What does this say for the people who claim to hear the difference between tubes when only the tubes are changed? Do people who swap tube type usually somehow also try to change the topology of the circuit? As an amp builder, do you receive requests from customers to modify an existing amp's circuit to suit the tube?

Sounds like a reasonable observation. What amps do you build, Corey?

Tubes are dead... get over it.

​​@@prosatanos1991generally the change in tone is due to the old tubes drifting from the ideal bias point or going microphonic. It's a pretty subtle change.

So it's just two different ways to accomplish the same thing?

The real question is, can you prove it? do you have different frequency response graphics while all the rest of variables remain the same?

what the eff?

@SaludInformada I'm just fuckin around, Dude , honestly I'm not serious. Analogue or Digital it really doesn't matter. Meshuggah is my favourite Band and they use Digital and they are just brilliant to see live

@genevai2893 I was just trying make a joke. I don't think gear really matters anymore.

But I am preparing a video to test if putting a 12ax7 on a tin of tomatoes really makes a difference. LYCOPENE AND SUBSCRIBE 😉

I mean, it’s well documented that once recorded through a mic’d signal chain, differences get minimized. Now, if you think every amp sounds exactly the same in the room, that’s more a comment on your ears. Now el34 and 6l6 tubes are damn near irrelevant, but different circuits sound different.

Yes, and the 6L6 tubes smell a little more pronounced in the Pinene area. 😂

and youtube sound...

​@@SaleBSGN yeah. But for some reason I can hear the difference when compressor enabled or disabled on compressors demo, even watching KZfaq from phone. But I don't hear any difference in compression over el34 and 6l6 in this video. Or slightly shift in frequency response. And sometimes when I'm recording something to measure the difference in tubes or other components I can't hear the difference from a raw file playing through the monitor's. Maybe if the difference significant, you can hear it within a shit mp3 through crap in ears and it does not require hifi audio system in special environment. And anyway listeners would use crap in ears with their phones transmit data via Bluetooth protocol from the streaming platforms most of the time

@@AndriiHryhoriev Out of all the clips, there was only one that sounded a little different to me (Clip B, edge of breakup). My hearing also sucks so it could be my ears playing tricks on me. What would happen if you added Clip A to Clip B phase reversed? Would it reveal anything or be dead silent?

That was the LAST test! :p

Glen should sell bottled Unicorn Farts , there’s a market

"You just used EQ/compression to make them sound exactly the same. Do not question why I'd say that there is a difference worth paying for when one could actually just EQ/compress and get the same result."

The next Spectre Digital plugin: Unicorn Fart. Glen should even use ridiculous descriptors for various settings. This idea is likely just vaporware, though.

I mean, he's using identical clips filmed at different angles.. you can clearly tell by the facial movements of the guitar player.. they're identical, at different angles.

Sick ostrich?

​@@Ran-tan-tanAllegedly.

Heads in the sand. 😂😂😂

You're being horribly unfair to ostriches. Unlike guitarists, they don't actually stick their heads in the sand.

​@@Ran-tan-tan still need two people, maybe three

😂

Upper lower middle mids also knows as 666 hertz

It was warm and full in the 1k range with a peppery bouquet at the front and a smooth grassy finish with notes of burnt almond.

@@stolenlaptop it's the metal frequency

Interesting, I preferred the other tubes myself. I'm getting more of a semi-rounded bloom in the harmonic structure of the lower 3/7ths of the mids while the higher end of the spectrum has a glassy, trapezoidal smoothness that darts but decays quickly.

great statement. I need to start saying this.

Average Gibson PAF owner XD

Are those sad tissues or happy tissues? 😂

@@Funkybassuk 😆

😄👍

If you don't have any physical gear (it sounds like you aren't using it in this process), then you don't need a re-amp box. Just take the DI signal that you would have sent through the re-amp box and apply amp sims/IRs to it again. As far as signal integrity, they are supposed to be as transparent as possible. Only use the re-amp box if you need to send the guitar DI through physical gear and back into your DAW through DI (like after a compression pedal or wah pedal you like or something before going into guitar rig) or through a microphone recording a cab.

