I own six Dumbles and must say they have a very nice tone. I own no cars, homes, clothes, or food supplies. Still, I have a very nice tone. It actually rivals a Fender!
"yes, this amazing tube amp is the essence of analog tone where the tone gets to survive in a magical tone land... anyway, here's my digital effects rack where my signal goes before getting sent to the amp"
What drives me nuts are the guys who bitch about some tube amps having solid state gain stages, but you'll never catch them without some solid state overdrive pedal like a Tube Screamer on their board.
Alex Dumble only raised the prices of his amps when the resale value went up (which was out of his control). In the early 80's he was only charging $1700 for an ODS. They became collectible and sought after, and when people started ordering amps from him for $2000 just to resell them for $20,000 he got wise and moved his prices to meet demand. It's not his fault his amps fetch those prices.
@@OhGodWhatIsThisAah living in a socialist state are you? no? or are you taking advantage of the freeoms capitalism give you? you are free (not under communism) to move where communism is the order. we won't miss you
@@babayaga1767 the days most fucking retarded comment goes to you. what a shit argument. say you're 17 without saying you've never fucking experienced anything in the real world.
The prices are crazy cos he only made 300 amps total. He never went into mass production. Each was customised to the buyers requests. If Marshall only made 300 they would be crazy prices too
And people still had the freedom to buy any other amplifier they wanted because there was always such a wide variety of options available. Isn't it beautiful? Thank you, capitalism.
Just play, man. Play through a Marshall. Play through a Dumble. Play through a Crate. Put a speaker in a cardboard box and connect it to a radio shack stereo amp- whatever, just play, man
If your sound isn't satisfying to you , that is a problem however. playing is all about having fun and enjoying it. Play through whatever brings out sounds that satisfy you. Thorough gear that you lay your eye on and can't resist picking up or turning on. that's my opinion...
I agree. If every violinist 'needed' a Stradavarious or Guarneri del Gesu to be happy ther'd be much less beatiful violin music made. Same for the guitar. Basically it comes down to one's 'inner musical voice' and the fingers of course. Give Robben Ford, Larry Carlton or any player with a distinctive sound and the gear they use on the day won't change a listener's ability to recognise them, even with some 'pawn shop specials'. But your right as long as one is enjoying it play with whatever you can get your hands on. Just play !!
it amazes me how little generosity of mind and a completed lack of heart there is in many of the previous comments - yes this video was done in a different time, yes our famous amp builder has a weight problem, but that's not why this is up here - what Mr Dumble is saying shows insight and understanding, and lovers of great guitar tone could learn something here, I did!
I got my info from a book I saw at a local music store... it was something like "Complete guide to guitar amp manufacturers" or something like that... One of those A-Z books that has every kind of amp company and signature model. I looked at Dumble and it only had a paragraph. It said he made a couple-hundred amps based on Fender Twins, he was a recluse, covered his circuit boards, and that he required an audition tape before he built an amp for anybody.(I sensed alot of eye-rolling from writer)
This is a fragment of the VHS Henry Kaiser video. I was just learning guitar at the time, I bought it, and it took me on the wrong path. You don't listen to Beefheart to learn scales! Ha.
I'd always thought of him as having a better understanding of the principles that make his amps sound so good, given his penchant for asking people for the value of the square root of two before becoming their friend and writing measured values on pots and caps to make sure they were exact. I bet that stuff about fragile harmonics is just something he came up with to explain things to non-technical guitar players.
I agree with some of the people posting about this video. Most people do not have the ear to detect the differnce between a Dumble and a clone. I have a 1971 Peavey Vintage 4x10 basically a Bassman clone (all tube $700 amp) a Zendrive pedal ($200 pedal) and a Dumbodrive pedal ($150 pedal). With this amp and either pedal I can get as close as anyone wants to a Dumble. $40,000 for a Dumble vs. $850-$900. You decide. I also have a 1971 Fender Champ that I can do about the same thing with.
You have to try out a Dumble thru some great sealed cabinets with 4 JBL D120F Speakers. I did this back in the 1980s in Santa Cruz CA at my friends music studio. The first thing I noticed was the Attack. When you just plucked a note, the amp responded so quickly and crisp. I was playing a 1970 Gibson SG. Alex Howard Dumble lived in Santa Cruz for many years...
what Dumble amps sound like now is not unique anymore. there are tons of amp gear out there that have "that sound". much more accessible too. if being a recluse, wierd, and limiting accessibility to his amps and service was by design to charge outrageous sums of money....hes a genius. he doesnt have to work much and gets very high dollar. kudos if this was his intentions.
