Or is that one of those things that it's best not to look at too closely?
Five years after the Lockdowns started, and three years after they finished, with the predictably disastrous effects on everything from the mental health of young people to the length of NHS waiting lists, through the empty buildings hiding behind those faux-window murals, and prices being 25% higher than in 2019... you would think most people would have come round to the realisation that the Lockdowns were right up there with invading Russia and occupying Afghanistan in the Top Five Dumb F****ing Things A Government Can Do.
Now go read this summary of a You Gov survey
And weep.
I'm 71, so I have 10 years or so, especially given my early record of drinking and smoking, and the fact that triple-jabbing is not good for all sorts of health conditions (though I still think my body treating the second and third injections as infections and neutralised them). I am so glad I am not going to see what this country will turn into.
Because not only are we being governed by the most clueless bunch of people ever to sit in the Commons, not only are we being administered by a Civil Service with the stellar qualities of a black dwarf, we also have an electorate that... I have no idea. Why the hey did they like Lockdowns so much?
Or is there something about the Normies that, after all these years, I still don't understand?
Tuesday, 29 April 2025
Friday, 25 April 2025
Trust Experts, But Verify
I'm seeing more along the lines of whatever-happened-to-trusting-the-experts. Tells you about my rabbit-holes.
Do I believe the experts? I do when they're right. Wait. What? You want me to believe them when they're wrong?
(boom, tish! I'm here all week folks)
Actually, the experts are not expecting me to believe them.
Belief is an epistemic attitude towards a statement, inclining one to act as if the statement is true. One can also act as if something is true, without believing it to be so, perhaps because it was the best option one had. One might even decline to act at all, on the basis that "all we have is an expert's opinion". Or one might make a contingency plan on the assumption that what the expert said is wrong.
The experts want much, much more. They us to have faith in them. They want us not simply to accept what they say faut de mieux, they want us not making contingency plans, to go all in, and only do things that make sense if what they say is true. They do not want us to research the subject for ourselves, and they do not want public debate. They want our uncritical compliance. They, after all, are the experts. They know much more than I ever will.
Whether they do is not actually the issue.
One issue is that we likely have no idea whether they are "experts" - unless we know enough about the subject to make our own minds up about it anyway. It's not enough for them to recite credentials, because we may not know what those credentials are worth; it is not enough that a journalist refers to them as an "expert", because we have no idea how reliable a judge the journalist is (and a lot of general reasons about journalists to suppose they are not).
Another issue is that not only do we need reasons to disagree with the "experts", we also need reasons to agree. If we don't know enough to disagree, we don't know enough to agree, either.
And finally, there's the whole free-will and rationality thing. We can no more outsource that than we can have someone else breathe for us. Doesn't matter who says what, it's our decision to act on it or not. Anything else is a denial of our humanity.
The proper course is to avoid having an opinion, and to formulate plans that are either independent of what the experts say, or to have contingencies in either direction.
The only commitments we should make are to our family. After that, it's all contractual, transactional, and conditional. Beware of people and organisations who say that is a terrible attitude, because they are usually after something from you for free. (If you can afford it, please go right ahead with my blessing. But if you can't, you should save whatever the resource is.)
What experts have to offer in exchange for our compliance is their authority, that is, following their advice is a sufficient defence against later charges of malpractice, manslaughter, dangerous driving, or whatever else. If I acted on the (perhaps expensive) advice of my lawyer, tax accountant, or doctor, the Judge has to back off the sarcasm and the Jury has to cut me a break. If I follow the law, the Government promises not to prosecute me. That's the deal, and it is a deal.
Absent the ability to make that deal, they aren't an "expert". They are just someone who has read too many books about too few subjects.
One should respect experts as people, until they sell out their reputations for government grants, honours and influence, or until they are exposed as frauds. Respecting them as people does not mean blindly accepting their every pronouncement. Indeed, respecting them as experts means putting in the work to understand and appraise their advice.
Do I believe the experts? I do when they're right. Wait. What? You want me to believe them when they're wrong?
(boom, tish! I'm here all week folks)
Actually, the experts are not expecting me to believe them.
