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What year did tube lose to SS

There was a major paradigm shift when CD became the media of choice I think it happened in 1982. All of sudden I went to the recprd stores and found CDs instead.
Similarly although I was too young to remember first hand, there had to be a year that saw the golden era of HI FI all tubed mostly stereo gave way to Transistor or Solid State. Please take a guess. I have no statistic but I think it was 1964. Was that The year when more SS amps were produced than tubed amps?
mechans
jyprez's avatar
jyprez
241 posts
 

douglas_schroeder

My point is that the tube vs SS issue has nothing to do with the digital vs analog question. Both tube a ss amplifiers can be built as class A A/B or even D. This is a digital vs analog question, not a tube vs. SS one.

My post was simply to clarify this because the original post starts out talking about the introduction of digital media but then ends by talking about the shift from tube to SS.

Tube can be very good and I have hand built several tube amps. They sound very nice but they still can measure up (if you actually do the fourier analysis of the frequency response characteristics) with the best SS amps. Distortion can be pleasing to the ear but it is still distortion.

mechans OP
3,048 posts
 
The digital media sentence was an example of a major industry shift.  I remember as a kid that we had Sherwood tube equipment, but by the time the mid 60s had gone by tube gear was not what most HiFi shops were offering.  Until fairly recently there were only a few brands of tube gear available (during the 70s and 80s, 90s). It was a question asking when people remembered that shift from tube to SS.  It was not a question about digital vs analog. Almost all of my current gear is tube BTW.
wolf_garcia
6,794 posts
 
It's been interesting to see during my 5 decades plus long career as a pro guitar player how SS stuff attempted to get into the guitar amp market. Weird Fender stuff, Gibson "Lab" series amps (actually one of the better ones), the extremely popular Roland Jazz Chorus 120...I tried them (I actually bought a Fender London Reverb in 1981 or something…meh…), as well as many other working guitar players I know, and, with the exception of a few Ultra Clean Tone jazz dudes (Polytone amps come to mind), pretty much everybody gave up on SS with few exceptions. The harmonic content and snappy response of tube amps simply feels and sounds right. Now I prefer relatively low watt stuff, including boutique-ish single ended amps.
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dentdog
506 posts
 
I was a heavy listener when it happened, probably 69-70. It brought down the cost of watts considerably and those inefficient speakers often came to life. They certainly weren't as musical but at that time we were attempting to break windows and my Phase Linear 400 was up to the task. Yes, it oscillated and yes it took out some speakers. But I still say it wasn't a bad sound, until it went up in smoke. No smoke actually but it was fried for sure.
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