This is the main reason, I dare to guess, why people prefer some tubes only. For the recording, you can eq pretty well, and you sound in a mix, rather than alone. When you practice or play for fun, you hear your guitar more, it is louder if not the only instrument you hear. And through the cab, you hear what you play. This is what is the most important - you need to like what you hear, to enjoy the process, it must be something making you want it more, repeat, get better at. Imagine if the strings were razor sharp and you couldn’t play for more than 10 minutes, cuz your fingers would be cut and start bleeding, but until these 10 minutes it is bearable. Would you like to play it the next time? Same with me and 6l6 - just don’t like hearing those. I forced myself to play, cuz I wanted to practice and have at least some fun, but when I just bought the el34, I immediately sold the 6l6 and now I have what I had always wanted, you know - “that sound”. It might not be drastically different, but just enough for me to like it much and much more, and prefer it to the other. When you are close to your cabinet, believe it or not, you hear it. After this stage, when the sound has already gone through the air medium, to the microphone, then digitalised and arrived to you daw, it doesn’t matter that much, though still the difference I can hear even there. The thing is, there you’ll eq anyway to achieve the sound you want, so in the end it won’t matter much, but I still dare to say, on a case by case basis, you won’t always equalise one tubes to the other so much that you’ll not hear the difference even in the mix. It will be there, and you, knowing this difference yourself in the real world, will still be able to tell there is one. But, as I said, perhaps, not all the time.

I'd bet that's gonna be in the follow up video.

Yeah, they make a big difference if switching types of tubes. You can use a tube with less output in V1 you'll change the headroom of the other tubes and the way they interact. If you really want your clean channel CLEAN this is a good thing to do.

Its most likely what happens to most people claiming to have a better sound after they change tubes.

It's funny you ask that because I'm going to use the word that Glenn just made fun of. But first, I want to be clear on some things. "Tone" is kind of loaded term. When most of us talk about guitar tone, we mean the overall sound. That includes volume level, gain level, the frequency spectrum, etc. Some people like to split hairs and say that tone only refers to the frequency spectrum. That just makes the conversation a little labor intensive. I think what we are all trying to achieve is a certain sound, and to get that sound, variables like input, output, and compression all have a roll. The bias on a tube amp is is pretty important because it dictates the headroom of the amp, so the hotter the bias, the sooner the amp will distort and compress. In a real world setting that is super important, but in the studio, there is a simple fix for that. Lower the volume on the amp, and turn it up in the mix. I think a lot of the arguments Glenn gets are from people who don't just sit in the vacuum of a studio, which is the perspective that Glenn is coming from.

Oh so now it's the bias? Hmmm. Let's move goalpost again.

@@bassyey Lol, they are just asking a question, and a very valid one at that. That's like saying, change the strings, but don't tune them. So the question is, did he get matched sets of tubes? Did he bias the tubes, or did he just slap some tubes in there and say "fuck it."

@@bassyey Not moving the goalpost at all. I would consider it to be a parallel subject of consideration. What if any difference in tone might one experience based upon how the tubes are biased? I've heard of people tweaking with fixed bias amps so that they can run them 'hotter' and claiming that it makes a difference in how the amp sounds and performs. It's within the realm of scientific inquiry as far as I am concerned.

I got the same results albeit a different way; I thought I could hear a difference in the midrange.

@hhaste he said in the video they have been re-amped.

I think you are really close! At least 3 out of 4. Good Ears! You get the cork sniffing, tone snob stamp of approval. 🦇

@hhaste he used a re-amp box. So it is the exact same performance. But Glenn did this to show differences are minimal at best. It's just fun to play along.

@@MrJingles021 Oh ok, thanks for explaining. I'm not too familiar with guitar terms, I haven't played in many years.

That’s what I thought as well

Did we just become best friends! 😄

@@StudioAmpCaptures LOL, the difference between them is pretty obvious, but apparently we have magic fairy dust ears

@@kennethwilson1984 I turned up my fairly large P.A system very Loud. Tried to hear and feel the 6L6 GOODNESS!!!😀 high end clarity.

@@StudioAmpCaptures Dutch and Dutch 8Cs here

I convinced my mother they where going to station player’s in the stands to catch home runs.❤

A quarter is 25 right? Hahahahaha I'm kidding

Some high school games have a fifth quarter that doesn't count for the victory but gives a chance for second and third string players to have some time in a game.

Once explained it's less funny, like any joke. But "There are no stupid questions" is only half the phrase, the rest is "there are only stupid people." So when someone says there are no stupid questions they are implying the person is stupid. Haha.

It depends on the setting. In a situation where you are trying to teach people, then yes, there should be no such thing as stupid questions as the goal is to get people comfortable to speak up when they are not getting something. You don't want people to keep quiet out of shame, that's how some people stay illiterate.

