lets hear again about them, that are the worst of all resistors and nothing new

Moderators: pompeiisneaks, Colossal


last time I checked the majority of amps everyone knows, loves, and copies as the go to standard for guitar tone are essentially amps built around 50 years ago with “inferior parts” …
Like many of the myths involving magic components (and unicorns) the tone enhancement properties of CC resistors can be very hard to find. At one point I would have flatly said it's not possible. But I went off on my own hunt for why people would swear CCs are better, and this is the only thing I've ever found. I also have tried to find the effect, and failed. I listed it because it's at least theoretically possible.martin manning wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 1:50 am I looked for this effect, but couldn't find it: https://ampgarage.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 43#p444443
I have two possible theories on this, possibly both are true, but basically most people can 'not' hear what many that speak about this are talking about. The reason is what falls into the two theories:WhopperPlate wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 2:03 pm Here’s the thing with mf s CF vs Cc vs ww vs ect ect …
If you can build an entire amp with metal film resistors and not hear a difference between cf … let alone between brands of resistors …well I wouldn’t want you building me an amplifier that’s for sure …I have never understood why anyone would wave that banner
People can argue back and forth whether they can measure it on a scope or not… what do your ears hear? Everyone acts like they need the indisputable scientific proof in front of their faces on paper with a scholastic seal of approval before they will believe their own two ears .
Me? I have essentially rebuilt entire amps from one resistor brand to the next several times over. Growing up as a young performing musician with an electronic shop and plenty of spare time to tinker away I chased the tone dragon for years on end . I have built turret boards with components pressure fitted tight enough so I could simply swap components within seconds . Just like any activity ,when you accumulate enough listening experience you will begin to hear and feel what others can’t (or won’t lol) .
Like many others on the forum , I will literally nitpick on a single component in a single position , until the right balance of value and composition are obtained to fine tune the response just right. People go on and on about someone like Dumble and their particularity when it came to part selection and dialing in an amplifier , or good ol Ken fisher who preferred red wire irradiated wire or whatever , and we clearly hear the results of their choices as something worth a small fortune , but somehow we can’t take them seriously with they claim to hear . Seems kinda arrogant .
I digress . As implied already:
last time I checked the majority of amps everyone knows, loves, and copies as the go to standard for guitar tone are essentially amps built around 50 years ago with “inferior parts” …
Marshall circuitry utilizing piher vs iskra cf alone is enough to create two camps . Not that I recommend it , but like I already said , go rip out all those old inferior parts from that vintage power supply with a bunch of modern cement wirewound whatever and it’s a different ballgame . If you can do that and not feel or hear a difference…i have said enough



You might be interested in reading about logical fallacies. Here’s a good list:WhopperPlate wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 2:03 pm Here’s the thing with mf s CF vs Cc vs ww vs ect ect …
I don’t know if you’re familiar with it or not, but you’re presenting one variation of the “Golden Ears” theory from the heyday of the super-hi-fi era. That theory said that (1) there are obviously detectable differences in the tone of certain components and that (2) anyone questioning this was clearly deficient in hearing, and possibly intelligence.Here’s the thing with mf s CF vs Cc vs ww vs ect ect …
If you can build an entire amp with metal film resistors and not hear a difference between cf … let alone between brands of resistors …well I wouldn’t want you building me an amplifier that’s for sure …I have never understood why anyone would wave that banner
 