Alex "Don't call me Howie!" Dumble got a sweet thing going by building amps for the right people. He started out modding Bassmen then got into marketing his own brand. He's the Thomas Pynchon of the amplifier world. It's all about "mystique" which is a nice word English borrowed from Old French meaning "bullshit". I tried a Dumble decades ago. I thought it sounded very good, but I could not understand the mythology around it. Why get a Dumble when you can get any number of amps that do the same thing for a lot less money? On top of that Alex "Don't call me Howie!" Dumble will only build an amp for players he personally likes. So now you can't even pay him twenty grand to spend twenty years building you an amp unless he digs your style. So if you don't play like Robben Ford or Larry Carleton, good luck. Your money's no good. Mystique does absolutely nothing in the service of music or, on a very basic level, tone. This is why I'm not so crazy about Seymour Duncan pickups. I dig a few of them, but I could really care less if they are produced using an archaic technique by an order of deaf monks on Lampedusa.
I doubt the tone of a Dumble amp can't be reasonably approximated using a pedal. The various Zen and Dumbler pedals out there are proof enough of that. There are also some solid state amp circuits out there that have more tube-like performance, particularly those made by Peavey.
I think it's safe to say that it's not even 'today's sound' anymore. When I hear one I can only think '80s Cali studio or rarified blues purist -- little of which I ever found that exciting then or now. Now, my Friedman BE-50 heads? That's exciting.
@@thetelenator4468 Well, plenty of people still enjoy a good blues guitar sound, including myself. I like a lot of other styles as well but each style has its own sound to accomodate it.
Einstein: " any idiot can make that which is complex...appear more complex...it takes true genius to make the complex appear simple".........this might apply here Mr. Dumble!
What he did is said complete and utter nonsense. He knows how to put an amp together, but it doesn't sound like he actually understand how electronics work. Because scientifically speaking it's utter gibberish.
He's read something about vacuum and SS devices. He's got some of the words right, but what nuclear engineers call a GCE (Gross Conceptual Error). Here's the deal: electrons literally move and transfer energy from cathode to anode in a vacuum tube; in a solid state (like maybe a crystal lattice structured device) the electrons transfer energy through vibration. They do eventually move incidentally (which is sometimes referred to as drift speed) , but that's just a stocastic orbital effect.
Steve Watson you haven't addressed the issue of harmonic response of vacuum tubes vs solid state yet, drift velocity should have nothing to do with this
P. Doherty yeah these ignorant motherfuckers who make fun of that comment just because it sounds like lettuce...what a bunch of fucking clowns. Probably dipshits who flunked 8th grade science. Probably climate change deniers as well.
no....you THINK the laugh is on us....but your "humor" is so fucking childish and lame that it's simply NOT funny. The fact that you actually think it IS funny is what makes YOU the joke.
well...umm... at least he didn't include any talk about the "color" of the sound. My favorite amp tone color is "BROWN"... Hey Howeird, how about modding my Twin Reverb with an extra 12AT7 for more gain with a few extras knobs to control that and then maybe do something weird to the standard Fender tone circuit that you can label Rock or Jazz and add a few little toggle switches for that yet have it sound like poop and nothing like rock or jazz? There you go. I've just given you the keys to become the king of genius tone!! lmao!
You don't need a hand-wired tube amp built by an Eskimo in Ireland to have good tone. You don't need an special amp made out of dried green bean sprouts built by a blind woman named Bernice to have good tone. You just need a nice tube amp that turns on when you push the damn power button.
Maybe it's snake oil but if so the dude has so many guitar players convinced that it's made him rich! I read he makes 3 amps a year and sells them for $70-150k each!
'Electrons survive in a a vacuum tube where they cant in a crystal lattice' is absolute BS. Harmonics are not fragile either. It is simply that solid-state devices never generate the musical harmonics in the first place in the same combinations and proportions. However, the vacuum tube does naturally produce musically pleasing harmonics, which can be preserved and enhanced with careful circuit design and by use of top quality components, especially output transformers. Great circuit layout is also vital, because the capacitance inside an amp can kill those higher harmonics very easily if the layout is wrong. That's why point-to-point wiring is often considered best. But a well thought-out PCB layout can also be good.