6l6 love to CHUG!!

Haha, told ya

Wait a few years and it becomes reality

You misspelled "documentary"

@@geckoofcolor5721 We are already there. Together with Demolition Man.

It really didn’t age well, though. 😂😂

I could not laugh once watching it, allmost cried a few times tho'

The difference is in the circuit not in the tubes 👍

One clip definitely sounds more "marshall", the other more "Fender".

That would require effort. The one thing that stands between so many musicians and success!

Very true, so very true

It's only a difference if you make it a difference. The amount of difference, is a matter of perspective. How deep do you want to dig? You can keep going, keep digging layers or variables until you go insane and are adjusting the voltage and current to the tubes by half a watt. In the end it's just perspective. The difference in perspective between a music consumer and a cork sniffing, tone snob, guitarist with vampire bat ears is pantheons and orders of magnitude. Also, Glenn as a MIXER shouldn't go down this rabbit hole and start processing layers of tone like this. As a mixer, it could drive you to madness. Now, as a dedicated engineer, yes, go mad, but as a mixer you don't want to go there, your job is the sound of the whole peice of work, not the tube bias on the bass track and the fact the guitar didn't use sweetened tuning on the G string. You will go mad if you take yourself down that path. However as an engineer, dig in, go insane, it's your job to know every variable possible.

I notice differences, big enough for me to prefer one to the other. I don’t say necessarily one is better and the other is worse, or that the difference is too huge and not subtle. But I hear it, and it makes me always buy the amps with one tubes, rather than the other, simply cuz I like to hear what I like to hear, I like to play and enjoy the process, rather than hearing a sound feedback which is unpleasant to my ears or my mind. Don’t be so dramatic about it.

Well, it's also how they clip. Do they clip symtricall, or asymmetrical? With asymmetrical clipping, at "edge of breakup" which they went wayyyyy past here, you'll get that glittery tone which is half clean on the A wave and Clipped on the B wave. The EL34 don't want to clip as easily and do that "tube compression" thing we call "sagging". The voltage to the plate and bias effects that however. Can you hear it in a mix? If you are John Mayer, yes. If you are John Petrucci no. A complex mix and high gain wash out subtleties.

all these differences are way way more subtle than just dial the eq of your amp. no one who listen in the public will say "woah I really ear the electrical resonance of the tubes, it must be a 6L6" . stop caring about these infime detail . even the engineer in the studio doesnt care about this when he mixes a track

​@@aether3395well, you can't EQ the compression because the tube is out of headroom, nor can you EQ the magical "asymmetrical clipping". The music consumer doesn't care, the engineer doesn't care, but if the player cares then whatever inspires you to play better may be worth it. What we are really talking anout here though, is the classic Fender Vs. Marshall debate. Your ears prefer what your ears prefer.

@@nunninkav you don't understand my point. the subtle compression or the subtle asymmetrical clipping between two tubes is not significant, dial the eq of your amp impact way way way more your sound than these subtles things. like in the video, all theses differences are so subtle you litteraly cant hear any differences whatsoever, it makes no senses spends times arguing about when the eq , gain, presences, pedal you uses , mic you uses for recording impact 100 times more your sound.

Power tubes do add clipping when cranked, on really old recordings they had to crank it to get some clipping since there was nothing else available. We are lucky that we have all the tools available today to give us what ever clipping we prefer without busting out our ears. A lot of metal players don’t even distort with them preamp tubes, if they bother to use a tube amp at all, seen a lot of gain staging going on in front of the amps, probably because it is more reliable than pushing the tubes. 🤣 Allthough, unreliable can be fun to play with too, like germanium fuzzes, but randomly some times these transistors can be to hard of a fight.

"Spongy" would be compression you are hearing. Less dynamics in the amplitude. Good ears, shhh don't tell Glenn you can hear it.

I nulled the poor 192kbps audio from this video and it has some difference, though in the clean take the difference sounds exactly like the clip itself, I could not manage to gain match them to a point where there was silence, and the distorted ones have distorted distortion for difference. Maybe the original wavs null better.

You mean, on the cleans. Good ears. Try the mix, which one from the clean is which in the mix, they have similar thing going on in both.

​@@nunninkav on both clean and distorted, and the edge of breakup, I could discern the eq of the guitars slightly, however, I see how they would be similar.

Ball joint on the control arm, maybe? or Sway bar/endlinks? I had strut clunk on my car, which I would have assumed it was, until you said you replaced them.