 Hmmm. That’s kind of a special case of people being able to argue back and forth about >anything< at all, real or not. Best example? The internet.People can argue back and forth whether they can measure it on a scope or not… what do your ears hear?
Everyone? Really? Isn’t this an example of Faulty Generalization? (see logical fallacies link)Everyone acts like they need the indisputable scientific proof in front of their faces on paper with a scholastic seal of approval before they will believe their own two ears.
The problem with that is that each time you select a part, or swap it, you know by doing that you have changed something. There is an inherent bias in humans to think that by changing something in the quest of improving it that they actually have improved it. I have chased – and measured – the tone dragon for decades, as well as listening to live performances, recorded music, and amps under test for quite some time as well. I mixed in technical testing designed to find where the dragon’s claws gripped. I can tell you with some personal experience and with the benefit of some formal testing, not everyone hears the same thing.Me? I have essentially rebuilt entire amps from one resistor brand to the next several times over. Growing up as a young performing musician with an electronic shop and plenty of spare time to tinker away I chased the tone dragon for years on end . I have built turret boards with components pressure fitted tight enough so I could simply swap components within seconds . Just like any activity ,when you accumulate enough listening experience you will begin to hear and feel what others can’t (or won’t lol) .
So, what you’re saying is that anyone who has a different opinion is kinda arrogant?Like many others on the forum , I will literally nitpick on a single component in a single position , until the right balance of value and composition are obtained to fine tune the response just right. People go on and on about someone like Dumble and their particularity when it came to part selection and dialing in an amplifier , or good ol Ken fisher who preferred red wire irradiated wire or whatever , and we clearly hear the results of their choices as something worth a small fortune , but somehow we can’t take them seriously with they claim to hear . Seems kinda arrogant .
See ad hominem, appeal to authority, appeal to consequences, argumentum ad pupulum, and quite likely that Texas sharpshooter fallacy.I digress . As implied already:
neskor wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 2:16 am and then you plug your guitar to Fender Twin from '64 populated with CC and you are in heaven
last time I checked the majority of amps everyone knows, loves, and copies as the go to standard for guitar tone are essentially amps built around 50 years ago with “inferior parts” …
I would be very, very interested in the results of a well designed listening test where you or someone else tried to detect a cement resistor swap for older parts in a vintage power supply, let alone if you could detect a positive difference, a negative difference, or no difference in amp sound when you do not see what is being swapped or not. It is >possible< that you could do this perfectly. But I’ve seen the results of tests where reputed Golden Ears were embarassed by their performance on such tests on parts in the signal chain, let alone the power supply.Marshall circuitry utilizing piher vs iskra cf alone is enough to create two camps . Not that I recommend it , but like I already said , go rip out all those old inferior parts from that vintage power supply with a bunch of modern cement wirewound whatever and it’s a different ballgame .
… and a final ad hominem.If you can do that and not feel or hear a difference…i have said enough
Thank you for your service.pompeiisneaks wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 5:38 pm
1. Some people can hear significantly better than the vast majority of the population. I believe this is true and could account for a small part of this. Scientifically it's been proven some people's hearing is way better. My nephew had to get hearing aids to do the opposite of what hearing aids do... mute sounds. Normal everyday sounds hurt his ears and gave him headaches. My wife's hearing is probably 10 times better than mine, but that's partly due to me being in the infantry and in a war in Iraq so I've lost a LOT
 
 I would be a fool to disregard this effect. Cmon, who isnt guilty of turning a knob that did nothing and heard something ? While I don’t want to go into any specific subject matter which I hold no experience with, I will say I am not quick to disregard an effect , and ironically what the HIFI guys hear as amazing ime is less spectacular then they themselves imagine.pompeiisneaks wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 5:38 pm
2. People often want to believe something, and convince themselves it is true. Called confirmation bias. An example I find for this are audiophile cables. They make gold plated, cryogenically treated, directional cables (i.e. electrons flow more 'musically' the way they point out on the damn things). But someone once did a double blind test ( and then someone more recently repeated this and was successful at reproving this) that they couldn't tell the difference in the audio sound between these types of horrifically expensive speaker cables and metal coat hangars as the speaker connects...
I wouldn’t hold it against you if told me I was full of myself and BSpompeiisneaks wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 5:38 pm
I feel more often than not the chance someone falls into 1 is pretty small. I'm not saying you're not one of them. You probably are.
Also, I could be 100% wrong, but sadly like R.G. was saying this is pretty hard to prove, because some of this is subjective, as well as difficult to prove.
 
