

We’ll look at old-school combos, inspired by the tones that helped launch the electric guitar into the pop-cultural firmament. This list has amplifiers from both camps. Looking at the market today, it follows similar trends to those that we see in the design of electric guitars, delay pedals and reverbs – a sort of Janus-faced evolution in which classic models are revised and reissued, and all-new models augment present-day design paradigms with high-tech technology. If part of the argument for digital alternatives is that “they’re just like a real tube amplifier,” then that, in a sense, validates the tube amp design concept.įurthermore, tube amplifiers are evolving.

Maybe there should be no mystery in this, considering that digital units often exhaust most of their DSP power in trying to recreate what the tube amplifier does as a matter of course.