Belief is an epistemic attitude towards a statement, inclining one to act as if the statement is true. One can also act as if something is true, without believing it to be so, perhaps because it was the best option one had. One might even decline to act at all, on the basis that "all we have is an expert's opinion". Or one might make a contingency plan on the assumption that what the expert said is wrong.
The experts want much, much more. They us to have faith in them. They want us not simply to accept what they say faut de mieux, they want us not making contingency plans, to go all in, and only do things that make sense if what they say is true. They do not want us to research the subject for ourselves, and they do not want public debate. They want our uncritical compliance. They, after all, are the experts. They know much more than I ever will.
Whether they do is not actually the issue.
One issue is that we likely have no idea whether they are "experts" - unless we know enough about the subject to make our own minds up about it anyway. It's not enough for them to recite credentials, because we may not know what those credentials are worth; it is not enough that a journalist refers to them as an "expert", because we have no idea how reliable a judge the journalist is (and a lot of general reasons about journalists to suppose they are not).
Another issue is that not only do we need reasons to disagree with the "experts", we also need reasons to agree. If we don't know enough to disagree, we don't know enough to agree, either.
And finally, there's the whole free-will and rationality thing. We can no more outsource that than we can have someone else breathe for us. Doesn't matter who says what, it's our decision to act on it or not. Anything else is a denial of our humanity.
The proper course is to avoid having an opinion, and to formulate plans that are either independent of what the experts say, or to have contingencies in either direction.
The only commitments we should make are to our family. After that, it's all contractual, transactional, and conditional. Beware of people and organisations who say that is a terrible attitude, because they are usually after something from you for free. (If you can afford it, please go right ahead with my blessing. But if you can't, you should save whatever the resource is.)
What experts have to offer in exchange for our compliance is their authority, that is, following their advice is a sufficient defence against later charges of malpractice, manslaughter, dangerous driving, or whatever else. If I acted on the (perhaps expensive) advice of my lawyer, tax accountant, or doctor, the Judge has to back off the sarcasm and the Jury has to cut me a break. If I follow the law, the Government promises not to prosecute me. That's the deal, and it is a deal.
Absent the ability to make that deal, they aren't an "expert". They are just someone who has read too many books about too few subjects.
One should respect experts as people, until they sell out their reputations for government grants, honours and influence, or until they are exposed as frauds. Respecting them as people does not mean blindly accepting their every pronouncement. Indeed, respecting them as experts means putting in the work to understand and appraise their advice.
Tuesday, 22 April 2025
The Philosophy of Psychology, or, Wrestling With A Pig
Attentive readers will have noticed that I've been playing catch-up again. Every now and then I get waylaid by something I can't resolve within the timetable of this blog. I've been looking for another longer-term project, with psychology or category theory as candidates. What? I'm a philosopher - I contain multi-disciplinary multitudes. Let's talk about psychology.
There is a perfectly reputable, if unexciting, study of the way the brain / mind works; how perception works and can occasionally mislead; and related subjects. Degrees in that subject tend to be B.Sc's and the studies don't make for best-selling pop-psych.
The psychology we are looking for is sometimes called moral psychology, the study of emotions, feelings, behaviour towards ourselves and others, thought-processes and other such stuff that can be discussed sensibly without knowing the difference between a ganglion and a neurone. Degrees in that subject tend to be B.A's.
Moral psychology used to be a stock-in-trade for any reputable Enlightenment philosopher, who would use it to make often mordant and worldly observations about their fellow man, society and economy, disguised as descriptions of emotions and personality traits. Sometimes this was to show that the vast array of human behaviour and emotion could be reduced to two or three basic traits, emotions or principles. David Hume did this in his Treatise of Human Nature;, as did Adam Smith in his Theory of the Moral Sentiments.
Moral psychology is for the philosophically-inclined. The way people ordinarily understand each other's behaviour and characters is called folk-psychology. It starts with identifying kinds of behaviours (counting the expression of emotions and thoughts as 'behaviour'), continues by grouping those behaviours into a "personal quality", and if those actions, emotions and thoughts are observed to be "done-once, done-often", ascribes a dispositional "personality trait", "character trait" or "quality" to the person. Folk-psychology is sometimes subtle, always contextual and culture-bound, and of course, independent of any theory of the container of those traits and qualities, be it mind, soul, spirit or something else.
