What is it that makes TW'ss so rich sounding and desirable?

[iknowjohnny]

I suppose the answer, if there is one, is somewhere in this forum but it would take a year to find it. So i'm asking out of curiosity, what do you think it is that makes them so good to so many. I don't mean what aspect of the tone, but what circuit design aspect do you think is most responsible for it? I have looked over the schematics and they're so simple and nothing stands out to me. I realize simple is good, but there are a ton of simple amps out there that aren't considered holy grail amps.

[davebolden44]

some things I like are:
the topology, there is a lot of real estate in the chassis so you can isolate heater wires from the rest of the circuit.
the simplicity, I love the less is more mentality that still achieves the nice overdrive.
the overdrive, once it stops getting louder it just gets hairier early on in the sweep and it just sounds great and they are fun to play with a lot of tone variation. i have never played a real one but i built an express and I think they are great. I love them for what they are, I love all my amps for what they do best, my ab763s, 5f6a, plexi, ao35, ac30. they are all great for what they do and each is equally as valid as the next.
I think the hype with trainwrecks is there arent that many and the original builder is gone. Fortunately for us he was gracious enough to leave us with a tone of great info ie: The Trainwreck Pages. I never knew the man but I think there are some guys on here who may have. Big Trainwreck fan over here.

[RJ Guitars]

Great New Look on the TAG site today - something about it is very familiar (maybe cuz: http://diyguitaramps.prophpbb.com/)

Anyway - Dave has it nailed - Wrecks sound great because of their simplicity. If you study Ken Fischer you'll find he mentions (repeatedly) his designs are intended to get everything great sound out of the back end that you are putting in the front end. However, with the exception of the tube itself, every component in the amp is theoretically losing some signal. Assuming you are putting good stuff in, then the output should be good stuff that's louder minus whatever you lost. Volume controls don't add volume, they just let it pass thru. Tone controls don't add tone, they just let it pass thru.

This idea of course falls apart when you consider that there is a certain frequency range that we care about and stuff outside that range can cause bad stuff to happen. High frequency oscillations for example are beyond what we can hear but will raise havoc in the sounds we can hear... so absolute simplicity isn't the answer because we need to do a few things to prevent or get rid of those high frequency oscillations. FWIW - rj

[vibratoking]

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