(Electro-Harmonix even went so far as to add a purely cosmetic LED to some pedals, oriented to shine up through the glass bottle to reassure players that their “tube tone” was smokin’ hot.) The attitude was so prevalent that manufacturers would often employ tubes in stompboxes in ways that had no audible effect, successfully duping many tubaholic guitarists. Like sulphuric acid, digital distortion eats through almost anything, so it can be a great choice for dense passages of aggressive music. (“Only tubes produce desirable even-order harmonics.”) (“Only tubes sound warm and musical.”) Sometimes it was quasi-scientific. (“Nothing else has that feeling.”) Sometimes it was aesthetic. Sometimes it was expressed in emotional terms. As a young guitarist I was told over and over that only tube distortion mattered. But guitarists of my generation were reared on tube dogma. Take tubes and distortion, for example.Īre Tubes for Rubes? No-it’s just a rhyme, silly! Tubes are awesome. I’m simply suggesting that it’s good to question our analog assumptions. Once you get an inkling of its power, you start wondering whether many aspects of traditional analog tone are popular because they’re great, or because they’re traditional.īoth, obviously. I flashed on that kindergarten Gnosticism decades later when I started learning about digital audio. Sure, we need A, B, and C to communicate, but we can dream in Yuzz, Fuddle, and Zatz. I loved its premise that the alphabet could extend past the letter Z, and that only our lack of imagination confines us to the usual 26 characters.
Seuss’s bestsellers, but it was my childhood fave.
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