Class D amps question

cheechi

cheechi

Mar 10, 2015
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#1
I have read through a lot of the recent Class D threads and it's got me wanting one. I don't need one. I have plenty of amps but I want to know something basic that I just haven't had the opportunity to hear for myself. Do these newer ones have any kind of power section distortion? Are they all preamp tone and the power is just power, or do the power sections of any add anything tonally? For example do I get a sound out of the Darkglass 900 that I wouldn't get from a B7k? How about the Aguilar TH heads vs the TH pedal? Or the GK MB800 vs the Plex? I have a B7k but not an ultra or v2. I could buy a Plex and TH pedal for less than buying any of those 3 amps. Would I have all the sounds they could make?

I have a Carvin BX1600 in addition to several other SS amps; usually at 3 or 4 into a 410 it overpowers everything including a few places' PA. Those that have played any of the above at gig volume (up past halfway or even dimed preferably) is the sound different at different volumes like with tubes?
 
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#2
Yes, sometimes. Some class D amps do incorporate overdrive type emulation and dynamics management into the power amp sections.

You really should play some to see if they are worth buying, or worth replacing what you already have. There's no way anybody can say yes or no without knowing your tastes.
 
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#3
I appreciate your answer and I realize you probably can't be any more specific, can you.

Well my tastes are SVT power tube distortion, I tried several 'almost' SVT's, but still wound up buying one because nothing else was quite like it. I rarely get to play it loud enough to really enjoy it. That's part of why I'd hope for others experiences, if I can almost never crank 300W, I'm never going to hear 500-900W of these others in their full glory.
 
#4
That's why 150 to 200 watt amps are really fun.

If you have enough cab and can't fully crank a 300 watt amps. It's a interesting situation. Been there myself.

Cranking low watt solid state amps came interesting to me. Cause some really had the feel you get with a tube amp. Thats some not all, some. Surprisingly when driven hard.

And many would be laughable and question what the hell your doing with your life lol and some are ridiculous expensive and hard to find.
 
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#5
cheechi said:
I appreciate your answer and I realize you probably can't be any more specific, can you.

Well my tastes are SVT power tube distortion, I tried several 'almost' SVT's, but still wound up buying one because nothing else was quite like it. I rarely get to play it loud enough to really enjoy it. That's part of why I'd hope for others experiences, if I can almost never crank 300W, I'm never going to hear 500-900W of these others in their full glory.
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If you want SVT-like power tube distortion at a more manageable power level look at the Ampeg V4B (100W), PF-50T (50W), or PF-20T (20W).

The little PF amps have a built in dummy load and two line outs. One line out comes from the preamp and the other comes from the output transformer so you can send that glorious output tube distortion to one of your solid state amps...Whammo power tube distortion coming from a solid state amp at whatever volume you want.
 
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#6
Yes I have a V4 and I love it. Other than getting a fridge which I will never do, I have the Ampeg sound covered.

I was just using the search for that sound, via pedals, SVP-CL, & the SVT3-Pro as an example where 'the pedal comes close but isn't the real deal'. And they are close, but they all lack the 'roundness' that the power tubes add, even without the proper cab, to the sound I was chasing. On the other hand, I know the Darkglass pedals predate the amp. Not sure about the other two, and I'm sure there are others that I haven't encountered yet or haven't got enough traction to be discussed at length here.

Of the many class D amps available now that the preamp one for one is available as a pedal, and has no separate pre/post gain knobs or gain/master knobs affecting the power amp section's tone, has anyone had a chance to A/B or play with them at stage volume to hear if the power section adds any character to the tone, or either if they clip at a certain point and you can't really use their whole volume range?

BogeyBass said:
Cranking low watt solid state amps came interesting to me. Cause some really had the feel you get with a tube amp. Thats some not all, some. Surprisingly when driven hard.
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My Peavey Combo 300 has pre & post gain knobs and if i crank the pre without the post going higher than 2, it will clip and the DDT light just goes crazy. It has totally different sounds with more pre/less post vs more post/less pre, it's a really 'crispy/bitey' type SS sound that I really like.
 
#7
Your Carvin IS a class D amp ;)

The Mesa D800 and D800+ have the power section distortion. I imagine that could be pretty loud, but you can do:

Ran my Streamliner at 16 ohms tonight -- a revelation

with the D800 series. You can also set it to 2 ohms and use an 8 ohm speaker to make it easier to get to the output distortion. The Streamliners discussed above don't have a switch (or go to 2 ohms at all), so 16 ohms is the best way to get there.
 
#8
Well yes the Carvin is but it's 'boring' on its own, all the EQ in the world but no baked in character. Which is great, it takes pedals amazingly and the SVP-CL sounds great through its power section. I've come nowhere close to halfway with only half of its power section, but its little brother the BX250 sounds clean up as high as I've ever turned it. I thought that was indicative of class D power, big, clean headroom with no distortion. Then I read through a thread within the last 2-3 weeks that I can't seem to find now that suggested some amp I was looking at was going into hard clipping way earlier than it was supposed to. The mini max Peavey was reported to do that too so I stayed away from that one.

