[Trevor]

On 14/02/2019 2:26 am, Scott Dorsey wrote:
In article , Trevor wrote:
On 12/02/2019 10:31 am, geoff wrote:
So there is no truth in the old adage that distortion products of
over-driven valves are of predominantly even order harmonics which are
pleasing to the ear, as opposed to the predominantly odd-order harmonics
that resulting from the distortion from over-driving solid-state
devices, which are considered unpleasantÂÂ* ?

The truth is that for many decades there has been *NO* reason to
overdrive a solid state amp so the question is moot. However there are
still plenty of people who like the distortion from valve amps,
especially guitarists. As an *effect* it will always have a place it seems.

It's not necessarily moot in some cases... because there are cases where
people are going to inadvertently overload things and it's important that
they either don't sound too bad when overloaded, or that they sound so bad
that it's an immediate wake-up call to the operator. Mike preamps in live
sound consoles are a great example.

But I was talking about valve Vs SS amps, and the fact is for the same
money or less you buy a SS amp with ten times the power and the question
of overloading it *IS* moot compared to the valve amp with 1/10th the
power! You *COULD* overload the SS amp of course, but then you are
definitely NOT comparing the power output to a valve amp with ANY amount
of, or type of, distortion!
Sadly however there are actually people for whom the distortion caused
by overloaded SS amps is not a wake-up call. :-(