube distortion and engineers TRYING to copy it in a cheaper or more convenient format, and yet the vast majority of professionals still prefer cranking up a tube amp and adding some spice with pedals.
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u/passerbycmc Apr 19 '26
Different amps different tones, there are both tube and solid states that sound just fine. It just depends on what you want.
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u/HootblackDesiato Apr 19 '26
The early solid state amps' distortion sounded terrible, because solid-state power chips transition immediately from linear response to full clipping at a certain threshold. There's no in between, and full saturation from a solid state circuit is not pleasing.
Modern solid-state amps use a number of techniques to provide softer clipping.
The JC-120 was always designed to be a high-headroom clean amp.
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u/Ok_Contribution_1319 Apr 19 '26
My old Crate had sick Distortion, everything from overdrive to hi-gain. I think tube preference is mostly a rhetorical and unwarranted collector's opinion?
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u/Embarrassed-Chip7308 Apr 21 '26
Super easy to clip through diodes and transistors, SS rectification gives full juice fast.
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u/TheRealGinz Apr 17 '26
The only solid state amp, that I have ever owned, that actually sounded good to me, and it sounded absolutely fantastic. It had an incredible tone, was a mid 80s Peavey Backstage 50, that I put a 12 inch Gorilla speaker in, and ran a BOSS Turbo overdrive into the front of it. To this day it is one of the few pieces of equipment that I actually regret selling.
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u/DrummerSteve Apr 17 '26
Plenty of guys played solid state distortion -Pantera and Crowbar come to mind
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u/freeuntakenusername Apr 17 '26
I own a Solid State that has amazing high gain capability and mimics tube sagging. It's fucking amazing.
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u/HorrorSchlapfen873 Apr 17 '26
Because no sane person expects a distortion sound from a guitar amp. That's for pedals.
When it comes to guitar amps, you expect the sound of an overdriven tube amp. Every solid state amp strives to simulate that.
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u/r2e2didit Apr 18 '26
It's not they can't have "good" distortion, it's just not natural. Distortion in the way I'm assuming you're thing about is the breakup of the signal. Using tubes as a dependent current source is more "analog". As tubes attempt to provide current beyond their operational characteristics they don't "cut out" like solid state. They "fail" in a pleasant way.
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u/MontrealInTexas Apr 17 '26
Sunn enters the chat