why can't vintage amps be replicated?

it's very obvious that i'm not the only guitarist that prefers the sound of vintage amps over some of the newer stuff out there... my question is: what is stopping manufacturers like fender and marshall from making exact replicas of their vintage masterpieces?...is it cost? much thanks for any insight....

Most likely because if amp companies keep putting out the same stuff another company will come out with something mind blowingly new and then that company will lose a lot of money trying to catch up.

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thats a damn shame....

Don't worry boutique manufacturers are churning them out also. Valvetech has pretty much copied the original voxs and costs as much as the reissues.

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I'd guess cost has something to do with it. Marshall does make some replicas of a couple of their older amps but they're damn expensive. I agree, it's a shame.

I found my sound by combining a new amp-modeler with a great old tube amp that's 30+ years old, and I feel like I get the best of both sounds that way. When I want, l get the classic sounds of the tube amp on it's own, and then there are times when I use the amp-models into the tube amp, improving the tube amp's range of tones. At the same time, the vintage amp's tubes and
preamp section can really warm up and de-digitize the sounds of the amp-modelers.


What I'd really like to see is a company like Line 6 integrate all that they know about modeling with more vintage, tube technology. I think they could make a truly great amp if they did, maybe a new classic. If they made a brand new version of the V4, of the same component quality as the originals, and then included in the chassis all of Line 6's best
amp-modeling and effects software from all their existing products they would have a monster amp on their hands. It would be like their existing HD147 head that's out now, but it would have a killer 100-watt tube power section, and a tube preamp to complement the digital preamps of the amp-models. I'd be willing to pay some good coin for an amp like that.

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it's partially cost...
it probably has alot to with efficiencies...which are related to cost, but not exactly the same thing...

for example:
Suppose to build a New Old Stock 1965 Fender Champ it costs $100 in parts.
This can be handwired, at a man labor rate of $20/hour, you're talking about another maybe $80-$100 just for the circuit getting built...maybe more...who knows.
Now if you simplify the circuit (PCB) and have a computer do it, you save a ton of money in a long run.

Even as it is, manufacturers generally are reducing their costs through automation and NOT passing the savings on to you. the above amp would be $100 in circuits and whatever, $20-$40 for the cabinet and chassis, and $400-$800 (maybe even more at Guitar Center). I haven't seen it verified, but it recent interviews with Hartley Peavey in both Guitar World and Guitar Player magazines he talks about how certain manufacturers (un-named but sure sounds like possibly Mesa/Boogie) put about $300-$500 of total parts and labor into an amplifier and turn around and sell it for 3x the cost!

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thesteve

marshall is, in their Handwired Series. And they are damn good...

BUT... to answer your question a little better; Vintage amps have something called "component drift". Over time, all the parts in an amp age and begin to meld together with their values changing ever so slightly and they start to sound "Better" becuase the parts work TOGETHER better. THis is a good example of "bigger than the sum of its parts". its almost impossible to replicate that. Blockhead amps are one of the first to build an amp off this concept. They tried out HUNDREDS of vintage marshalls until they found the ONE that just blew them all away. THEN, they took EVERY SINGLE PART IN THAT AMP and measured its value, its placement, even the amount of solder used, and copied it 100%...

also, back in the day, different values of parts were used.... a schematic may have it laid out, but in the old days, they just grabbed what was nearby or plentyfull, and the parts varied in quality and sometimes in value... these variations created some amps that are godly, and some that are so so. TOday, they build these amps EXACTLY to spec with more often than not, cheaper parts.

some boutique amp makers are really taking this stuff seriously. If you love vintage fenders, check out Victoria or Clark amps... if you love vintage marshalls, check out Blockhead or Germino. These companies, more often than not, sound BETTER than the originals... So its not all lost

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Let's start with:
what's a vintage amp?
How do they sound?
How did they sound when they were new?

We all think that vintage amps are the best. But have you listen to an 1957 Fender amp? Just few people have been able to listen an unmodded old amp. But we have the idea that "vintage is better".
When you hear your guitar idol playing a vintage amp, remember that you are hearing the result of the recording process.
The fact is that vintage amps were made with the cheapest components they could find at that time. The vast majority of those components are not available now, because they woul be considered junk. At that time, the typical resistor's tolerance was about 20%... Now the typical tolerance is 5%.
They were point-to-point hand soldered not because that was the best method, but because that was the only method available. I'm sure that if they would had PCB in 1960, they would have used them. There weren't things like "99,9% oxigen free silver wires", or "matched tube pairs" neither...

i've heard that this is one of the reasons (Aside from being handwound) that vintage pickups sound "better". I read story from someone taking a music class where they were studying vintage vs. new pickups. The instructor played a vintage Gibson vs. a new Gibson and the entire class could tell the difference between the pickups. Then he took a hammer and hit the new pickups a few times to loosen everything up and make it a little more microphonic...after the "relicing by hammer" the class had a much harder time distinguishing the two sounds.

