Paraphase distortion vs twin long tail

[Xander8280]

Would a loud clean paraphase inverter style amp yield a cleaner over all tone?
It's funny that I'm searching for a loud clean tone, I love dirt but I need volume.

With a JCM 2204 obviously i can move much air, but when I use the extra gain stage and dime the preamp volume I get more than double the volume and low end from a total clean tone. I understand poweramp distortion, but could I push a power amp with a super loud and super clean pre and get that level?

I enjoy some compression and sag from a choking power section, but that's only possible with fuzzy heavy overdriven preamps.....can we change that?

Thanks guys!


thought maybe voltage dividers between gain stages and maybe variable resistors for biasing the cathodes to the level of saturation and gain desired to keep the waves under clip.

[Stevem]

A paraphrase inverter looses gain, if a level of 1 goes into its input you get .9 out, a long tail pair provides gain!
Loud and clean requires speakers, no so much wattage by any means!

[Reeltarded]

It's not loud enough with the master on 10?

[tubeswell]

Paraphase inverters sound good if you don't have many pre-amp stages, like in a supro t-bolt.

Interestingly, from my experiments with the t-bolt inverter, I've found it is quite a clean inverter, but the lowish HT on the V1 stage helps give that amp quite a bluesy vibe. But if you bypass the 100k pre-amp supply resistor (thereby rendering the HT voltage for the V1 stage at around 300V, making it more of a TV-front fender circuit), the result can be surprisingly clean, albeit with quite a bit of harmonic distortion as you crank it.

[jazbo8]

A paraphrase inverter looses gain, if a level of 1 goes into its input you get .9 out

Why do you say the paraphase looses gain? It can have probably the highest gain among the various phase splitters.

[matt h]

(deleted)

[Stevem]

Sorry, long day yesterday deep sea fishing and throwing up for most if it!
Yup, cathodyne not paraphrase !

It's a pain in the ass, but doubling your speakers will get you far more clean volume than even quadrupling or greater the amps rms power!

[martin manning]

Paraphrase? Paraphrase? Come on you guys, don't let the auto-correct push you around like that!

[matt h]

(deleted)

[tubeswell]

To paraphrase Martin...

[matt h]

(deleted)

[Stevem]

Man does the auto correct drive me to edge at times!

[tubeswell]

To paraphase Martin...

FTFY (fixed that for you for non-redditors.)

I didn't re-edit - I got it right first time

[Gaz]

Paraphase inverters sound good if you don't have many pre-amp stages, like in a supro t-bolt.

I think this kind generalization really stunts experimentation. The Budda Superdrive amps use a paraphrase and those sound VERY good.

Sorry, long day yesterday deep sea fishing and throwing up for most if it!
Yup, cathodyne not paraphrase !

It's a pain in the ass, but doubling your speakers will get you far more clean volume than even quadrupling or greater the amps rms power!

So if I have 4 speakers and a 100W, adding 4 more speakers will yield more "clean volume" than 400W through 4 speakers? I don't think so.

[gingertube]

The paraphase splitter needs careful design attention to get reasonable balance out of it and while it is possible to design for the balance to be maintained as the tube ages this is often not done. It can, however, sound very good, think of some of those old Ampegs with 6SL7 paraphase splitters.

It is also easy to design with deliberate imbalance to emphasize second harmonic distortion. That can be useful, not to "warm it up' as most folk might think, but to balance third (and other odd) harmonic distortion inherent in the power tubes. This takes off some of the more agressive/harsh edge.

Adding some 2nd harmonic distortion in this fashion is also good for masking background noise and a raft of other "nasties". Its a way to make a crap amp sound OK. The HIFI crowd are quite familiar with this.

Just one man's opinion - feel free to disagree!

Cheers.
Ian