Folk-psychology is always directed at action. Its aim is not "understanding all to forgive all", nor is it to understand motives or reasons. It is a grab-bag of concepts to describe us, and of tricks to influence, persuade, re-educate, convert, and indoctrinate us. The aim is to make us act, think or feel in a manner useful to someone else. It is also to identify people who might turn out to be odd, disruptive or obstructive, to the point that we would not choose them as colleagues, neighbours or friends - so we can avoid them before they become a nuisance. Folk-psychology is what we need to choose and develop alliances, friendships, social networks, sports teams, military units, political parties and so on, and it is what we need to avoid users, losers and abusers, wastrels, hopeless cases, traitors, freeloaders and so on.
Hegel was the last of the great systematisers of moral psychology, linking it with politics and law at one end, psychiatry in the middle, and folk-psychology at the other. After that, the philosophers stopped doing moral psychology, and instead specialised in sociology, economics, psychiatry, or "philosophy of mind". As a result, folk-psychology took over as the theoretical foundation of all psychology.
Today, the vast majority of what passes for "psychology" on the shelves of bookshops, in hospitals and therapy rooms, in novels, films and plays, and even in psychiatry and the DSM / ICD classifications, is variations on and justifications of folk-psychology, peppered with pseudo-technical terminology, salted with politics, seasoned with religion, law and morality, and poured like gravy over people and behaviour. The aims of academic psychology are now those of folk-psychology: producing conceptual tools for influencing the people we need to-do with, and identifying the people to avoid.
That is what the books are about; that is what the tests are used for; that is how it used by Governments, militaries, schools, and businesses. The "normies" use conventional psychiatry and psychotherapy to make an industry out of "treating" the fringe people; and recently in response, the fringe people have created mental health activism. Some even use it against themselves via a third-party when they go to psychotherapy.
In practice, psychiatrists have been suborned by the pharmaceutical industry, the insurers and State health services, and are pill-pushers: the patient gets fifteen minutes for free if the taxpayer is paying, or an hour or more for £800 or so for a private consultation. The result is still a pill. In the same way, psychotherapists "deliver" a short course of CBT-based treatment if the taxpayer is paying, while psychodynamic therapists will settle in for three days a week for forty-four weeks over three or four years at £150 or so an hour, with variations in between. These are features, not bugs.
A theory that gains a wide reception in the profession usually meets a number of conditions. It fits the prevailing mores of the largely white, middle-class, feminist-y, liberal-ish, and majority female, members of the profession. It can be used by businesses to gee-up their employees when times get hard and HR is cutting heads. It can be used to give the appearance that a vast military organisation cares about the morale of its troops, as it sends them into yet another asymmetric war where the enemy might be a twelve year-old boy with a bomb. It might describe a new symptom, disorder or condition that expands the market for psychotherapeutic services. It can be used by Governments to scare their populations into compliance with unjustified and disastrous public health policies.
There is a perfectly reputable, if unexciting, study of the way the brain / mind works; how perception works and can occasionally mislead; and related subjects. Degrees in that subject tend to be B.Sc's and the studies don't make for best-selling pop-psych.
The psychology we are looking for is sometimes called moral psychology, the study of emotions, feelings, behaviour towards ourselves and others, thought-processes and other such stuff that can be discussed sensibly without knowing the difference between a ganglion and a neurone. Degrees in that subject tend to be B.A's.
Moral psychology used to be a stock-in-trade for any reputable Enlightenment philosopher, who would use it to make often mordant and worldly observations about their fellow man, society and economy, disguised as descriptions of emotions and personality traits. Sometimes this was to show that the vast array of human behaviour and emotion could be reduced to two or three basic traits, emotions or principles. David Hume did this in his Treatise of Human Nature;, as did Adam Smith in his Theory of the Moral Sentiments.
Moral psychology is for the philosophically-inclined. The way people ordinarily understand each other's behaviour and characters is called folk-psychology. It starts with identifying kinds of behaviours (counting the expression of emotions and thoughts as 'behaviour'), continues by grouping those behaviours into a "personal quality", and if those actions, emotions and thoughts are observed to be "done-once, done-often", ascribes a dispositional "personality trait", "character trait" or "quality" to the person. Folk-psychology is sometimes subtle, always contextual and culture-bound, and of course, independent of any theory of the container of those traits and qualities, be it mind, soul, spirit or something else.
