Let's talk about some amplifier stuff.

[AeternusEternus]

A friend of mine told me about an idea he had about building an amplifier. Basically, he ran into a guy that built himself a tube amp from scratch that had a tone knob and a volume knob, and that was it. He was inspired to find a way to build an even simpler amp: JUST a volume knob. His thought process is as follows:

When you plug into a head, you have a lot of electronic processing to your tone (drive, low/mid/hi, etc), then it all hits your preamp tubes, then that all hits your power tubes. What if you could build an amp that JUST had preamp tubes to color the input signal, and then a set of power tubes to turn it up? If you built such an amp, could you just use pedals to craft your tone, and then run it all into the amp, where the preamp tubes would warm it up and put it to the power section? Would it still sound good?

I don't know if this sort of thing would sound good or if this is even how preamps work. But if he's right, could I just run a pedalboard into something like a Presonus Tubepre and run that out into a power amp? What if that preamp was something nicer, like an LA610? If the LA610 worked well, could I not run a pedalboard into a PC and apply Nebula programs designed to emulate preamps?

Really, in short, I guess the question is, what's the difference between a Metal Muff and an E530?

 

[if6was9]

Sounds like the idea of having a power amp and a selection of pres. Alot of guys already have a selection of pre amps and just a poweramp for running it out to a cab. Pedals won't work as nicely as pres cause the main bulk of the tone is already their and set in stone with no eqs an such. Sure you can try this already by setting an amp with a clean neutral flat sound and then trying to use pedals to shapre the tone- Not as varied as you'd think or want it to be

 

[ahjteam]

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Yeah my head went to that amp as well. That amp SUCKS though.

 

[Nebulous]

I'm no techie, but I would assume that a mic pre like the Presonus one mentioned would probably have incorrect signals either in or out of it to then send to a power amp, or if I'm wrong there then you'd probably have very little colouring compared to a general tube amp due to the lack of tubes in the Presonus.

IIRC tube guitar amps get their sound from multiple gain stages, so the one tube probably wouldn't make a huge impovement.

You'd probably spend less money going Pod> poweramp and get a better result.

 

[Wolfeman]

When you plug into a head, you have a lot of electronic processing to your tone (drive, low/mid/hi, etc), then it all hits your preamp tubes, then that all hits your power tubes. What if you could build an amp that JUST had preamp tubes to color the input signal, and then a set of power tubes to turn it up? If you built such an amp, could you just use pedals to craft your tone, and then run it all into the amp, where the preamp tubes would warm it up and put it to the power section? Would it still sound good?

You and your friend should read a couple of tube amp books, because your thinking here is so flawed I don't even know where to begin....

Not trying to be a dick, but you are way off on how a tube amp works, and honestly to explain it I'd have to write a book. So just go read one

 

[Full_Tilt]

If a totally stripped down control panel is what your after I certainly wouldn't dismiss preamp gain control ,also some pedal colouration EQ / FX etc only sound good after the preamp tube so at least get it built with a serial FX loop or keep the 2 stages separate as many of us already do .
The actual idea of a simple amp is pretty sensible IMO .