Tube Rectifier vs Solid-State Rectifier - What's the difference? 

I found in the world of stereo tube amplification: tube rectification is used when the amp's goal is to sound as warm and romantic as possible. The ss rectification included in modern gear gives the amp a bit more focus and punch.

Built my first tube recrifier, i’ll never go back. Soft start and way smoother crunch. Just perfect

Howdy. Nice. Another advantage of tube rectification is the soft charge up of the anode voltage. Using SS there is a nasty current rush just after switch on. There are two rushes happening at the same time. Firstly the transformer will gobble a lot of current until it is phased in. Phasing in is that the magnetization has shifted 90 degrees. Secondly the capacitor bank will draw heavy current when charging. With tube rectification there is only the phasing in rush. Regards.

Thankyou for posting this! Excellent demonstration, the only video I could find A/B-ing the 2. The tube definitely has a rather more burbling quality, very noticeable here on the sustained dirty chords, not only on the attack portion.. I had always imagined it was just an initial sag and then recovering at a certain rate after the high current transient, but this shows that the rectifier is constantly varying output during the waveform to a higher degree than I previously realised, and is partly responsible for a lot of the character that I like! Enlightening. Thankyou again.

That's just awesome ! Heck I'm 100% deaf in my left ear and the tubes rock on the clear notes ! But i could hardly tell the difference when it got dirty ! That would be an awesome feature on an amp ! Kudos !!!

Thanks, I learned a lot from this video. Tube has more tonal character for clean playing, but SS has great immediacy for distortion.

Thanks for the video. Definitely hear the difference. The solid state rectifier was too much "in your face" type of sound. Prefer the tube rectifiers. Love sag in an amp.

Great video!

Interesting. Thanks for the video.

Great demo! very cool to hear it A/B with the same amp and speaker... Solid state has a bit more "bite" but both sound great... I could see this being a nice touch when tracking studio work, or getting inspiration while working out solos and the like.

Thanks. Very helpful explanation. I have a Mesa Boogie Stiletto Ace, which is 50 watts and allows you to choose between Tube and Solid State rectification. I go back and forth. Sometimes one is preferable over the other. With EL-34's, I probably prefer solid state.

Great video man. I have both ss and tube amps. I'll take my tube amp over my ss anytime. Tube amps have a more natural sustain clean or dirty, the ss when holding a sustained chord breaks and cracks before the notes die out at the end.

People do these comparisons all the time. Did you take into consideration that the tube rectifier looses up to 50v voltage at the anodes of the output tubes? So what is it that you hear - The tube rectifier or the lower voltage?

Excellent video ! But what happens when the 120v is too much for the newer rectifier tubes and the arc? The you put two solid state diodes across the pins of the rectifier socket to prevent the current from changing directions? I'm assuming the amp will still only be as fast as the tube ? Would the voltage and ripples be half way between the two ?

very little difference....thanks for the idea..👍👍👍

BIG Difference . Shrill solid state vs Smooth and articulate tubes 💫 Now Rectifier great for heavy rethemes Not Leads . Treble is Trouble !

Should have done several double blind tests so that YOU the player didn't know which was which and THEN see if what you "heard" matched what was installed. Would have been easy to have had someone else switch out or not switch out the rectifiers and then try maybe 5 or 10 trials and keep score. Expectation bias could have been a factor here or not. I do know that people say the low end of a tube rectifier amp has sag. Was that evident?

Interesting experiment. But listening with my Bluetooth earpiece I could not tell the difference. Maybe in person I could. Thanks for posting.

the neck pup on the SS rectifier sounds really balanced.

Very stark in 60’s Ampeg Rocket vs Reverberocket. Haven’t looked at the circuit but ver different sounds. Great clear explanation.

Great video, much needed. What type of Valve was used GZ-34 or something else? Small combos can sound "Juicier" at louder volume and big amps(Fender Twin) work amazingly well with solid state rectification. I used a 15watt 1x10" combo with a valve rectifier and compared to the other Guitarists marshall 100 superlead it sounded so warm and sustainy that he wanted to buy my little 15watter...I said "nah" he wept, only coz I was able to turn my amp up to nearly full and got it cooking while his 100W could'nt be used past 3 volume and that made it sound "Spikey". Valve or solid state are both useful as long as they work and are reliable.Your technical explanation was 10/10!

Damn it, I prefer the tube one (but my amp has ss.) It's more noticeable on cleans. I guess because the distortion is already adding sag/compression.

My Mesa Dual lets you switch. To my ears tube is better for classic rock and blues overdrive, diode is better for high gain. The difference is noticeable when you are standing in front of the amp.

The only important difference is that with tube rectif you will never get AC into circuit( if tube goes off any current stops) if diode is damaged it is not so good

I think that it's probably having more of an effect on the player's feel than what someone in the audience is hearing.

Дуже дякую вам за зрівняння 👍🙂 Мені також подобається більше блок живлення на кінотроні чим на твердо ільних діодах. Кінотрон додає соковитості в звук на кранчі, чистому. На дісторшині краще діодний міст.

Well this two devices have diffrente electric voltage drops .So if you have not re-biased the amp ..The voltages will be different

there are 4 diodes in a solid-state full-wave bridge rectifier, not 2.

The differences are so subtle that you will never notice them on a stage playing with a band. In that case, I would always go with the SS rectifier, as they are more reliable. However, it should be pointed out that if you change your rectifier tube out for a SS version you will almost certainly increase the voltages supplied to the plate etc. of your tubes. Be careful. Don't cook your tubes. On my Vox AC30 CC2, the GZ34 puts out 352VDC with the amp running idle. With the SS rectifier, 374VDC. Way too hot IMO. Amps where the ability to switch in/out an SS rectifier is designed into the amp itself will be just fine, but be careful when swapping your tube rectifier out of your Vox, Fender, Marshall amp etc.

