Musical Instrument Amplification
Some musicians also prefer the distortion characteristics of tubes over transistors for electric guitar, bass, and other instrument amplifiers. In this case, generating deliberate (and sometimes considerable, in the case of electric guitars) audible distortion or overdrive is usually the goal. The term can also be used to describe the sound created by specially-designed transistor amplifiers or digital modeling devices that try to closely emulate the characteristics of the tube sound.
The tube sound is often subjectively described as having a "warmth" and "richness", but the source of this is by no means agreed on. It may be due to the non-linear clipping that occurs with tube amps, or due to the higher levels of second-order harmonic distortion, common in single-ended designs resulting from the characteristics of the tube interacting with the inductance of the output transformer.
See also: Distortion (guitar) and Guitar effectsRead more about this topic: Tube Sound
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