@reallycrazynines I know....the man has a good guitar, and a KILLER amplifier. All the tools necessary for great tone, and yet he covers it up with a shitpot of effects and noise that would make Robert Fripp look like a bluesman. Alexander Dumble makes a great amplifier, I love the richness of the OD....but the prices he charges are beyond obscene. Do I think he's fisting his customers like meat puppets? Oh yeah...but how bad do you want the tone?
Why a Klon for $1500 when you can get one for $150 from some guy with a soldering iron? Or even read and learn about effects design-building and build whatever drive pedal you want for much less...
the funny thing is that many of the guitarists with dumbles and trainwrecks seem to be rather unskilled on the instrument. there are exceptions of course (I.e.- eric johnson.) but- the first guy (actually named "guy") that came up on you-tube when i wanted to hear a trainwreck sounded like started strumming a damn C chord and them playing some sloppy sequences. to make matters worse- he was playing a real 1959 Les Paul. the tone was rancid...absolute proof that tone is in 100% in your hands.
or maybe that's not your style (or you have heard him only in this video). By the way, he's one of the most knowleadgeable persons I've read about guitarists, with incredibly eclectic tastes.
@@ptose He's a musical hack with very little talent but he is a trust fund baby with a very large amount of money to spend on gear and he could pay good musicians to play with him. That does not change the fact that his musical ability of his own was really REALLY bad at the time that this video was made. But to be fair, Henry did improve. He's still not great but what he plays these days is at least listenable.
Just wish Mr. Dumble would have shared some of his secrets, techniques, ideas, etc. Sadly I think they all went with him. But that's the way he wanted it.
@F3FisGoodforYou hey, you should elaborate on your comment. why is what he said bullshit? i am interested in the physics if you could explain it a little bit, i'd appreciate it.
I can see how this is a perfect meme quality video now ...decades after it was made. But a proper understanding of the PHYSICS of how electrons and sound reproduction actually works, understands what he's trying to get across here.
Dumble obviously had a great here and strong intuition for what values to tweak to create a good sounding amp, but what he actually said is here is nonsense.
Would anyone be interested in a new line of custom tube amps? I'm toying with brand names and "Crystal Lattice" seems like it might be a winner. 2024, the Crystal Lattice DE (DE stands for Dumble Effect). I was also looking at the Fragile Harmonic Electron Electric Harmonica amp as a potential second product?
I wonder if Dumble has ever built a bitchin' Leslie amp? Not for guitar, but for organ. I encourage you to listen to the record I uploaded of Jesse Crawford playing a Hammond organ circa the late 50's, He is joined by harpist Ann Stockton and the album is call 'Jesse Crawford Remembers'. No overdrive here, but the tone is incredible. The Hammond organ is nothing more than an electric guitar with 91 individual pick-ups and spinning metal wheels instead of vibrating strings...plugged into an amp.
Now I understand the whole Dumble ethos and why they demand such prices. I’m off to Clitheroe to see if there are any more with my first born under my arm.
Many idiots making fun of Mr Dumble his comment...he is saying "more fragile harmonics can survive in a vacuum tube, where they seem to be squashed in a transistor", is a 100% correct statement, harmonics make a tone rich, the less harmonics, the less "fat" or "thick" it sounds, makes total sense. That is also why digital sounds, sound "thin"... not as much harmonics :)
That, my friend, was and AWESOME comment... One of those you're that hits you when just reading the normal responses and then you see it and bust out laughing... Good call!
Alex Dumble knows FAR more about amps than people think. He's truly far beyond what most people who "design amps" understand. That being said - his amps aren't always for everyone. Like most high-end things, they don't do it all for everyone. A Rolls Royce may not be the fastest car, nor does the Ferrari carry groceries well!
Duuuuuude...my Unk had a copy of that and my Dad and I built an amp out of one of the simple circuits in that book and I went WAIIIIIIIIT a minute. I was grown by that point...Dad was in his sixties I guess, late 60s...I kept thinking about how damn good this generic circuit sounded.
He didn't use TS9 for longer than a year.. In fact, most people, who think he used a TS-808 aren't right either! I've heard René Martinez himself talking about what pedals he used, he said he never saw him using a TS-808, so he didn't use it after 1985. He preferred TS10, which takes less low notes away.
