[HAM] Beefy Phat.

[David Anderson]

Sometimes failing electronics can cause phatness. As tubes age, for example, often the first thing to go is their high-end. And as their emission drops, it gets easier to drive them into distortion, which can give you extra harmonics. I gave some weak, but functional 12AX7s I had to a guitar-player friend of mine. He loves them when he wants more triode distortion. 

The health of the power supply capacitors is an often-overlooked factor in why one example of the same circuit sounds different from another. I had a vintage hi-fi preamp whose tonal balance was all out of kilter--sounded thin and harsh. It turned out to be an electrolytic in the power supply that was not leaking and not causing excessive hum (the other PS sections seem to have done enough filtering). The nastiness only went away when it was removed from the circuit.

On the other hand, sometimes you can clean up a circuit too much when doing a repair. I had one guy who brought me a Rhodes to repair and said I was the third person he'd brought it to. Nobody could fix a bad buzz it had. I found a bad solder joint in the grounding system and fixed it. Thing is, then he complained a little that it had lost some of the "bite" it had, which was distortion coming from that bad solder joint. I had to explain to him that I couldn't fix the problem and keep the side effect he liked. I suggested a little mild distortion from a distortion pedal which he tried and was happy with.

David 
-----Original Message-----
>From: Jordan Kersten <jordankersten at hotmail.com>
>Sent: Jan 30, 2008 1:17 PM
>To: The Hammond Forum <hammond at zeni.net>
>Subject: Re: [HAM] Beefy Phat.
>
>
>Ah, yes! Failing electronics.   My questions is, what components shall I suspect to drag down by beef!?