I remember your thread now that you bring it up, and while I couldn't put my finger on it that was basically what I'm looking for. What other newer amps distort that same way with the extra tubey-ness as you describe it. And quite honestly, it doesn't even have to sound tubey. A pleasant, usable distortion or even into the fuzz type of range (like my Peavey). So after re-reading agedhorse's reply in your thread I guess my next best step is to build some dummy loads.

I'd buy a TH350 based on the sound of the pre alone, if one was about the same price as the corresponding pedal. But if the pedal + what I already have gives me everything the TH350 does and more, I'm just buying the pedal. If there's more/better/extra to be had, then it's worth the difference in price. Same with the MB350/MB800. Trying to compare the D800+ to one of Mesa's pedals one for one like these other examples, probably doesn't do either of them full justice.
 
#10
I must admit that I am somewhat darkly fascinated by this power tube distortion priority for a lot of TB’ers. I’m old enough to have bought new and gigged several all tube bass heads, because that’s all we had at the time. There certainly were cats, like Jack Casady and Felix Pappalardi, who would take the amps, turn every knob to 10, and that was their sound. No dis intended. I was a big fan. So, I get that.

But, at least in my humble playing, I nearly always went for clean power and great clean tone. Which, the SVT excels at, BTW.

These days, I am quite happily playing in cover situations with large playlists to keep things interesting. In fact, I’m really glad I never was at the right place at the right time to be in a band that had a big hit; because, then I would be left with touring to support that same tune the rest of my playing days. Yuk. I do have a Grizzly pedal on my board; but, even with all the tunes we are doing, rarely need to use it. So, if it isn’t the real deal, it’s also not a deal breaker. For me.

The Class D SS circuits are generally engineered to provide clean amplification. Great engineers (like our @agedhorse) can get creative to cause them to emulate power tube saturation. And, you’ve also got the modeling systems getting pretty close with software based emulation. I’m all for these advances. They give us choices. If they aren’t close enough for a player, you can always get an SVT. I suppose. But, if I were such a player, I would be enthusiastically supporting any and all engineering efforts to get there other ways, even if they fall short.

I do find it a bit odd that there seems to be so much angst against Class D generally on TB(NOT pointing my finger at this thread). Use what works. We have a lot of choices. It’s a good thing.

EOR. Carry on.
 
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#11
cheechi said:
Well yes the Carvin is but it's 'boring' on its own, all the EQ in the world but no baked in character. Which is great, it takes pedals amazingly and the SVP-CL sounds great through its power section. I've come nowhere close to halfway with only half of its power section, but its little brother the BX250 sounds clean up as high as I've ever turned it. I thought that was indicative of class D power, big, clean headroom with no distortion. Then I read through a thread within the last 2-3 weeks that I can't seem to find now that suggested some amp I was looking at was going into hard clipping way earlier than it was supposed to. The mini max Peavey was reported to do that too so I stayed away from that one.
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There's a trick to getting some nice grind out of a BX1500 or 1600, but it is all preamp. I'll go into that if you like. It's hard to get it to grind without getting loud. You're right, it takes a lot of eq effort to get a great sound out. I haven't used mine since I got my Streamliners.

If the BX is what you are considering for use the Peavey pedal, I would go for the full amp. Carvin has bailed out on us and all you get now is a schematic. Hopefully it holds up.

cheechi said:
I remember your thread now that you bring it up, and while I couldn't put my finger on it that was basically what I'm looking for. What other newer amps distort that same way with the extra tubey-ness as you describe it. And quite honestly, it doesn't even have to sound tubey. A pleasant, usable distortion or even into the fuzz type of range (like my Peavey). So after re-reading agedhorse's reply in your thread I guess my next best step is to build some dummy loads.
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@bobcruz started that thread and I haven't even been able to start on my 8"ers yet for 16 ohm.

I can't remember what recent thread went into which class D amps do good output breakup, but it's out there somewhere :D

Much of the older Genz Benz does and it factory servicable. Not cheap, because it's so good, but less then newer amps that have caught up with the technology.
 
#14
bucephylus said:
I must admit that I am somewhat darkly fascinated by this power tube distortion priority for a lot of TB’ers. I’m old enough to have bought new and gigged several all tube bass heads, because that’s all we had at the time. There certainly were cats, like Jack Casady and Felix Pappalardi, who would take the amps, turn every knob to 10, and that was their sound. No dis intended. I was a big fan. So, I get that.

But, at least in my humble playing, I nearly always went for clean power and great clean tone. Which, the SVT excels at, BTW.

These days, I am quite happily playing in cover situations with large playlists to keep things interesting. In fact, I’m really glad I never was at the right place at the right time to be in a band that had a big hit; because, then I would be left with touring to support that same tune the rest of my playing days. Yuk. I do have a Grizzly pedal on my board; but, even with all the tunes we are doing, rarely need to use it. So, if it isn’t the real deal, it’s also not a deal breaker. For me.

