Pre amp distortion vs power amp distortion

[Rob227]

Is there any reason to try and get power tube distortion? Amps like th 2/95 are so high powered that I am never going to get the tubes to distort. Is there any reason to bother or is it good enough to just have clarity through the power amp?

I like the whole quad/2/95 setup but I'd also like to put together a smaller more portable unit. Some idea's that came to mind were to build a DIY 50watt plexi kit and match it with a preamp. I still want to buy or build a small class A el34 power amp 10-50 watt. One power tube would probably be good enough for home use but won't run stereo. Any idea's?

 

[Mister Joshua]

Well the 295 is 6L6 which are traditionally hard to drive. If you were using EL34's then yeah the "brown" power tube distortion is an option. I've never been able to distort 6L6's, although i am sure it's possible. Since i use the 2:90 with 6L6's i tend to lean towards pre amp distortion. I think with the quad / 295 rig a good pre amp crunch will be your path to happiness.

Peace,
Joshua

 

[Heritage Softail]

Only for me, I like the bit of the fur of a lower watt amp cranked to that bit of burn. Plus the speakers provide some physical compression effect.

Some say getting the amp loud gets power section distortion. I think it gets air moving good way before then. My uber sounds better once it gets some volume and air moving. Really loud the power tubes sweat and the speakers give it up.

I do not like power tube distortion on a REC with the gain up high. It makes is saggy instead of like a chainsaw.

 

[Jackie]

Boogie poweramps have a lot of negative feedback in their neg. feedback loops, which keeps the powertubes from distorting, resulting in a nice and tight sound when combined with a hi-gain preamp. You'd have a tough time getting one to distort. Probably have to pretty much dime it on 10.

I know the Rec has one or two modes where there's NO feedback at all though, so Randall shows he explored the concept.

 

[r_cod_81]

My current bedroom setup is a Studio Preamp (plus a few pedals) into a wee 5W EL84 class A amp I built from a kit last year: the SE5A from http://www.ampmaker.com and I love it! I have the input gain at 9:00 to keep it clean as I'm just using it as a power amp and the EQ as open as possible, specifically the mids turned all the way up. I generally have the amp's master volume turned up halfway, this gets the power valve it working nicely at a reasonable volume.

For live work I use my marshall 8008, an advantage of utilising pre-amp distortion is that you can plug into any power amp and can thus select the right output power for your required application - sometimes I even go straight from the recording outputs of my Studio Preamp into my recording device (Tascam 8-track) and monitor with headphones, I recorded all my parts on my band's demo like this and it sounds great!