He explains it perfectly. One way has a ‘more free passage’ than the other. No way to get there any other way, despite what today’s manufacturers tell you.
@@ThomasShatter What he was saying about electrons traveling differently through a vacuum (i.e. cathode tube) than through a transistor (solid state) makes sense from a physics perspective. If the electricity is the signal, then different flows could affect the tone.
Dumble knew what he was talking about. I bought an Amplified Nation Overdrive Reverb, in search of that tone, and was gobsmacked. Almost all of my pedals are now pointless, as plugging directly into the amp sounds better than any pedalboard/amp setup I've used in 40 years. Modelers don't come close, and unfortunately, neither do most of the amps I used to consider the best.
@jsh09d What I find strange in all of this is the sheer number of people who came here to listen to a Dumble amp also actually know who Solid Snake is...just sayin.
Gist/paraphrase: The more {that} fragile harmonics can survive in a vacuum tube, (where they seem to be eliminated or squashed) in a solid state crystal lattice. They can survive in a free space vacuum better
@TimeLordGuitar i hope you are not talking about Glen Kykendahl and his '59 standard & trainwreck amp. he is quite a player and gets an awesome tone..one of the best i've heard... oh you said his name is Guy-ok i don't know who he is but i'll have to check him out now..
I own six Dumbles and must say they have a very nice tone. I own no cars, homes, clothes, or food supplies. Still, I have a very nice tone. It actually rivals a Fender!
lol
@@2beJT dumbles provide great isolation from exposure and you can eat the crystal lettuce when hungry.
ah ha so you are a street musician
so not quite as good as a Fender then?
And you eat air?
@@edwhite7475 Dumber copied Fender i guess alot of companies did and still do and i dislike most of them
The guitar world has been trolled for 30+ years. Well played Dr D!
"yes, this amazing tube amp is the essence of analog tone where the tone gets to survive in a magical tone land... anyway, here's my digital effects rack where my signal goes before getting sent to the amp"
You’ve never heard of running fx parallel?
What drives me nuts are the guys who bitch about some tube amps having solid state gain stages, but you'll never catch them without some solid state overdrive pedal like a Tube Screamer on their board.
@@guitartonetopia "here's a totally unamplified digital signal... You can't hear it because it's unamplified, but hey, parallel"
Alex Dumble only raised the prices of his amps when the resale value went up (which was out of his control). In the early 80's he was only charging $1700 for an ODS. They became collectible and sought after, and when people started ordering amps from him for $2000 just to resell them for $20,000 he got wise and moved his prices to meet demand. It's not his fault his amps fetch those prices.
No, it's capitalism's.
@@OhGodWhatIsThisAah living in a socialist state are you? no? or are you taking advantage of the freeoms capitalism give you? you are free (not under communism) to move where communism is the order. we won't miss you
@@babayaga1767 the days most fucking retarded comment goes to you. what a shit argument. say you're 17 without saying you've never fucking experienced anything in the real world.
The prices are crazy cos he only made 300 amps total. He never went into mass production. Each was customised to the buyers requests. If Marshall only made 300 they would be crazy prices too
And people still had the freedom to buy any other amplifier they wanted because there was always such a wide variety of options available. Isn't it beautiful? Thank you, capitalism.
WARNING...WARNING...WARNING...
Do not - I repeat, DO NOT - watch or listen to this clip while tripping on acid.
look around you
Hahahahaha haha
I can picture it already
RIP Alexander Dumble 😥. Too bad this was the only video interview of you.
Just play, man. Play through a Marshall. Play through a Dumble. Play through a Crate. Put a speaker in a cardboard box and connect it to a radio shack stereo amp- whatever, just play, man
and then one day when your really good, buy a two rock like me ;)
+Danny Shipley Boy you don't sound arrogant as shit.
+Danny Shipley I bet he can't even play
If your sound isn't satisfying to you , that is a problem however. playing is all about having fun and enjoying it. Play through whatever brings out sounds that satisfy you. Thorough gear that you lay your eye on and can't resist picking up or turning on. that's my opinion...
I agree. If every violinist 'needed' a Stradavarious or Guarneri del Gesu to be happy ther'd be much less beatiful violin music made. Same for the guitar. Basically it comes down to one's 'inner musical voice' and the fingers of course. Give Robben Ford, Larry Carlton or any player with a distinctive sound and the gear they use on the day won't change a listener's ability to recognise them, even with some 'pawn shop specials'. But your right as long as one is enjoying it play with whatever you can get your hands on. Just play !!