 I recall that as well. I wouldn’t be quick to discount Merlin’s testimonials .pompeiisneaks wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 5:38 pm
I do remember reading in pretty heavy detail in merlin's book that he mentioned that carbon films have been proven to create some of the harmonics that guitar amps 'like' and metal film can feel 'sterile' and too clean for many... I don't know that I agree, but I have stuck mostly to carbon films myself on purpose due to the data he had there.
This is called hyperbole
 
 To dismiss everyone’s opinion as negligible in spite of their renowned experience and reputation is potentially pretty arrogant . Naive even.
Whereas I completely agree about the subjective nature of hearing (as I just addressed this in my last reply before I saw your response), I often see this argument to unfairly dismiss the majority of cork sniffing entirely , obviously including resistor preference . There’s only so many times you can swap the same two resistors back and forth and not begin to hear more than the next . It’s like a musician with ear training . Most people can’t extrapolate the amount of data from music as say a classically trained virtuoso concert violinist , and I don’t argue whether or not I prefer the sound of a Stradivarius. They just sound good. I am not someone who’s going to say you can’t build a modern world class violin… but like iskra and Daly caps, old growth Italian spruce ain’t around much .R.G. wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 7:34 pm
I don’t know if you’re familiar with it or not, but you’re presenting one variation of the “Golden Ears” theory from the heyday of the super-hi-fi era. That theory said that (1) there are obviously detectable differences in the tone of certain components and that (2) anyone questioning this was clearly deficient in hearing, and possibly intelligence.
Open minded techies will acknowledge that there are things that the instruments can't detect yet, so chasing ever-more-subtle component differences could always be denied by the Golden-Ears crowd. In fact, some of the Golden-Ears arguments involved that components would be changed by tampering with them in any way, eventually down to the ...intent... to test them.
The Golden Ears theory was discredited when the technicians quit testing components and started testing the owners of Golden Ears. In tests designed to remove all possible hints of swapped versus not swapped components, possessors of Golden Ears did >worse< than random guessing would predict. After a few of these tests being made public, the hifi Golden Ears started refusing to participate in any more of them because they just embarassed themselves.
Hearing happens in the human mind, not in the ear, and that the human mind makes things up to suit what it expects. Eyewitness (and ear-witness) testimony is notoriously unreliable.
I completely agree that you hear differences. You absolutely do, and this reinforces your faith every time you test yourself or deal with anyone who holds a similar faith. But can you make the same determination purely by ear? With no pre-knowledge of the parts being changed/not-changed during the test? If it’s so obviously hear-able, it stands to reason that it should be detectable ONLY by ear, right?
This seems to me to be a variant of the Psychologist’s Fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychologist%27s_fallacy
ears.
My response got cut off . Next replyR.G. wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 7:34 pm
The problem with that is that each time you select a part, or swap it, you know by doing that you have changed something. There is an inherent bias in humans to think that by changing something in the quest of improving it that they actually have improved it. I have chased – and measured – the tone dragon for decades, as well as listening to live performances, recorded music, and amps under test for quite some time as well. I mixed in technical testing designed to find where the dragon’s claws gripped. I can tell you with some personal experience and with the benefit of some formal testing, not everyone hears the same thing.
Personally, components improving the tone within a particular component arrangement definitely is about 1 in 5 cases . I dislike most of what I have tried in any given context . An iskra or a piher magic unobtsnium part mixed in more often than not sounds bad to myself . It’s the sun if the partsR.G. wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 7:34 pm
The problem with that is that each time you select a part, or swap it, you know by doing that you have changed something. There is an inherent bias in humans to think that by changing something in the quest of improving it that they actually have improved it. I have chased – and measured – the tone dragon for decades, as well as listening to live performances, recorded music, and amps under test for quite some time as well. I mixed in technical testing designed to find where the dragon’s claws gripped. I can tell you with some personal experience and with the benefit of some formal testing, not everyone hears the same thing.
R.G. wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 7:34 pm
I would be very, very interested in the results of a well designed listening test where you or someone else tried to detect a cement resistor swap for older parts in a vintage power supply, let alone if you could detect a positive difference, a negative difference, or no difference in amp sound when you do not see what is being swapped or not. It is >possible< that you could do this perfectly. But I’ve seen the results of tests where reputed Golden Ears were embarassed by their performance on such tests on parts in the signal chain, let alone the power supply.
I am aware ! If you are on the internet and aren’t aware …

