Help Me Explain Power Cables to my Guitar Friends

Changing power cords might actually hurt the performance of a guitar amp, Unlike hifi, guitar amps are all about coloring the signal, and they are prized for the ways in which they distort.

Many classic sounds are based on undersized power and output transformers, carbon composition resistors, underfiltered sagging power supplies and overdriven speakers and tubes. It's a whole different country.

Guitar playing is my other hobby, and I use a completely different set of criteria for judging guitar amps. As a player it's as much about feel as about sound. "Improving" the amp with a power cord may destroy the qualities cherished by the player.

Lkdog, you might have a point about the modeling amp. I use an Hughes and Kettner Zentera modeler around the house for practice (decent tones and flexability at low volume). I'll have to swap on a good power cord just for grins.

For playing out (rare these days) it's either a Soldano Decatone or a Groove Tubes Soul-o 75. I don't know that I'd want to bring an expensive cord to the places I go to play...

Daveyguitar, you're right about the higher quality guitar cords on the market. They beat the cheapo microphonic cords of years past (think Hendrix with that silly coiled cord going to his Marshall). The metal guys I know don't care about cords, but the jazz guys I play with do.

As a lot, guitar players tend to be very conservative on gear and its hard to convince them to incorporate new technology of any kind. Even cutting edge technology such as digital modeling amps is largely employed to emulate the sounds of classic 50's and 60's amplifiers.

I remeber reading something written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagan about the guitar player as the noble savage holding a vintage Les Paul. The comment is not far from the truth (and I resemble that remark)!

Piezo, I think you missed my point. Like it or not, many classic guitar amp sounds are the result of imperfection and happy accidents. Consider the classic Marshall, Fender, and Vox amps as examples.

That doesn't mean that you can't build a premium amp that also sounds very good. I didn't mention it above, but I also have a mid 90's Matchless HC-30. It's a cathode biased EL84 amp, based of the Vox AC30 design and tuned for great power amp distortion. It has hand wound transformers and point to point wiring. I love it for rhythm work - it has a greasy, buttery distortion that really augments your playing. However I also like preamp distortion for solo work - there's something magic about having tons of controlled, well articulated sustain at your fingertips.

The Groove Tubes Solo 75 is a compromise - it can do nice preamp distortion and wicked power amp distortion. You can select Class AB, grid biased Class A or Cathode biased Class A for the output stage from rear panel switches.

For awhile I had a rack mount processor from ADA called the Ampulator. The purpose of this thing was to simulate big amp power tube distortion using a 12AX7. It gave the user front panel control over bias, amp class (A, AB), feedback, tube balance, and power supply hum leakage. Playing with these controls was very instructive - for example the sounds of some classic amps depend on some hum leakage for the rough, false note tones they can generate. I came to appreciate how much imperfection, cheap parts, and design limitations influenced the classic amp tones.

Let's not forget speaker distortion. A Celestion 30 sounds very different from an EV-12M at 100 watts.

My Matchless simply doesn't get some of those really raunchy early rock tones, though it's a wonderful amp on its own terms. THere's more than one approach to interesting guitar tone.