“They have a personality of their own”: Brian May won’t be giving up tube amps anytime soon
Brian May has had his say in the ongoing debate over tube amps and digital modellers – and he’s very firmly in the tube amp camp.
Although it’s become more common for artists to trade tube amps for digital modellers when on tour, and sometimes also for recording, May maintains in an interview with Guitar World that he doesn’t plan on making the switch.
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Asked if he’d ever tried digital modellers, May says [via Ultimate Guitar]: “I’ve tried modellers, and there are some very good ones now. There’s a great simulator; it’s a pedal [Catalinbread Galileo] that really does a very good job of simulating my sound.
“But, of course, there’s nothing quite like the original when it comes down to it. In the heat of the battle, all those tiny little peculiarities count, and when I’m at top level and top volume, there’s nothing quite like those amps.”
May adds that the extra physicality that tube amps offer is a big draw for him. “They have a personality of their own, and I couldn’t swap it for anything,” he explains. “And I wouldn’t like to be on stage with the amps someplace else; I need my amps to interact with my guitar – physically, in the air – and interact with me because I feel it in my body as well. I don’t think I could do the modelling thing live on stage.”
May is a fan of Vox AC30 amps, some of which he has had for decades. Elsewhere in the interview, he explains that they have also played an important role in shaping his sound: “I love the [Vox] AC30 sound; to me, it’s perfect.”
“The moment I first plugged into an AC30 with a treble booster, I knew that was me. That was my voice. That was my sound. The only problem with them has been that they’re not very road-worthy, so you have to keep on top of them, maintenance-wise.”
The amps May uses nowadays were made in the ’70s, but they’ve been completely rebuilt. “You have to ventilate the valves, or they get too hot, and then performance suffers and eventually they peg out. The guy who does it for me now is a genius. He’s really rebuilt all my AC30s, so they have all the original character, but I think you could probably drop them from a plane and they’d still work.”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