What do you use instead that sounds less harsh. Not doubting you. I wanna hear for myself.WhopperPlate wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 9:23 pm Cement resistors on the power tube screens are about the easiest easy for me to hear…next to f&t caps
No tearing down intended, just objectivity. When you do this, remember that it's not possible for one person to do a really objective test of modifications they're making.WhopperPlate wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 9:23 pm I would be glad to have the opportunity to prove how full of crap I am !lol in fact I was thinking when I return from my trip out of town and get back to my shop I would make a video swapping resistors in my recent build to give you all some extra ammunition to tear me down with ! Should be fun to hear and debate !
Obviously I wouldn’t be testing myself , as you already indicated is pointless to any degree . What I would do is simply alligator clip in close tolerance resistors of different composition and brand within a single position and record them . Nothing fancy . What do you hear ? That’s it . I can tell you what I hear and feel and you can reference that against the limited data coming from the audio clip . Nothing designed to write your college thesis around, just something to give us all something to become more or less stubborn in our confirmation biasR.G. wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 10:11 pmNo tearing down intended, just objectivity. When you do this, remember that it's not possible for one person to do a really objective test of modifications they're making.WhopperPlate wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 9:23 pm I would be glad to have the opportunity to prove how full of crap I am !lol in fact I was thinking when I return from my trip out of town and get back to my shop I would make a video swapping resistors in my recent build to give you all some extra ammunition to tear me down with ! Should be fun to hear and debate !
This is the whole point of a double blind test. The person answering can have no hints of what, if anything, has been changed.
For reference on that issue, you might like to read about Clever Hans, the horse. Hans the horse amazed people by being able to correctly answer questions in math by clopping his hoof on the ground the right number of times.
Scientists were amazed - until a few of them noticed that Hans could not give correct answers if his owner wasn't nearby, and even then Hans could not not correctly answer questions that his owner could not correctly answer. Hans was pawing the ground until his owner, quite unknowingly, gave some indication of the right answer.
The owner had trained Hans in math, completely unaware that it was his own actions that told Hans when to quit pawing.
We are all oblivious to our own built in biases. They can be subtle beyond belief. Making a video of yourself or someone else changing parts in the pursuit of better or worse sound is substantially impossible to do fairly. There are whole college courses in "design of experiments" specifically intended to do testing while excluding unconscious biases.
A fairer and more believable test might be something like having a fixed camera (not a person keeping track to eliminate them unknowingly providing information) record your answers to "is it better, worse, or the same?" upon hearing the same musical sample played through the same amp with either one component changed, or not changed at all, at regular intervals in a setup where you can't see or hear the parts being swapped or not, and where the parties doing the swaps, nor tell actual from no-change by the time taken, the smell of the soldering iron(s) or the dimming of the lights, that kind of thing.
This is a test of the ability of the person claiming to perceive differences to do so accurately and reliability. If the differences are as obvious as the magic-parts people hold, getting 100% correct answers should be easy. If this kind of test does not prove that the person can reliably and accurately demonstrate their discrimination, there's really very little reason to go down the path of ever-more-finely testing components to find out what is actually, really, and provably different about the components. So while such a video might be good for getting clicks on youtube, it's not much good for anything else. If the person's perception is accurate and repeatable, there is then something to look for. With your long experience with pro audio/sound people and making fun of the Golden Ears, you should be familiar with the concept.
This is the kind of thing that broke the Golden Ear mythos. Frankly, any video showing a testing setup less rigorous about excluding conscious and unconscious biases doesn't prove anything, and only serves as fuel for the yes-they-do-no-they-don't fires without proving or disproving anything. I suggest that you not bother with videoing something less rigorous. But I really, really would like to see the video of a fair, double-blind test.