Folk-psychology is always directed at action. Its aim is not "understanding all to forgive all", nor is it to understand motives or reasons. It is a grab-bag of concepts to describe us, and of tricks to influence, persuade, re-educate, convert, and indoctrinate us. The aim is to make us act, think or feel in a manner useful to someone else. It is also to identify people who might turn out to be odd, disruptive or obstructive, to the point that we would not choose them as colleagues, neighbours or friends - so we can avoid them before they become a nuisance. Folk-psychology is what we need to choose and develop alliances, friendships, social networks, sports teams, military units, political parties and so on, and it is what we need to avoid users, losers and abusers, wastrels, hopeless cases, traitors, freeloaders and so on.
Hegel was the last of the great systematisers of moral psychology, linking it with politics and law at one end, psychiatry in the middle, and folk-psychology at the other. After that, the philosophers stopped doing moral psychology, and instead specialised in sociology, economics, psychiatry, or "philosophy of mind". As a result, folk-psychology took over as the theoretical foundation of all psychology.
Today, the vast majority of what passes for "psychology" on the shelves of bookshops, in hospitals and therapy rooms, in novels, films and plays, and even in psychiatry and the DSM / ICD classifications, is variations on and justifications of folk-psychology, peppered with pseudo-technical terminology, salted with politics, seasoned with religion, law and morality, and poured like gravy over people and behaviour. The aims of academic psychology are now those of folk-psychology: producing conceptual tools for influencing the people we need to-do with, and identifying the people to avoid.
That is what the books are about; that is what the tests are used for; that is how it used by Governments, militaries, schools, and businesses. The "normies" use conventional psychiatry and psychotherapy to make an industry out of "treating" the fringe people; and recently in response, the fringe people have created mental health activism. Some even use it against themselves via a third-party when they go to psychotherapy.
In practice, psychiatrists have been suborned by the pharmaceutical industry, the insurers and State health services, and are pill-pushers: the patient gets fifteen minutes for free if the taxpayer is paying, or an hour or more for £800 or so for a private consultation. The result is still a pill. In the same way, psychotherapists "deliver" a short course of CBT-based treatment if the taxpayer is paying, while psychodynamic therapists will settle in for three days a week for forty-four weeks over three or four years at £150 or so an hour, with variations in between. These are features, not bugs.
A theory that gains a wide reception in the profession usually meets a number of conditions. It fits the prevailing mores of the largely white, middle-class, feminist-y, liberal-ish, and majority female, members of the profession. It can be used by businesses to gee-up their employees when times get hard and HR is cutting heads. It can be used to give the appearance that a vast military organisation cares about the morale of its troops, as it sends them into yet another asymmetric war where the enemy might be a twelve year-old boy with a bomb. It might describe a new symptom, disorder or condition that expands the market for psychotherapeutic services. It can be used by Governments to scare their populations into compliance with unjustified and disastrous public health policies.
These abuses are not failures of professional ethics, but actual professional success-stories.
This line of thought could be, and probably has been, expanded into a paperback polemic. Those can be fun to read, but writing them has always struck me as being like mud-wrestling with a pig: you both get muddy, and the pig enjoys it. I don't enjoy mud-wrestling.
So I'm going to have some fun discussing category theory (or something else) instead.
This line of thought could be, and probably has been, expanded into a paperback polemic. Those can be fun to read, but writing them has always struck me as being like mud-wrestling with a pig: you both get muddy, and the pig enjoys it. I don't enjoy mud-wrestling.
So I'm going to have some fun discussing category theory (or something else) instead.
Friday, 18 April 2025
If You ever Doubted That We Went Insane in the 2010's
The Supreme Court - an institution created by Tony Blair in imitation of the Americans, and exactly as successful in the UK context as you might expect - has had to interpret an Act of Parliament to make clear that "woman" means "adult human female". Which everyone thinks means "person with a uterus and without a penis", but doesn't. Any ambiguity over "woman" transfers to "female", except when someone goes barmy and thinks that "gender" is anything other than a euphemism for "sex". Oh. Wait. We have been that barmy for almost twenty years.
