ckpop wrote:The Reason for the success of the Dual Recto was partly this.........
The sound of the music industry was changing the 80's were over and grunge took off, For the heavy type player a channel switching amps that was Rock solid, channel switching and covered sloppy playing because they didn't have the chops. The key part of the tone was the amount of gain and low end that went beyond a stock Marshall. The amps are not very colorful now but the earlier one's were better. Randell happened to come out with this amp just at the right time and then everyone jumped on the bandwagon.
This in no way puts down Randell Smiths work because he is a true designer but timing sometime can be a big part.
But recto is pretty much clone of SLO 100 with the addition of tube rectifier and a couple of switches. What's annoying about R.S. is that he patents pretty much every switch in the amp, but doesn't refrain from stealing the whole amp circuit from another company. That's lame IMO.
Other than that they do have great sounding amps, can't deny that.
Cliff Schecht wrote:I'd love to see his measurements proving that the negative feedback from the capacitance of traces between FR4 is actually making a piss of a difference.. We are talking about values in the femtoFarad range for audio circuits. When he talks about lining up the harmonics just right, I start to think of phasing and the affect this has on the amps transient response (i.e. how it rings) which is one of a few tests that can be used to characterize any time-variant system.
It's pretty easy to make a 5pF capacitor this way. Put it right between plate and grid pins on a 12ax7 thus making use of Miller effect (which is also easily explained by NFB theory) to multiply this by the gain factor to some 2-300pF and see/hear what it does. This is no black magic, only practical application of basic circuit theory.
Randall Smith, whatever your opinion of him might be, often provides valuable technical info in his colorful descriptions although sometimes disguised as marketing BS. You just need to filter out the BS. I look at his patenting "hobby" as his way of showing that the USPO is the biggest storage of imbecils on this planet.
IMO both Dumble and Trainwreck circuits are pretty straight forward and do lend themselves to adaptation to PCB and volume manufacturing. Why hasn't it been done? I'd say that those capable of doing it aren't interested in cloning/copying somebody elses designs simply because their motto is "Art ends where copying begins".
End of rant, carry on, gentlemen.
Aleksander Niemand
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Life's a party but you get invited only once...
affiliation:TUBEWONDER AMPS Zagray!-review
Well, I think for everybody is clear that it is NOT posible to massproduce an amp that is going to perform above the rest.
Last year the Nashville amp show was a great example. There were very good amps there. I think it was hard to find a bad sounding amp. I actually found one but I won't say which one but anyway there were great amps and then you come to the trainwreck room and it was just another league. No amp in the show could capture the clean to mean, harmonic complexity and sustain that the TW amps brought courtesy of Glen Kuykendall.
Talking about Mesa I'm not a fan of his amps. Although a couple of his amps specialy the MKI and MKIIC+ sound very good they recently put out a very bad el84 driven amp. I think that out of all the amps with el84's that I've heard that was the worst sounding one (lonestar special)
Yes Randell is the king of patents from ideas that have been around. It is more of a legal road block for other because I think Randell realized how easy it was to take someone else's idea
I mean Leo Fender took from western electric, Jim Marshall took from Leo Fender, Randell smith took for Fender and Marshall, Soldano took from Marshall and so on. They used from each other only as a starting point but produced very different Sounding Products.
There is only so many ways you can design guitar tube amp circuits and 99% has been done already. The same circuit design can be close but the parts you use make all the difference. Wasn't Ken's Express sort of in the same design based slightly on a princeton ? so was Randell Smiths MK1.
No amp in the show could capture the clean to mean, harmonic complexity and sustain that the TW amps.
I agree, most of the amps we're building and playing are variations of the same basic ideas that are 50-60 years old. That's why it's so lame to go around and patent everything without any real innovations.
Yes I agree Kind of stupid to a point but as a business decision pretty wise to compete with an ever growing market. I think he knew anyone could buy the amp, open it up ans copy it. He was thinking of long term survival for Mesa Boogie and any way he could throw a wrench at the competition, He did even if it meant investing in patents. It was that or make someone sign a non disclosure or Goop the circuit.
Going back to who will be the next trainwreck.......
Someone that dedicates sometime to do a lot of experimentation, that has a good ear, that can design an amp that will perform in a unique way no matter if it borrows from others but make it a unique design.
That is what Kenny did.
He didn't start as a builder but his career with Ampeg troubleshooting and designing amps and then his repair and modification work gave him enough background to redesign parts of diferent amps and create a product that still today can standout from the rest.
It is posible...I think most of us here come to clone his amps and in the process we learn. Probably someone here with a good ethic and desire to innovate can be the next.
