Tube Rectifiers - Does anyone care

[letsgocoyote]

do you even care if your amp has a tube rectifier or not?

[Gunner Recall]

Nope. I actually prefer SS.

[metalmariachi]

SS rectifiers are a tighter, have more clean head room and the bottom doesn't get mushy..

With the tube you have sag and more compression when cranked.
And a looser feel when playing.

I like both. In the tube category, nothing records bass like a B-15 and
with SS rectifiers nothing does live like A V4-B or SVT.

Then you have Mesa with ss, single and dual tube rectifiers all in the same amp.

MM

[androidpopjr]

Sunn Beta Lead. If you can find one it will make you into some weird Sunn SS loving freak. They make amazing tubes as well but this amp is just the bee's knees.

[matterday]

do you even care if your amp has a tube rectifier or not?

not really

[V0id]

do you even care if your amp has a tube rectifier or not?

I don't even know what those fuckers are

[smile_man]

Mellowtone amp?

[letsgocoyote]

All the few tube amps I've ever owned have had tube rectifiers. So I guess I never noticed their effect or not. From a purist standpoint a tube rectifier is a must I think, but then I don't no if I am a purist.
For those unaware, the rectifier, whether it is a tube (5y3, 5ar4/gz34, etc) or solid state (diodes), is part of the power supply, and depending on the power transformer provides certain voltages to the other tubes in the amp.
Tube rectifiers have 'voltage drop', which basically means when you smack the strings it drops voltage for a moment, and depending on the tube, such as a 5y3 rec, you llose about 50 volts to the tubes for a moment, which makes a natural compression effect, giving you bloom/sustain blah blah blah corksniffer. small combos usually have 5y3 rectifiers with 6v6 tubes, higher power combos with 6L6 or el34 might have a 5ar4 rectifier which has less voltage drop and can pump more juice to the more powerful tubes. large amps like a twin reverb or many bass amps have a solid state rectifier, sold state provides NO voltage drop (well tchnically they do but its under a volt).

if someone wants to explain it better feel free, im still pouring over all these tube books i got so i may have made a technical mistake.

right now i am building a tine 3watt combo with a solid state rectifier.

after that I plan on building a 10-15 watt single ended 6L6 head with either a brownface inspired (i like the brownface tonestack sound which is in the hi five deluxe) or a silvertone 1481 (awesome 5watt amp!) inspired preamp.

im still trying to decide on a rectifier though. i think i might need to use a 5ar4 rectifier for the 6L6, but they say the voltage drop for a 5ar4 isnt far off from solid state... and so I am leaning towards solid state for the following reasons:

1. tighter sound with more power/headroom
2. cheaper - solid state makes it cheaper because you need a less powerful transformer (cheaper) and you dont need a filament winding for a tube rectifier (cheaper)

[metalmariachi]

Very good explanation.

SS rectifiers also supply a higher voltage than a tube rectifier, and a 5AR4 supplies higher than a 5Y4. roughly 1.4 x the supply voltage for SS and 1.2 x for a 5Y3.

Ok transformer supples 300v AC, the SS will give you 420v DC,
5Y3 around 360 V DC and 5AR4 roughly 400 V DC

With a 15 watt single 6L6 you could use a 5Y3 or a 5U4 for more sag than a 5AR4 (GZ34).
I am guessing you're going cathode bias.
Just have to make sure you have 3 amps available from your power tx for the filaments of the 5U4. There are also tons of NOS 4W4 etc rectifiers out there that draw 3 watts and aren't in big demand with the tone purists.

The 18 watt marshal builders are using the 6CA4 rectifier which gives very nice results.
I did find that using an old Hammond organ transformer with the rectifier and tube filaments from the same tap gave a rawer more open sound than the newer transformers with separate taps.

I love the brown Fenders, especially the tremolo super complicated phase inversion signal splitting but sounds godly.

I built a 4 6V6 amp that uses 1 5Y3 as the rectifier, basically the brown Princeton circuit with a Concert/Super etc tone stack. The combination of that tone stack, the cathodyne phase inverter and lower voltages makes for a beautiful sparkling clean and pretty much loves every pedal thrown at it.

MM

[Brettski]

The tube rectifiers in my Mesa Triple sound fantastic. Rest assured, it's punchy and tight as anything when you tweak the amp properly. It sounds badass on the SS setting too. I guess that's the best one, the one that let's you choose.