Customer Reviews

Inside Tube Amps: The Book on Tube Amps Technology

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book has a good deal of information and is obviously written by someone who knows his amps, but it is not clearly written and is not really for the uninitiated. While the schematics of the different sections of an amp are useful, there are still unexplained terms and the presumption that everyone owns a Fender or Marshall amp. If you are looking for more broadly applied information about tube amps, look elsewhere. Another gripe for me is the cheesy printing and lack of even one real photo to aid in explaining parts layout (This is not an inexpensive book!). Good if you own an newer Fender or Marshall and want to make it sound more vintage or want to troubleshoot amp problems. Not for the homebrew amp crowd.

This book contained lots of information, but the way it was presented made it extremely difficult to accomplish my final goal -- to build a class A amplifier. The book is not a tutorial on so much the construction of tube amps, but rather a long list of modifications. Perhaps the biggest problem that plagues this entire book is that the author repeatedly tells you to open up your '60s Marshall or Fender or Traynor amp, all of which are extremely expensive and not exactly readily available. Because I don't own any of those amps, I was stuck to just read about adding more midrange to a '66 Marshall JTM, rather than learning how midrange actually works. Also, the author spends too little time on important subjects (tubes in general were basically covered in 3 or 4 confusing sentences...).

There aren't many basic, layman-level books out there concerning the field of tube amplification. This book is one of the few that is billed as such. It does offer a lot of good information that is unavoidably technical, yet presented in such a way as to be accessible to the beginning amp hobbyist. However, the reader is forced to wade past some pretty bad writing that is awash in typos, bad grammar and a condescendingly conversational "style". Clearly, no copy editor was ever allowed near the book prior to printing. It does seem to have, at least, been spell-checked. It's really too bad, though, because this book does try to fill a much-needed niche. If Torres can see his way to overhauling the text in future editions by letting a qualified third-party proofread it, then I could easily see the rating upped to at least four stars.

One other comment of a purely mechanical nature is that my copy of the book was missing several pages of text in the chapter on power tubes. Or more precisely, I should say that the pages themselves were there... only they were blank!

I was excited to get this book and hoped that I would lear more about the components in a tube amp and what they do. The book talks about the high level functions and then jumps right into diagrams of specific amps. That jump left was to big for me. I got lost and although the schematic diagrams were somewhat facinating, there are many web sites that have those diagrams in more detail for many more amplifiers. I get the feeling that this book is really an attempt by the author to give you enough information to want to buy his amp kits. Further, when I went to the User Review Section of Harmony Central (A Musician Web Site with extensive information about musical products), and looked up Torres Engineering I found reviews by customers that were not happy. They had not been treated well on the phone and the products or services they purchased had problems and the company was unwilling to solve the problems. Before you buy any of the kits or amp modifications do yourself a favor and read the reviews.

I agree with many of the reviews below. This book is poorly written in a style which, while not exactly condescending, can be considered needlessly flippant. There is no real progression toward building a real tube amplifier, though there appears to be an attempt at one. You'll be confused by a series of somewhat disjoint chapters discussing various components of a tube amp and unfortunately interspersed with tube amp modifications that should have been placed later in the book. Finally, in the chapter(s) dealing building one, you realize that (a) you contantly have to look for more information in earlier chapters and (b) you do not really have a complete list of what you'll need (nor do you have a set of concrete how-to, step-by-step instructions).

If not for the fact that there's some valuable information tucked away on some of the book's pages, this would be a total bust.

First in answer to the many disillusioned reviewers: No this isn't an amp design book. It's also written with the assumption that you have just a little bit of electronic background. So if you need to bone up on reading schematics or what the difference between a capacitor and a resistor is, this isn't the place to start.

That said, I learned more about the functionality of tube amps from this book than from any other, and I have most of them. Torres does a great job of explaining why a certain cap can affect the tone of a preamp, or how transformer saturation works, etc. There are also invaluable repair tips in there, so this goes beyond mods to service as well. The book is not comprehensive, but explains little mentioned areas like phase inverters and vibrato, and has the best explanation of biasing I've ever seen in a tech book.

Inside Tube Amps may not be the bible of tube design, nor answer your every question about repair... but in my opinion if you need to have a deeper understanding of how basic tube amps work and how to influence their performance, this book is absolute must reading! I only wish I could find a comparable book on solid state repairs (after 10 years looking, lol). Even if I had to buy this again at the 'collectable price' of $110 it's going for now I wouldn't even think twice.

I bought this 10 years ago clueless, and now make my living in this field.

~SK
Los Angeles, CA

I got this book many years ago when I first decided to build an amp because it promised instructions on how to build one, and I have to say that it proved useful in that it convinced me that there was no real mystery to amp building (provided you could figure out what you needed and could find the parts). The book contains valuable and useful info, BUT, the layout and the somewhat wandering style is a nightmare. Often I would find that the text referred to a diagram (and they were not numbered) that was 3 pages and 3 diagrams back. While I wouldn't say that the book was dangerous, I would say that when you are messing around with hundreds of volts you need to be sure you know exactly what you are doing. This book did not give me that confidence, and I succeeded in building my amp only because I was cautious and reserched everywhere I could before I started wiring and soldering. There were also a few misleading instructions (like measuring for the b+ voltage coming out of the rectifier before you plug any other tubes in: you won't get a useful reading unless there is something drawing the right amount of current so you have to plug a tube in or it will read the voltage of your filter caps). I spent hours pondering why I was getting 450v everywhere. Somethings you only learn from trial and error. Lets hope we only make minor mistakes. My recomendation for anyone who wants to know the whole truth is to seek out The Ultimate Tone series of books by Kevin O'Connor ... it's almost at the opposite end of the spectrum: if anything there is too much info for the novice. Pricey, but you'll never regret buying them as long as you are interested in guitar amps and tone.

Actaully, Dan is much more knowlegeable that say GW. While this book will not give a complete understanding of tube amps it does an excellent job of explaining biasing and power supply design vs other books that don't really explain the how.

In the mods section he does try to explain things, but he does not give schematics of the mods, just shows how the board looks.

He avoids math as much as possible, but does use some. It would appear that he feels the readers don't like math.