Anyway, it is now official that, if you have a penis, you cannot go into the women's changing rooms or WC's.
This statement of the obvious was only made because a group of Scottish women, with whatever backing they had, kept on banging their heads against the legal system until they got this judgement.
You might wonder why the House of Commons did not put this through as supplementary legislation.
That's because the Supremes exist to rule against the Government. They have no other purpose in life. So if Labour had passed the legislation, the Crazies would have run lawfare - with whatever limitless backing they seem to have - against the Government until it reached the Supremes. Who true to form, would have ruled against the Government.
But someone gamed them.
In this case the Supremes were ruling against a Government. The Scottish one.
Tuesday, 15 April 2025
Sci-Fi Towers
You know that sci-fi movie where the gigantic towers of the mega-corporations and the rich loom over the poverty and little people below? Well, the "below" bit here isn't poor, but the effect is much the same. Those towers don't even look as if they belong in the same world as the rest of us, like some hallucination.
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(Photo edited 19/4/2025)
Friday, 11 April 2025
C'est Manifique, Mais C'est N'est Pas Singapore
Politicians talking about "Singapore on Thames" again. It looks plausible...
until you go inland, and realise that far more of Singapore looks like a tourist postcard than scruddy old East London will ever do.
Tuesday, 8 April 2025
Greenland Dock
The station for Greenland Dock is Surrey Quays, but they don't signpost it at the station in case, you know, the wrong kind of people go there. It was one of the first Docklands developments, as the low-rise and human scale (as the architects say) of the buildings shows. It was the first of the London docks to be built (as opposed to riverside wharves) (more details here) and it's pretty darn large. The Royals are larger, but some of the Isle of Dogs docks are smaller. On a sunny day, it's a pleasant place to walk around, with houseboats...
and little feature places as well.
Friday, 4 April 2025
...Really, Even If You Can Make The Katana Sound Like One (Almost)...
And it turns out we're not done with Katanas yet...
Roland / BOSS have a thing called Tube Logic. I'd forgotten about it. It's some clever stuff that makes power transistors (or more to the point, an Op-Amp) sound more like power valves. More. Like. Not "exactly like". This is rock 'n roll. Nobody can hear your nuances over the drums.
In a last desperate attempt, to do something about the ineffably "blurry" clean tone I was getting from the humbuckers on the 594 with the power selector at 25W, the Master volume at 09:00 and the pickups at 6 / 7... I turned the volume to 12:00 and dialled the guitar volume back to 2 to bring the volume back to polite levels. It sounded almost identical to the first setting, but, I don't know, 10 lbs lighter?
Then out of curiosity, I turned the power selector to 0.25W (which takes all of 6dB off the 1W loudness of the speaker), and dialled the guitar volume back to 8. Oh Holy Moly! When played through an HX Effects channel with a Tube Screamer, or another distortion pedal, the clouds parted, and the sun shone through. Okay, we're not talking Mediterranean, but it was good enough.
You'll notice this is entirely counter to how Real Amps work. To get a clean tone on a Real Amp, keep the volume / gain below a certain level, and crank it up to get distortion. Cranking up the guitar, while turning down the amp, to get distortion, or cranking up the amp, while turning down the guitar, to get clean, is just being silly.
But that's Tube Logic for you. (Plug in via the Power Amp In socket, to by-pass the K's DSP, which you don't need because you've got a multi-effects pedal.)
It works for me. (For now.)
I do need to dedicate three blocks (two EQ and one compression) of the nine in an HX Effects circuit to what amounts to managing the Katana so it sounds vaguely like a proper amp, but I can live with that for the moment.
There's one combination I'd like to test: a Big Trees
Roland / BOSS have a thing called Tube Logic. I'd forgotten about it. It's some clever stuff that makes power transistors (or more to the point, an Op-Amp) sound more like power valves. More. Like. Not "exactly like". This is rock 'n roll. Nobody can hear your nuances over the drums.
In a last desperate attempt, to do something about the ineffably "blurry" clean tone I was getting from the humbuckers on the 594 with the power selector at 25W, the Master volume at 09:00 and the pickups at 6 / 7... I turned the volume to 12:00 and dialled the guitar volume back to 2 to bring the volume back to polite levels. It sounded almost identical to the first setting, but, I don't know, 10 lbs lighter?