Came for the video, stayed for the comments
strat - man - do Am I the only one here just for the comments? xD
I like the guitarist's contribution at the end there. "Huh."
The best part is that he continues on about his gear as if Mr. Dumble never said anything. 😂
it amazes me how little generosity of mind and a completed lack of heart there is in many of the previous comments - yes this video was done in a different time, yes our famous amp builder has a weight problem, but that's not why this is up here - what Mr Dumble is saying shows insight and understanding, and lovers of great guitar tone could learn something here, I did!
yeah he said something that was relevant in 1980 not any longer.
I got my info from a book I saw at a local music store... it was something like "Complete guide to guitar amp manufacturers" or something like that... One of those A-Z books that has every kind of amp company and signature model. I looked at Dumble and it only had a paragraph. It said he made a couple-hundred amps based on Fender Twins, he was a recluse, covered his circuit boards, and that he required an audition tape before he built an amp for anybody.(I sensed alot of eye-rolling from writer)
Wait, so all the goop on the circuit board was just Sweet Baby Ray BBQ sauce?
This is a fragment of the VHS Henry Kaiser video. I was just learning guitar at the time, I bought it, and it took me on the wrong path. You don't listen to Beefheart to learn scales! Ha.
True. Beefheart didn't like scales and said often "Scales are for fishes"
I'd always thought of him as having a better understanding of the principles that make his amps sound so good, given his penchant for asking people for the value of the square root of two before becoming their friend and writing measured values on pots and caps to make sure they were exact. I bet that stuff about fragile harmonics is just something he came up with to explain things to non-technical guitar players.
by my calculations Dumble wouldn't have had many musician friends, if he's screening them by asking the square root of two. Perhaps Brian May..
@@StandbyCymbalist Naaah... that's something around 1.4. Not terribly hard, unless he wanted it to 20 decimal places or something. HAHAHAHA 😄
His body language and the way he says "lectrons' can survive in a f-free space vacuum" just gets me every time.
He kinda rolls haha
Who's the real dumble. The guy who makes them or the dumble that forks out the cash for one.
Electric Ritual Operation Dumble drop.
So which would be cheaper - to buy a dumble or to play in the vacuum of outer space?
erm playing in the vacuum of outer space would be fatal and worse no one would hear you scream or your guitar
I agree with some of the people posting about this video. Most people do not have the ear to detect the differnce between a Dumble and a clone. I have a 1971 Peavey Vintage 4x10 basically a Bassman clone (all tube $700 amp) a Zendrive pedal ($200 pedal) and a Dumbodrive pedal ($150 pedal). With this amp and either pedal I can get as close as anyone wants to a Dumble. $40,000 for a Dumble vs. $850-$900. You decide. I also have a 1971 Fender Champ that I can do about the same thing with.
fender twin will do just fine.
old fender amps are a pain in the ass. every time you repair them they drop in value, and you have to repair them a lot.
is it the twinkie crumbs that go inside the chassis that make his amps sound best when he made them?
This is the undisputed champion example of how to say nothing at all and still seem like an expert. He gave away nothing. Point: Dumble
Yes, he modded the Fender Twin and then given the crown of genius. Not rocket science but the guitar world is laced with a load of bs hype. rip.
He's right though. Harmonics don't clip as harshly in tube amps as they do in solid state amps.
All of the people saying that he said nothing betray the fact that they understood nothing
I think comments like these are the greatest yes and this bit could ever dream of
@@TheChadPad This is the Chaddiest comment in the history of Chadderdom. Go punch a hole in some drywall.
You have to try out a Dumble thru some great sealed cabinets with 4 JBL D120F Speakers. I did this back in the 1980s in Santa Cruz CA at my friends music studio. The first thing I noticed was the Attack. When you just plucked a note, the amp responded so quickly and crisp. I was playing a 1970 Gibson SG. Alex Howard Dumble lived in Santa Cruz for many years...
That's Dumbledore right there. I don't know who brought Dobby in on guitar, doesn't seem strictly canon to me ...
what Dumble amps sound like now is not unique anymore. there are tons of amp gear out there that have "that sound". much more accessible too. if being a recluse, wierd, and limiting accessibility to his amps and service was by design to charge outrageous sums of money....hes a genius. he doesnt have to work much and gets very high dollar. kudos if this was his intentions.