No I couldn't hear The Difference at all Really and it's you should be able to because I have played a lot of old Transistor amps and I got Really Into tube amplifiers and I've played all sorts of news of bunch of different types of power tubes and it creates a lot of different sound even though they say it's just a pre amp tubes that shape the sound and it's b******* because even EL84 like a box doesn't sound anywhere near like EL34 which is Marshall. I played a lot of bands but they're really really old harmony brand 30382 rectify amp just 1 part 2 born premium 2 and 1 direct to fire 2 but it's just a few small components cause 1962 they didn't have circuit boards and all that garbage and when you open up it was really genius looking on the inside I've never seen anything quite like it but those things get consistent tons and sound quality where is I'm looking at spenders and other brand amplifiers are getting 8 and 9's at their best in song quality even my offenders super 60 which is one of the most liked amps out there because it's got 6L6 tubes which is rare for a fender . Most splendor tube stuff I've been seeing over the years this EL84 which I really don't care for and then there is the 6V6 and I really don't care for those either I guess there's a Castillo ray Vaughan type of blues type amp I'm got KT88 which are awesome but maybe a little too much for some people cause that's what the most didoordered like Marshall's and stuff that I've seen you don't see a lot of those around but it's like the guy from slayer or another really heavy bands used KT88I. I used 6L6 amplifiers The most, a lot of brands use it 11:26 boogie being one of the best really great. American sound. . It's very much like the EL34 is in Marshall those are the best sounds I think but little boutique amps sometimes they could make a yo 84 type power tube so good if you've got the right components and like the 2 rectifier ant pie head nobody is using what I consider roll 2 band fires you guys are doing solid State versus tube but yet you guys aren't getting the stuff out of it I get out of it I have taken a couple different types of analog distortions and I've cranked the sand up the song exactly like Norman green bomb spirit and Sky with session in the same amount of sag it's like a truly crazy psychedelic sound I've never knew anybody doing that I've seen a bunch of people playing Santana and I'm all sorts of cool stuff in these boutique amps I'm not seeing any of that kind of smoothness and then these videos and I was able to pull off in indigoted Devita by Iron Butterfly and a whole lot of other sounds that you can't get out of a guitar amplifier anymore. All these so-called newer tube amplifiers are not tubed to me they just sound like too transistor like ever since Steve I had and then I got stolen my 1962 harmony 303 a which harmony is a cheaper brand of back then generic stuff was still good because they didn't have the circuit boards and achieve components from China get equipment like the look almost all the batteries that take 9 V are garbage except for the first ones from the 1960s like the Russian bigmouth get here that on tons of recordings tons and tons of recordings through the 60s and then up again up through the 80s and 90s nineties had a huge reassurance surgeons though it's a band's like Bush and smash and pumpkins and also to them using Russian bigmouth instead of the distortion that comes on the amplifier which is f****** amazing on its own. Sadly they're still promoting and selling Marshall's transistor c*** letting people think that they could buy a martial stack for cheaper and it's really good on like a martial stack no sorry but transistors s*** is f****** garbage and you sit there and play it in a room by yourself without distractions you hear WHY people are willing to spend thousands of dollars for a Tube amplifier instead of transistor garbage that a lot of a started off with. This is like the third video I've seen today and it's still is it's not showing enough of the difference and this is the person who's owned these and I know what I'm a trip but I was getting that alarm and green bomb tone I just used an old analog boss turbo overdrive that weighs like 20 pounds and I crank that going into the amp I turned up all the knobs my volume knob turned up all the knobs on the pedal all the knobs on the app with the exception of volume just to use that the control of the volume and it was insane troopy sagginess nerves also all sorts of crazy other tones coming through there too that sounded familiar to me like psychedelic stuff futuristic stuff a little bit like Rock and roll fantasy by bad company is It's a Synthesizer guitar From the 70s used on that song and it's got a lot that analog crazy distortion sound . So I was able to whip the sag around just like that just unbelievable trippy and then I was able to twist the pedal around to do some other stuff and I was able to get the sound from in the gotta Devito by Iron Butterfly which is like a f****** buzz saw one of the solos he does in that song is amazing it sounds demotic sometimes you can't tell guitar what it is but yet psychiatrist doing some amazing ship that demox owned is solo people used to take acid and listen to that song it's supposed to be people to kill themselves and stuff the long 18 Minute version of Iron Butterfly and their song indegattadavida. is very demonic and very Powerful. . That's the first psychedelic and also the first metal sound there wasn't much dark metal type music ever before that the kink's being like going to talk back to using power chords at that time.

I couldn't hear much difference but I'm listening with cheap headphones on my phone so that probably doesn't count. 😂 Also I suspect the difference would be more pronounced at higher output where more current is drawn. I'm a retired engineer and I build tube amps for fun. I've been using solid state rectifiers but now I'm gonna try a tube. Thanks for the inspiration!

Solid State rectification is for crayon eaters

This is all interesting, but a power rectifier has nothing to do with sound. Not only that, no one here would be able to identify a good tube amp over a solid state amp if they weren't told which was which.

These comments kill me. No matter how ac is rectified, as long as it’s smoothed, there is no tonal difference at all. Because the DC is the same. Difference? Amp manufactures manipulate the circuits to sell you shit. End of story.

Cut the intro down for God's sake. Sounds like a day at Guitar Center. 😂

Who would ever listen to this clown show?????