The Class D SS circuits are generally engineered to provide clean amplification. Great engineers (like our @agedhorse) can get creative to cause them to emulate power tube saturation. And, you’ve also got the modeling systems getting pretty close with software based emulation. I’m all for these advances. They give us choices. If they aren’t close enough for a player, you can always get an SVT. I suppose. But, if I were such a player, I would be enthusiastically supporting any and all engineering efforts to get there other ways, even if they fall short.

I do find it a bit odd that there seems to be so much angst against Class D generally on TB(NOT pointing my finger at this thread). Use what works. We have a lot of choices. It’s a good thing.

EOR. Carry on.
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I'm not sure if the class D outputs we are discussing are intended to sound tubey, or if they are intended to just break up and recover nicely.

I also don't know how much this has evolved from the early and great efforts of Genz Benz.

The aged horse has gone into this quite a bit, perhaps he can offer insight on some he is familiar with.

Now I have to go back and RTFM on all my amps.
 
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#16
right, when I said 'your thread' I meant the one you linked. Sorry for the confusion.
Since I have both the Carvin BX250 and BX1600, I've got big and small covered. This is the main reason I started out with not 'needing' another amp. Until all these threads started popping up, my shopping list was a Peavey T-Maxx pre & tonehammer pedal (you know, until the next thing gets added).

@bucephylus the example I thought of first was Pink Floyd without acid, then with. But it's not quite like that. The power tube distortion is the part of the signal chain I want my compression to be. As close to the outpout as you can, but 'all the time' (most of the time realistically). With my rack amp/preamps I use a compressor in the effects loop to come close to this both at lower volumes and with SS gear. It's not even about volume; I wouldn't abuse an underpowered tube amp to get there, because like you I like a big clean sound, but also when I dig in and those tubes are behind it it's the greatest.

@agedhorse Since I have a V4, SVT, SVT3-Pro (which I will probably sell to buy another amp), and occasional access to an SVP-CL, the PF-350 is a bit redundant for me. I'd just as soon get a vintage B15N but don't tempt me there either.
 
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#17
cheechi said:
right, when I said 'your thread' I meant the one you linked. Sorry for the confusion.
Since I have both the Carvin BX250 and BX1600, I've got big and small covered. This is the main reason I started out with not 'needing' another amp. Until all these threads started popping up, my shopping list was a Peavey T-Maxx pre & tonehammer pedal (you know, until the next thing gets added).

@bucephylus the example I thought of first was Pink Floyd without acid, then with. But it's not quite like that. The power tube distortion is the part of the signal chain I want my compression to be. As close to the outpout as you can, but 'all the time' (most of the time realistically). With my rack amp/preamps I use a compressor in the effects loop to come close to this both at lower volumes and with SS gear. It's not even about volume; I wouldn't abuse an underpowered tube amp to get there, because like you I like a big clean sound, but also when I dig in and those tubes are behind it it's the greatest.

@agedhorse Since I have a V4, SVT, SVT3-Pro (which I will probably sell to buy another amp), and occasional access to an SVP-CL, the PF-350 is a bit redundant for me. I'd just as soon get a vintage B15N but don't tempt me there either.
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IMHO, from a user perspective the primary characteristic of class-D that really stands out is small size and light weight.

As far as distortion...people tend to be pretty picky. Some are happy with the distortion from a specific pedal (or combination of pedals), some are happy with the distortion from a driven tube preamp, some are only happy with the distortion produced from driven output tubes. One reason people like output tube distortion is because it has unique characteristics that flows from the topology of push pull tube circuits.

However, the output tube distortion produced from one model of amp to the next varies significantly. Some amps sound great pushed over the edge, and some do not. IMHO, an SVT sounds great pushed up to the edge, where it gets grindy. But I don't really care for the sound when an SVT is pushed totally over the edge, to the point of getting farty and raspy. If I want super saturated output distortion, I think a Matamp GT120 is a bout as good as it gets.

Digital modeling or emulation may be a viable solution you should consider.
 
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#19
cheechi said:
@agedhorse Since I have a V4, SVT, SVT3-Pro (which I will probably sell to buy another amp), and occasional access to an SVP-CL, the PF-350 is a bit redundant for me. I'd just as soon get a vintage B15N but don't tempt me there either.
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I was just providing you an option in light weight that I thought might be more up your alley.
 
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#20
BogeyBass said:
That's why 150 to 200 watt amps are really fun.

If you have enough cab and can't fully crank a 300 watt amps. It's a interesting situation. Been there myself.

Cranking low watt solid state amps came interesting to me. Cause some really had the feel you get with a tube amp. Thats some not all, some. Surprisingly when driven hard.

And many would be laughable and question what the hell your doing with your life lol and some are ridiculous expensive and hard to find.
Click to expand...
That's how I ended up with my 400RB. It's not an SVT sound, but when you hit it hard, it breaks up in a pleasing way
 
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