Then out of curiosity, I turned the power selector to 0.25W (which takes all of 6dB off the 1W loudness of the speaker), and dialled the guitar volume back to 8. Oh Holy Moly! When played through an HX Effects channel with a Tube Screamer, or another distortion pedal, the clouds parted, and the sun shone through. Okay, we're not talking Mediterranean, but it was good enough.
You'll notice this is entirely counter to how Real Amps work. To get a clean tone on a Real Amp, keep the volume / gain below a certain level, and crank it up to get distortion. Cranking up the guitar, while turning down the amp, to get distortion, or cranking up the amp, while turning down the guitar, to get clean, is just being silly.
But that's Tube Logic for you. (Plug in via the Power Amp In socket, to by-pass the K's DSP, which you don't need because you've got a multi-effects pedal.)
It works for me. (For now.)
I do need to dedicate three blocks (two EQ and one compression) of the nine in an HX Effects circuit to what amounts to managing the Katana so it sounds vaguely like a proper amp, but I can live with that for the moment.
There's one combination I'd like to test: a Big Trees
through a 1x12 cab. Not cheap, but then neither is a decent home hi-fi. And I think it looks cool.
Tuesday, 1 April 2025
...No, You Really Do Need A Valve Amp...
Hope you enjoyed the little psycho-drama. It had no resemblance to the inner workings of my mind. At. All.
I'm an engineer at heart. I don't collect, and I don't have that "pride of ownership" thing. Things are tools: cars, guitars, screwdrivers, espresso machines, lawnmowers, hi-fi's, whatever. I buy one because it does the job, and I can afford it. I prefer it to be well-made, with good materials, be comfortable to handle, and work with as little friction and bother as possible.
Guitar amps are made to compete with the singer, the bassist, maybe a horn section, a keyboard, the guys at the bar ordering drinks, the pool game over in the corner, the trucks leaving and arriving outside, and (shudder) a drummer, that monster capable of rendering any other instrument inaudible with a flick of the wrist. Nuance and subtlety of tone pretty much vanish when the band strikes up. Guitar amps are just fine for that purpose.
Ah, you say, but they are used in studios as well, where there isn't so much competition. Take a look at a video set in a 32-track (or more) recording studio. Not only does the mixing desk have more controls for things you didn't even know could be adjusted, there are racks of industrial-grade electronics to distort, warp, and modulate sound in ways that are not available on a Helix or a DAW. What comes out of the guitarist's amp into the mic and back to the mixing desk is mere raw material. What's on the record bears zero resemblance to what the band heard in the studio. In the 1960's the amp might have mattered, but not so much since the mid-1970's.
Guitar valve amps are not for home playing. They only come on song around 70dB, and the sweet edge-of-breakup only hits at 85dB or so. Unless it's a, yes, the K-word, which has some trickery in its Tube Logic.
Okay. Let's look at the gear.
Based on Guitar tube reviews, there's a bunch of valve and modelling combos priced below £600 from Marshall, Supro, Vox, Fender, and other familiar names. The clean tone sounds somewhere between suspiciously pristine and just okay, while the cranked tone is thin and fizzy, or boxy and fizzy. The so-called boost buttons do not add harmonic distortion, but just noise. Many of them have quality compromises even more than usual, often in the quality of the speaker, tubes or other components. See Psionic Audio's review of the AC10C1 for an example.
Let's go over the £600 line, and stay there.
Guitar-amp manufacturers have a house take on the clean, edge-of-breakup, and distorted sounds: the usual characterisations relate to the clean sound. Roland is super-clean; Fender is "scooped"; Vox is "chimey"; Marshall is "mid-range"; and so on. Each range has three variations on weight: 20-25 lbs, 40-50 lbs, and 60+lbs. Only the first of those will be going upstairs, so if you want an AC15 or a 4x12 Marshall stack, either you need to know a couple of strong lads prepared to get them up the stairs, or the studio needs to be in the garden or on the ground floor, and you will need a trolley.
