# What's tube amp saturation?



## Metalus (Aug 31, 2009)

So I was reading an interview with Joel From Killswitch Engage and I come across this: 
"The Maxons are set up solely as a clean boost, and when youre using a high-gain amp this creates awesome compression. We have our gain turned all the way down and the level turned up until we get the *saturation* we need. The tone knob is used to smooth out the tone and tighten up the bottom end. We leave our Maxons on all the time when we play."

What does he mean by getting the saturation he needs? Ive heard a friend of mine who plays guitar also tell me a couple of times that certain amps didnt have the saturation he wanted. Can anyone enlighten me on what this means? 
Thanks in advance guys.

Regards,
Andrew


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## signalgrey (Aug 31, 2009)

instead of pushing the Preamp tubes into distortion he is pushing the POWER tubes into distortion. you can do the same kinda thing with an attentuator, or other methods.

i think thats right. correct me if im wrong.


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## TomAwesome (Aug 31, 2009)

When they say saturation, they just mean the clipping and added harmoincs (distortion) from the amp, be it from the preamp (which is what would be affected by the Maxon) or the power amp.


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## ellengtrgrl (Aug 31, 2009)

Just another name for distortion/clipping. Saturation is a term that's been used for a long time in solid state electronics (I have a bit of an electronics background - electronics classes for engineering degree #1 back in the 80s, a ham radio license for 31 years [yes I'm a bit of a girl techno geek - I've even restored old ham radios]). It's basically used to mean that the acitve device (transistor, IC, FET) is working outside of it's linear region (where a clean signal is outputted after amplification), and is in the operating region where it distorts everything. 

Over the past few years, I've been hearing, and reading a lot of comments about tube saturation. Yeaahhhh.......I guess so. After all, a tube amp can distort. But we never called it that. We old timers typically just said that the signal was clipping or distorting out of a tube amp. I guess since most solid state devices usually mega clip/distort, when they distort (it's kind of hard to do vintage low gain soft clipping/distortion with a transistor amp, ala a 60s Marshall Super Lead,without doing some serious circuit tricks), I guess you could say that uber high gain tube amps that clip as ferociously as Dime's solid state Randalls did, are saturating.


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## petereanima (Aug 31, 2009)

signalgrey said:


> instead of pushing the Preamp tubes into distortion he is pushing the POWER tubes into distortion. you can do the same kinda thing with an attentuator, or other methods.
> 
> i think thats right. correct me if im wrong.



but in the current (KSE) case its meant to overdrive the preamp-tubes, becaues they have (i assume) the maxons in front of the amp, so the input-preamp-tube is going to be overdriven, which is nowadays with highgain amps a common thing.

@thread-starter: you can compare "DRY" versus "SATURATED" tone. for a dry tone, listen for example to the tone on the last The Faceless record, or the first song on Arsis' "We Are The Nightmare". a very dry, less "gain"-y sound. for the opposite, take a listen on the last Cannibal Corpse records. gain cranked + boosted with Boss MetalZone-pedals (iirc) for extra saturation and tightening.

the power-amp saturation is a kinda different thing, you usually only get this when you really crank the shit out of the master-volume, and most modern amps are designed that you do not want that (therefor the insane amounts of headroom). this was used on old marshalls etc. - many people confuse "power-tube-saturation" with "sounds better when louder". while the second one is mostly true, it has nothing to do with power tube saturation, but with the heard frequencies which can be heard after reaching a level of volume.


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## Metalus (Aug 31, 2009)

I gotta test all this out when i get a chance. So lets say if i wanted to get a nice level of saturation on my ENGL Savage 120, how would i set my channel volume and my master volume? would i put y channel volume at noon and crank the master? or would i have high channel volume and low master volume?


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## petereanima (Aug 31, 2009)

the Savage is already pretty saturated, for a more dryer tone turn the gain 50% back and here if you like it.


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## budda (Sep 2, 2009)

Metalus said:


> I gotta test all this out when i get a chance. So lets say if i wanted to get a nice level of saturation on my ENGL Savage 120, how would i set my channel volume and my master volume? would i put y channel volume at noon and crank the master? or would i have high channel volume and low master volume?



You'd experiment.

You said you wanted a nice level of saturation - but you didn't say from the preamp or the power section.


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## Metalus (Sep 2, 2009)

petereanima said:


> the Savage is already pretty saturated, for a more dryer tone turn the gain 50% back and here if you like it.



Hmmm im confused . what do u mean by back 50% and here? any specific settings?



budda said:


> You'd experiment.
> 
> You said you wanted a nice level of saturation - but you didn't say from the preamp or the power section.



I would wanna try out both. I guess i could get an 0d808 and put it in the front to saturate the pre amp. How would i go about saturating the power section then? Lowering my channel volume and cranking the master?


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## budda (Sep 2, 2009)

he means "and hear if you like it".

if you want to get preamp saturation, all you have to do is turn the gain knob on the distortion channel up - no boost necessary to hear what that sounds like.

if you want to hear power amp saturation, crank a marshall plexi.

or, keep the gain real low on your drive channel, turn your channel volume to 4, and max your master volume.


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## petereanima (Sep 3, 2009)

Metalus said:


> Hmmm im confused . what do u mean by back 50% and here? any specific settings?



sorry! yeah, what budda said -was a typo and should read "turn back the gain by 50% - and HEAR if you like it"


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## Scali (Sep 3, 2009)

Saturation is basically when you've 'filled up' the input signal beyond the maximum input level, and it starts distorting (rather than just linearly amplifying the input sound). Saturation is a term also used in photography or video... Eg when something is so bright that it is the maximum white level the equipment can take, and then starts to 'bleed' into the rest of the image. Which is also a form of distortion.

Steve Lukather's tone was often described as 'fully saturated', which basically meant that there was no point in turning up the gain further, because the amp simply couldn't distort any more than it already did. On my own boosted amp setup I have the same. I have my gain at about 4.5. I can turn it higher, but the sound doesn't change anymore, you just get louder noise when not playing. At 4.5 it's more or less 'fully saturated' (the preamp is anyway).


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## Metalus (Sep 3, 2009)

Thanks alot guys. Can anyone go into more detail about the level of saturation on a Savage 120? Maybe a specific setting that i can play around with to notice it (both pre and power amp section)?


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## petereanima (Sep 3, 2009)

you wont get "power tube saturation", until you really turn up volume and master all the way. this is when the power tubes start to clip and to distort. again: "power tube saturation" is something people like Hendrix etc. used to get more gain out of the old Marshall Plexi. Its nothing you want on a modern High Gain Amp, they are dsigned with 120 Watts etc. specifiecly to NOT get into power amp saturation.

for "normal" saturation / preampsaturation - as said: turn your gain knob to 1/10 - play, and you will hear a more un-saturated tone. and then turn the gain knob to 10/10 and play again. that what you hear with "gain cranked to 10/10" is a really saturated tone.


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## budda (Sep 3, 2009)

Metalus said:


> Thanks alot guys. Can anyone go into more detail about the level of saturation on a Savage 120? Maybe a specific setting that i can play around with to notice it (both pre and power amp section)?



I told you how.

if you want to hear preamp gain, put your gain knob to 8 on any distortion channel and play at regular volume.

if you want to hear power amp drive, go to your clean channel: volume at half on the channel, master volume on 10.

Master volume controls power amp volume and saturation, channel gain and volume control preamp volume/saturation.


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