1. It has nothing to do with wattage, and this is a more complex issue than it would seem at first glance. And in case you missed it, the myth is that more watts = better tone. As better tone is subjective, it becomes immediately apparent that all such assumptions are flawed to begin with. But let’s dig deeper:
   • More volume might imply better tone: this is because of the equal-loudness contour (the fact that we perceive sounds differently as a function of their volume). It might also be related to the rather visceral sensation of high-SPL sound resonating and shaking your body (and everything around it for that matter). However, an amplifier’s power is not the only factor that defines SPL and consequently perceived loudness: there’s also driver (speaker) and enclosure efficiency and the nature of the programme (what’s coming out of them—a distorted guitar would sound much louder than a clean bass at the same SPL). So keep in mind that while it’s easy to make an uncomfortably loud small combo that doesn’t mean it’ll also sound good.
   • Poweramp saturation myths: the general consensus it that you must play a tube amp very loudly to get the best tone out of it. This is because of power tube saturation, which apparently is the Holy Grail of guitar tone. The issue is vastly covered at Amptone.com so I won’t get into it. Suffice to say this only applies to amplifiers with a tube power stage; the only reason one might turn up a solid state amp is the one discussed above (more volume). Solid state poweramps are designed never to go into audible distortion because that would sound terrible (though I’m sure there are people in this world that would actually like it).
   • Headroom and distortion: I’ve assumed that your goal is a distorted rock tone but what if what you’re after is a squeaky-clean sound with accurate dynamics? The peak-to-RMS ratio of a guitar’s signal can be quite extreme, which means you’d need a lot of power to reproduce those loud attacks, even if the “body” of the note is at a much lower level. Granted, clipped peaks are not as obvious when they’re short and far apart so guitar amps can “get away with it”. This is particularly true for tube amps, where the clipping is softer so even less obvious. This is why people say tube amps sound louder than solid state amps of equivalent power: the sound of the former is actually more compressed, i.e. you can turn it louder without noticing much distortion.
     By now you might be thinking “so if I want more headroom I should get a tube amp”. Well, maybe not. I know I’m biased against ancient technology but let me put it this way: an EL34 pentode is about 12EUR and will output around 20W in class AB. An LM3886 chipamp is only about 4EUR and will output at least 40W, plus it doesn’t require a 300V supply and it has internal thermal protection and current limiting. Factor in the added weight and component cost of a tube amp and you’ll soon realize it’s actually cheaper to buy ten times as much solid state power. Remember though, this is about headroom, not pentode saturation or tube tone in general.
2. It has everything to do with size. Here’s where the specific shortcomings of small combos come into play:
   • Small speakers can’t reproduce low frequencies: at least not the kind we use in guitar amps. That’s just how the laws of physics play out. It’s no coincidence that a Pignose sounds different than a fullstack. You can’t build a speaker that’s also loud, wide-bandwidth and small. In fact some guitar players use a woofer or bass cab along with their 4X12” or whatever. Some use bass cabs exclusively. It’s also the reason why most speaker systems (outdoor event systems in particular) use three sets of drivers: woofers, midrange speakers and tweeters. Some even use subwoofers and supertweeters.
   • Small enclosures aren’t helping: people have been developing enclosures for more than 50 years and they’ve sure come a long way. Except guitar cabs. Poor neglected guitar cabs have always been built with convenience and material economy in mind and not audio performance. This is how people have come to associate a “classic guitar sound” with what is essentially poor speaker design. The heart of the problem is again in the low frequencies. You can read the gist of it on Wikipedia.

So here it is in a nutshell: Small combos usually sound “thin” even if they are reasonably loud. This is because of speaker and cab design; put it through a 4X12” and you will be pleasantly surprised. Of course then it would stop being a small combo. However you don’t have to use a half stack to get a nice full tone, as half stacks aren’t particularly well-designed to begin with. There’s no reason why small (or let’s say reasonably-sized) combos have to sound bad, it’s just that people keep buying them and thus manufacturers have no reason to design better products.

We usually think of phantom power as related to condenser mics but I’m not talking about the 48V you get from a mixing desk here, although it is pretty much the same principle: carry your power on the same cable as your signal so you don’t have to lug around a battery. On guitars with active electronics this system is particularly useful since:

• Obviously, there’s no onboard battery: no replacing, no recharging, no making room for an aftermarket installation.
• You’re not restricted to batteries, yet you retain the option of using them: you can just as well power your pickups from any standard 9V adapter. Or go 12V or 18V if that’s your cup of tea.
• One cable fits all: the system is compatible with any guitar that has been set up to use it or any other (mono) guitar for that matter:
  • phantom-powered active guitars: all that needs to be done to the guitar is to use a stereo jack and tie tip to signal, ring to where battery (+) would be and sleeve to ground. Anyone with basic knowledge of electronics should be able to figure this out;
  • “standard” active guitars: (i.e. those with onboard batteries) if for some reason you need to use one, just short the ring to sleeve, before disconnecting power, of course. Otherwise you’d be shorting out your battery or adapter. This is necessary because most manufacturers use (or should use anyway) the “insert jack to connect battery” scheme, i.e. the battery is floating unless you short R and S together, which is what inserting a mono jack plug does. This could be accomplished with a switch.
  • passive guitars: if for some reason the original TRS recommendation is abided (which people rarely do) power would again be shorted to ground, which is hazardous if not fatal to the supply. To be safe, you could simply unplug the battery or barrel plug from the adapter or again use a switch, possibly the same one as before: a single pole on-off-on switch can choose what the ring is connected to—supply (phantom power), nothing or ground.

