Types of Guitar Amplifiers

This is the traditional guitar amplifier. Purists will say it's the only guitar amplifier worth having. Up until the late 90s, they were probably right.

A guitar amplifier with valves (also known as tubes) has a nice warm tone. They're heavy, need regular (but not too often) maintenance and more expensive than solid-state amps.

There are more differences, you could have a look at my other lens on Tube or Transistor Amplifiers

By the way 60W of tube power will seem a lot louder than 60W of transistors. Also different manufacturers measure the power rating at different points in the signal chain. So use the power ratings as a guide only and remember your ears are the best measuring instrument (at a comfortable and safe distance) for deciding how loud the amp will be when playing with others.

With the advent of electronics came the transistor and the transistor amplifier circuit. These opened up lots of opportunities for reducing the price of guitar amplifiers. The power requirements for transistor amplifiers (also known as solid-state amplifiers) are less than for tube amps so a lot of the other components (e.g. transformers) can also be reduced in scale. This means that the production costs can be lower and the the whole weight of the amp is less. Add printed circuit boards to the list of ingredients and the recipe for building an amp becomes a lot easier to replicate on a larger scale.

They tend to have cleaner sounds but don't have the warm overdrive that tube amps can provide.

Take a look at Tube or Transistor Amplifiers for more information.

I don't know which were the first brand to introduce this type of amplifier, but Marshall definitely captured the initial market with their AVT valvestate range of amplifiers.

These are hybrid amplifiers, in between pure tube and pure solid-state amplifiers. From a design perspective, they are a compromise, inheriting the advantages and disadvantages of both parent designs.

So you gain:

• lower price


• better tone than solid-state


• lower weight

You still have:

• no power amp saturation tone


• printed circuit boards, so these are more difficult to repair by your local amp tech

The opposite type of hybrid to Type 3 above. This uses a transistor/PCB-based preamp and a tube power amp. I always thought that the pre-amp was more integral to the tone, so you'd want the best components there, right? Makes sense to have a tube pre-amp then. However, then I played some of this type of hybrid and I actually prefer them to Type 3.

Vox are the main manufacturers of this type of amp and they bring in modelling aspects which we'll get to below.

I was going to list modelling as type 5 and 6 but in fact you can modelling varieties of all the amplifier types above.

Digital modelling is the most famous. Almost every major brand amplifier has at least one digital modelling amplifier in their range. Some brands, such as Line6 specialise in only providing digital modelling products.

The aim of modelling is to give the guitarist a tonal palette that they wouldn't have access to with just one amp. With your one modelling amp, you could emulate a Fender Twin, then change to a Boogie MkII or a Marshall JCM900. The idea being that instead of carting around 17 amps each for their own tone, you have one box and emulate the 17 amps. And some of those amps are expensive and way beyond the standard guitarist.

There are a lot of people who are just plain against digital modelling. Maybe they tried one of the earlier models (they were pretty bad), maybe they're opinionated or maybe they're actually right. When listening to the arguments, you have to separate out the following points:

1. How closely does the tone relates to the original emulated amp


2. How close is your recording to the one with the original emulated amp


3. How closely does the interaction relate to the original emulated amp

Most people confuse the above points. It's worth separating them since as of today, digital modelling lacks in point (3) above. It's pretty much got points (1) and (2) covered and indeed actually offers a lot of advantages over the original amplifers.

As for point (2), it's about how the guitarist interacts with the modelling amp. If the guitarist wants a pinch harmonic, then they may have to play differently with the emulation than they would with the original amp. Similarly, the emulations often respond differently to the dynamics of the guitarist's playing.

Before digital modelling, some manufacturers were promoting analogue/analog modelling. Tech21 were leaders in this field and by flicking a switch, you could change between British, California and Tweed amplifiers. The benefit of these is that there's little to go wrong. Many guitarists swear by the Sansamp as being a great backup, easy to fit in a bag and easy to plug in when necessary.

Not an amp in itself, but there are now a number of software applications for emulating amplifiers, speaker and microphone configurations. You'll need a computer, a host programme (some of the applications come with their own), an audio interface and speakers or headphones. These are useful for recording guitars or just writing organisations.

These are great for recording a clean guitar signal so you can then tweak it to meet what you want.

Beware, it's often a case of the simpler the better. You can easily spend more time playing with the different configurations than you will with playing guitar or mixing the recording.