I've always disliked the notion of "warming up" a signal in studio electionics. For one thing, people have varying opinions on what is "warm". When you add up all those opinions, "warm" is just another word for "good".
I think any piece of equipment has to sound good to begin with. There is no way of adding "goodness" after the fact. Adding distortion to a good clean sound, only makes it worse. Good tube equipment has its sound, but it's not a sound effect. As we all know, good (vintage) tube equipment often sounds surprisingly clean. That's because it was conceived for general use (e.g. broadcast), not for special effects. People are mislead by modern day tube equipment which often sounds kind of fuzzy. IMHO fuzzy tube is a bad sound, just like fuzzed-up solid state is a bad sound.
I see solid state and tube as two different approaches to design a good (or bad) piece of equipment. The difference between the two is in just about every aspect: simplicity vs. complexity, transformer coupled vs. transformerless, low feedback (or zero feedback) vs high feedback, high impedance vs. low or medium impedance and hence different capacitor choices and much more. It's kind of friviolous to say you can emulate all that with a "toob" circuit.
Bottom line: I like tube and I like solid state, but I personally don't care for fuzz (unless we're talking about guitar stompboxes).
I think any piece of equipment has to sound good to begin with. There is no way of adding "goodness" after the fact. Adding distortion to a good clean sound, only makes it worse. Good tube equipment has its sound, but it's not a sound effect. As we all know, good (vintage) tube equipment often sounds surprisingly clean. That's because it was conceived for general use (e.g. broadcast), not for special effects. People are mislead by modern day tube equipment which often sounds kind of fuzzy. IMHO fuzzy tube is a bad sound, just like fuzzed-up solid state is a bad sound.
I see solid state and tube as two different approaches to design a good (or bad) piece of equipment. The difference between the two is in just about every aspect: simplicity vs. complexity, transformer coupled vs. transformerless, low feedback (or zero feedback) vs high feedback, high impedance vs. low or medium impedance and hence different capacitor choices and much more. It's kind of friviolous to say you can emulate all that with a "toob" circuit.
Bottom line: I like tube and I like solid state, but I personally don't care for fuzz (unless we're talking about guitar stompboxes).
(I say that jokingly) I've been working on this for months, it's called the "grind" mode on a new design that'll be unveiled this week, which introduces a nice 2nd harmonic distortion and subtle 3rd. To be honest I didn't even know SSL was doing something similar (not familiar with the duality), and apparently neither did the guys at THAT as they were rather intrigued by the idea and have been very helpful along the way. (though still not sure this is exactly what SSL are doing but possibly something along the lines) The circuitry's already built and tested, to anyone that's wondering what it sounds like....well, it sounds imho....awesome - I can post a clip if you guys would like to hear. On drums it as some nice "in your face" punch and grit, might be a little too much on a full mix though. It's not variable in my version, though it could have been just as easily, but ran out of front panel space so opted for a fixed setting optimized around +4dbu, though since it does react as a valve distortion, harmonics are increased (or decreased) depending on input signal level, so seems the effects really shine on transient material. There's more involved than what you explained mrcoffee, as well as side affects to contend with, but heading in the same direction. What you have described (half wave and full wave rectifying) will not allow total 2nd/3rd harmonic control, one will be affected more than the other, but both are affected in either case, which leads me to believe SSL might be doing something different (note this feature is in thier standalone preamp unit, which doesn't incorporate a compressor). And even if this weren't the case tapping into the sidechain recitification for the source might not be the way to go, it will be counter productive when compression is engaged. IE: As compression increases, the sidechain signal will be pulled down and hence thd will decrease. A seperate dedicated driver circuitry seems the better approach to me.