The diagram below shows what I’d call a typical setup: on one end you have the TRS plug (A) which goes into your guitar. On the other there is a standard TS plug (B) which plugs into the amp or effect, as usual, and an assortment of power connectors: female coaxial power connector (AKA barrel plug) (C), male coaxial power connector (D) and 9V battery (PP3) connector (E). This should assure sufficient flexibility but feel free to add female or male mini jacks, screw terminals or whatever else you like to use as power connectors. Just make sure you don’t run the risk of short circuits, like when a center-negative barrel plug touches a grounded metal enclosure or a metal jack. One alternative option is to forgo the power connectors altogether and connect it directly to the supply. This is the system I use since once you integrate it into a pedalboard it’s as easy as plug&play. Remember that switch I mentioned, though: when you plug in the ring may short to ground for a moment so it’s best to plug in and then power on (it’s always best to do that but when’s the last time you saw a guitarist remember and implement a safety procedure?).

This is by no means a free lunch, though. The system has one major drawback: if you don’t have one of these special cables around you’re pretty much screwed, your guitar will be dead unless it has the option of running in passive mode. Fortunately it’s easy as pie to make a whole bunch of these cables and keep them around. Speaking of which, remember that your signal is still riding on this cable so it must be properly shielded. Two conductor plus shield (regular 2C microphone cable) will do just fine but if you want the semi-symmetric setup you’ll need three conductors plus shield. Since we’re talking active guitars here it’s probably safe to assume that your signal is going to come from a low impedance source, so cable capacitance and resistance is less important. The question of what makes and how good is a good guitar cable is beyond the scope of this article so use whatever floats your boat. If you are using an adapter for your phantom power source though, make sure it’s properly filtered and regulated!

Note: I’ve used the term “active guitar”, which one should read as “guitar with active electronics”, be they active pickups or an onboard buffer, booster, EQ, distortion, chorus or whatever.

If there’s one word guitarists (and musicians in general) misuse, it’s gain. Gain, as you’ll find in any dictionary, means the ability of a circuit to increase the power or amplitude of a signal. Or as a parameter, we can define it as the (mean) ratio of an amplifier’s output signal to its input signal. So if we feed a 2V signal to an amplifier with a gain of 10 (which equates to 20dB), we would measure an output signal of 20V amplitude (provided there’s enough headroom, which is another topic).
For some strange reason, when guitarists say gain they really mean saturation! As in “A Dual Rectifier has more gain then a JCM800.”, which might be true, certainly is something we can determine but is not what the guy is thinking about when he says it. A Recto might sound more saturated then a classic Marshall but we’re really getting into subjective territory: a fully saturated sound is a square wave, and I’m sure people would agree that doesn’t sound as “gainy” as a cranked stack. So it’s not even the level of signal distortion but the specific harmonic content that results. A shrill sound that emphasizez the pick attack might sound more “gainy” then a dull “bluesy” sound, even if it comes from the same amp, at the same gain setting, being just a matter of EQ (or filtering, to be correct).
We might use alternate terms like overdrive or just drive instead of saturation, but never gain, for gain is as I said an intrinsic property of an amplifier stage while saturation is a consequence where more factors are involved. Par example, take a classic distortion circuit like the RAT: if you run it at 4V instead of 9V it will sound more saturated because the operational amplifier inside will have less headroom to swing the output signal, so it will “distort earlier”, i.e. with a lower input signal. Notice that this has nothing to do with the gain pot! The same principle (under-volting to decrease headroom) was apocriphally used by Van Halen on his Marshall, by employing a variac. But don’t get any ideas, ’cause there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Another term that stabs my mind every time a musician uses it is warm sound. So far I haven’t been able to precisely determine what the hell this metaphor means, chiefly because everyone you ask will have his own vague explanation but most agree that it’s an elusive character, the “Je ne sais quoi” of one system or another. From a scientific standpoint it should be obvious why such descriptions are invalid. But if I must strive to make a determination, especially in the context of guitar tone, I’d wager it also has something to do with harmonic content. Warm is usually used in opposition  to harsh (shouldn’t it be cold?!), when trying to describe the sound of soft-clipping vs. hard clipping (more high-order harmonics), dominant crossover distortion and so on. Warm is thus inevitably associated with vacuum tubes, to the point that most would agree that anything with a tube in it sounds “warmer”, and the more tubes the better. Of course this is more nonsense since distortion (the particular dynamic and harmonic characteristic) again is determined by the whole circuit topology and operating conditions and not just by the particular active device used (as will be demonstrated in a later post).

I think that’s enough ranting about the modern musicians’ colorful vocabulary for now. If you have more terms you wish to clarify please mention them in the comments section. ‘Till next time, stay tuned and… in tune!