Tube Amp Myths Part III

All Vintage Fender Amps are Clean Amps:

Fender has a reputation for  making amps with great clean tones so many people do not know that Fender also built amps with  quintessential over-drive  tones.  The Tweed amps and some of the Brownface/Blonde series amps have great over-driven tones. Heck even a cranked up 60's Fender can have great grind.   Marshall amps which known for great overdrive are offshoots of the Western Electric circuit found in the 5F6A Tweed Bassman and 5F8A Tweed Twin.

All amps need FX Loops:

I cannot enumerate the number of times customers have asked if I can put a effects loop in one amp or another. The fact of the matter is they are only really effective (pun intended!) in amps with lots of pre-amp gain.  An effects loop is placed between the pre-amp and power amp to avoid the effects form being distorted by pre-amp distortion. This especially useful with reverb, delays and other time based effects .

Many vintage designs do not have enough pre-amp distortion for an effects loop to be beneficial.  Vintage designs often rely on power tube overdrive so this negates the usefulness the effects loop because the loop would be placed before the power section. Despite this there is trend in by modern builders to add a loop to every design. A even a good active tube-based design is going to change the sound somewhat. Many builders instead vie for a cheap and quick add on which is even worse.

Expensive Speaker Wire Makes a Difference:

Some companies will sell customers expensive speaker wire for a combo connection to a speaker or for the short run from a head to cabinet. These money grabs will do nothing for your tone. What is important is that speaker cable has reasonably quality good cooper, a large enough gauge for the power and quality connectors. Your amp and transformers are filled with regular copper wiring—-a couple feet of silver wire will have no effect whatsoever except to lighten your pocketbook.