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thesteve

wow.... thanks everyone.... BTW, I really like the sound clips of the victorias..

Have you looked into the Randall MTS Series amps? Sounds like what you are talking about, quite expensive though IMO...but I haven't tried one yet. They could be incredible..

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so if i mash my pick up a few times with a hammer it will sound vintage. is this recomended. cos i am perfectly willing to try this and tell you all how it goes. should i take them out first. i have never fitted a p'up so i hope not. feed back would be apreciated. oh and how hard should i hit them?

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Why do vintage amps cost so much?

Take germanium transistors for examples, all pedals used to be made with them, but they were very inconsistent in their quality, so you either got a fantastic pedal or a crap one. THen they came out with silicon, a much more mediumatic way of producing with consistent results, all the factory start making silicon transistors, thus the price of germanium ones skyrocketed. And over time a fault will probably found in silicon ones thus new ones will be invented and so on and so forth

IN the words of the Bright Eyes, a line is progress, a circle is not.

that is of course assumptious in the fact that I'm assuming we are making progress.

Are vintage amps mainly 50's - 60's? If the aging theory is responsible for great tone, when did they start sounding better? Were they not "great" when they were new? If the aging theory is responsible, how long would it be for a similar construction amp (hand wired with similar components) to sound as good as "vintgage"?

Are the vintgage amps we hear used by well paid artists possibly painstakingly maintained by the best amp techs? I often read how these amps are not taken on the road. So they are vintage, but maybe not representitive of the general population of vintage amps.

I agree that the modern manufacturing methods of mass production are squarely aimed at cost reduction, but that is not all sinister. Part of cost reduction is reliability and I would guess that statisticaly modern amps have a lot fewer failures during the first year than amps made in the 50s/60s.

Retail prices that are 3x maufacturing cost is very consersative, my guess is it's even higher than that for these low volume (compared to most consumer electronics) products. A laptop comupter has a cheap plastic case, a PCB, power supply, drive, monitor, and these sell in the 1000's each day for $500 - $1000. I wonder how many amps sell each day, probably not even 1% of that and you can get a hand built Dr. Z for $1500. To me that's a deal!

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Vintage amps can be replicated. Victoria, Top Hat, Carr, and Allen are just a few examples. The main thing is to build an amp like a vintage amp usually involves more expensive parts and a lot of labor. The amps are more expensive and less people buy them, so less are made and less dealers carry them.

But they're out there and you can find them.

There are a few things to consider as to why they'll sound different in ways that people generally find better.

1. Most vintage amps have a much shorter signal path compared to a modern amp. A fender bassman has two gain stages plus a phase inverter. In between the stages there are only a handful of components. In a modern marshall or fender if you don't have more stages, then you might have solid state buffers for effects loops, solid state reverb drivers, etc. The less stuff in the signal path will usually yield a better sound.

2. Component drift, like JubileeMan said, is a factor. Not only do components drift over long term, carbon comp resistors can actually change value with heat. A tube amp gets very warm and the sound can sometimes change. Every old amp with a lot of original parts will sound a tad different. Sometimes better, and sometimes worse.

3. Speakers of vintage amps are generally rated at just about what the amp can put out. A 75 watt speaker in an amp that runs at 20 watts won't sound as good to me as a 25 watt speaker in it's place. but running a speaker that close to the edge can cause the speaker to wear out or brake, which leas me to the next...

4. Old amps have seen techs, and techs, if they're doing their job rige, make amps sound better. An amp will get biased correctly, and things can be set to run to sound better. Modern amp companies offer warranties, and their amps are built to live through their warranty. This means that sometimes, without changing a resistor, you can't get to an optimal bias setting for the power tubes, or the caps and resistors will be grossly over rated, or the output transformer will be able to handle twice the voltage and sound too clean and sterile. etc etc.

5. And this is the one that I believe is most overlooked, old amps used less filtering and many times, tube rectifiers. Old amps generally weren't designed to be cranked. When you crank an old amp, the power supply can't keep up, and that gives you compression, tonal changes, inefficiency, and other artifacts. This has a great effect on tone and feel. Finally, the new Vox amps have a filtering switch on the back of the amp. They're realizing that sometimes the technical problem is a creative solution.

On the other had, the Epiphone Valve Junior is a modern build of a fender tweed champ. They do use cheap parts and bad layout, and they have problems. As we've learned here, making a few changes can make it an awesome sounding amp. If they'd have used a better PCB, better wiring and circuit layout, and some better components, I bet they could have built something killer out of the box for $200 instead of $100. In my mind, that would have been worth it.

Cheers.

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