Do tubes produce less bass?

[Quiet_Hollow]

I never thought my question would produce a debate like this. Someone on the forum has a unique amp. It's hand made in the US, completely class A, with expensive high voltage transistors and it supposedly sounds very much like a tube amp. I lost the link, but there's a waiting list for their gear. I can't afford those amps but they look very nice. I may be able to dig up the link.

Are you reffering to the solid state amplifiers built by John Bedini?

http://www.icehouse.net/john1/index001.html

Some of his tube stuff here:

http://www.bedini.com/amplifiers.htm

[tromprof]

When I first got my K-horns I was using Adcom gear, and the bass was great, though everything else no so much. I then went to vintage Yamaha and the bass was still great and everything else improved as well. Finally I got my hands on my keeper amp, a 300B based SET. Perhaps there is a little less bass, perhaps there is just a better balance, but in my experience whatever minimal decline in bass there is, and I think that nobody listening to my setup would call the bass weak, the trade off is well worth it. The sound of the K-horns with a good SET is to die for.

[Ski Bum]

Some good replies here so far.

"for clarity, tubes, for bass solid state"

Although I frequently switch stuff up, I typically use a SET for the horns, and SS for the woofs. Plenty of bass, plenty of headroom, and lends itself to fine tuning on the fly, a nice feature indeed. It's not perfect (still passively bi-amped, using Crites passive crossover).

However, one thing that causes me to switch things up on occasion (i.e. run full range with the tubes) is that on my fortes, the crossover from woofs to squakers is ~600hz, and there is a huge amount of musical information below 600 hz. While exclusively using tubes full range, they may not plumb the depths with as much authority, but there are some very stimulating things they do on the lower mids and upper bass that my ears really enjoy. And my room is small enough to get away with the small amps and still have decent bass. As a bonus, I can completely bypass my pre-amp when running tubes (or ss for that matter) full range, for the most simple, minimalistic signal path possible. If I could fit a sub in my listening room, or rather if another large box could get by SWMBO's radar, I'd probably run the fortes exclusively on tubes.

One of these days I may go fully active. I have four SET channels and two SS channels of amplification available. Hmm. Be warned, gagelle, this is how the whole Klipsch addiction progresses. But it wouldn't be a 'hobby' if it didn't lend itself to such tinkering, right?

[tromprof]

However, one thing that causes me to switch things up on occasion (i.e. run full range with the tubes) is that on my fortes, the crossover from woofs to squakers is ~600hz, and there is a huge amount of musical information below 600 hz. While exclusively using tubes full range, they may not plumb the depths with as much authority, but there are some very stimulating things they do on the lower mids and upper bass that my ears really enjoy.

It is interesting you would make that observation. I owned a pair of Fortes for over 20 years, always hooked to SS. The day I sold them I hooked them up to a tube amp to demo them for the prospective buyer and was shocked how good the sounded with that combo. Why I had never tried that before escapes me, perhaps because in their later years they had been relegated to basement duty, but it was particularly the bass that struck me as most changed. I would have described the Fortes as having a tendency toward somewhat flabby bass (this is compared to my reference, K-horns!), but with the tubes it was remarkably clear and tight. It made me sad to see them go.