So the questions for a bedroom player are: a) do I like the clean tone , b) can I get the thing up the stairs without getting a hernia, c) does it sound good at low volumes, d) will it treat my favourite pedals nice , e) what's the cool factor?, f) can I afford it?, g) will it make that much difference?
a) excludes Fender, because their clean tone is full of itself, and c) excludes Roland because even the JC-20 is WAY TOO LOUD at about 2 on the dial. b) excludes any combo over about 12kg or so, and hence restricts me to the smaller 5-15 watt combos, or a 1x12 and a head. f) depends a lot on the answer to g). To be fair to most modern gear, c) and d) are generally YES for the clean tone, and NO for edge-of-breakup or distortion.
e) Cool factor. That's a tricky one. None of the usual combos or head+cabinets are that cool. Even Marshall stacks are iconic rather than cool.
I'm an engineer at heart. I don't collect, and I don't have that "pride of ownership" thing. Things are tools: cars, guitars, screwdrivers, espresso machines, lawnmowers, hi-fi's, whatever. I buy one because it does the job, and I can afford it. I prefer it to be well-made, with good materials, be comfortable to handle, and work with as little friction and bother as possible.
Guitar amps are made to compete with the singer, the bassist, maybe a horn section, a keyboard, the guys at the bar ordering drinks, the pool game over in the corner, the trucks leaving and arriving outside, and (shudder) a drummer, that monster capable of rendering any other instrument inaudible with a flick of the wrist. Nuance and subtlety of tone pretty much vanish when the band strikes up. Guitar amps are just fine for that purpose.
Ah, you say, but they are used in studios as well, where there isn't so much competition. Take a look at a video set in a 32-track (or more) recording studio. Not only does the mixing desk have more controls for things you didn't even know could be adjusted, there are racks of industrial-grade electronics to distort, warp, and modulate sound in ways that are not available on a Helix or a DAW. What comes out of the guitarist's amp into the mic and back to the mixing desk is mere raw material. What's on the record bears zero resemblance to what the band heard in the studio. In the 1960's the amp might have mattered, but not so much since the mid-1970's.
Guitar valve amps are not for home playing. They only come on song around 70dB, and the sweet edge-of-breakup only hits at 85dB or so. Unless it's a, yes, the K-word, which has some trickery in its Tube Logic.
Okay. Let's look at the gear.
Based on Guitar tube reviews, there's a bunch of valve and modelling combos priced below £600 from Marshall, Supro, Vox, Fender, and other familiar names. The clean tone sounds somewhere between suspiciously pristine and just okay, while the cranked tone is thin and fizzy, or boxy and fizzy. The so-called boost buttons do not add harmonic distortion, but just noise. Many of them have quality compromises even more than usual, often in the quality of the speaker, tubes or other components. See Psionic Audio's review of the AC10C1 for an example.
Let's go over the £600 line, and stay there.
Guitar-amp manufacturers have a house take on the clean, edge-of-breakup, and distorted sounds: the usual characterisations relate to the clean sound. Roland is super-clean; Fender is "scooped"; Vox is "chimey"; Marshall is "mid-range"; and so on. Each range has three variations on weight: 20-25 lbs, 40-50 lbs, and 60+lbs. Only the first of those will be going upstairs, so if you want an AC15 or a 4x12 Marshall stack, either you need to know a couple of strong lads prepared to get them up the stairs, or the studio needs to be in the garden or on the ground floor, and you will need a trolley.
So the questions for a bedroom player are: a) do I like the clean tone , b) can I get the thing up the stairs without getting a hernia, c) does it sound good at low volumes, d) will it treat my favourite pedals nice , e) what's the cool factor?, f) can I afford it?, g) will it make that much difference?
a) excludes Fender, because their clean tone is full of itself, and c) excludes Roland because even the JC-20 is WAY TOO LOUD at about 2 on the dial. b) excludes any combo over about 12kg or so, and hence restricts me to the smaller 5-15 watt combos, or a 1x12 and a head. f) depends a lot on the answer to g). To be fair to most modern gear, c) and d) are generally YES for the clean tone, and NO for edge-of-breakup or distortion.
e) Cool factor. That's a tricky one. None of the usual combos or head+cabinets are that cool. Even Marshall stacks are iconic rather than cool.
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