Alex "Don't call me Howie!" Dumble got a sweet thing going by building amps for the right people. He started out modding Bassmen then got into marketing his own brand. He's the Thomas Pynchon of the amplifier world. It's all about "mystique" which is a nice word English borrowed from Old French meaning "bullshit".
I tried a Dumble decades ago. I thought it sounded very good, but I could not understand the mythology around it. Why get a Dumble when you can get any number of amps that do the same thing for a lot less money? On top of that Alex "Don't call me Howie!" Dumble will only build an amp for players he personally likes. So now you can't even pay him twenty grand to spend twenty years building you an amp unless he digs your style. So if you don't play like Robben Ford or Larry Carleton, good luck. Your money's no good. Mystique does absolutely nothing in the service of music or, on a very basic level, tone. This is why I'm not so crazy about Seymour Duncan pickups. I dig a few of them, but I could really care less if they are produced using an archaic technique by an order of deaf monks on Lampedusa.
I doubt the tone of a Dumble amp can't be reasonably approximated using a pedal. The various Zen and Dumbler pedals out there are proof enough of that. There are also some solid state amp circuits out there that have more tube-like performance, particularly those made by Peavey.
Magnulus76 Peavey? Seriously?
I think it's safe to say that it's not even 'today's sound' anymore. When I hear one I can only think '80s Cali studio or rarified blues purist -- little of which I ever found that exciting then or now. Now, my Friedman BE-50 heads? That's exciting.
@@thetelenator4468 Well, plenty of people still enjoy a good blues guitar sound, including myself. I like a lot of other styles as well but each style has its own sound to accomodate it.
Came here while researching boutique amplifiers. Glad I walked through the Dumble Door...
Einstein: " any idiot can make that which is complex...appear more complex...it takes true genius to make the complex appear simple".........this might apply here Mr. Dumble!
I think he did it's just still way over most people's heads.
What he did is said complete and utter nonsense. He knows how to put an amp together, but it doesn't sound like he actually understand how electronics work. Because scientifically speaking it's utter gibberish.
He's read something about vacuum and SS devices. He's got some of the words right, but what nuclear engineers call a GCE (Gross Conceptual Error). Here's the deal: electrons literally move and transfer energy from cathode to anode in a vacuum tube; in a solid state (like maybe a crystal lattice structured device) the electrons transfer energy through vibration. They do eventually move incidentally (which is sometimes referred to as drift speed) , but that's just a stocastic orbital effect.
@@Quicksilver_Cookie Exactly!! The guitar world is full of gullibles that get sold a load of bs supreme all too often!!!
Steve Watson you haven't addressed the issue of harmonic response of vacuum tubes vs solid state yet, drift velocity should have nothing to do with this
Crystal lettuce. It all comes down to that
Crystal Lettuce. There you have it.
he doesnt know from lettuce, look at 'im
P. Doherty yeah these ignorant motherfuckers who make fun of that comment just because it sounds like lettuce...what a bunch of fucking clowns. Probably dipshits who flunked 8th grade science. Probably climate change deniers as well.
doublestrokeroll no...we are all just better than you
doublestrokeroll You know the laugh is on you guys right?
no....you THINK the laugh is on us....but your "humor" is so fucking childish and lame that it's simply NOT funny. The fact that you actually think it IS funny is what makes YOU the joke.
well...umm... at least he didn't include any talk about the "color" of the sound. My favorite amp tone color is "BROWN"... Hey Howeird, how about modding my Twin Reverb with an extra 12AT7 for more gain with a few extras knobs to control that and then maybe do something weird to the standard Fender tone circuit that you can label Rock or Jazz and add a few little toggle switches for that yet have it sound like poop and nothing like rock or jazz? There you go. I've just given you the keys to become the king of genius tone!! lmao!
Thank you, Mr. Dumble. Beautiful genius
This could easily be a meme video
He reminds me of the comedian The Amazing Johnathan
Heck ya! Let's all chug Windex!
And it's apparent he's drinking Windex too.
He does bear a striking resemblance
You don't need a hand-wired tube amp built by an Eskimo in Ireland to have good tone.
You don't need an special amp made out of dried green bean sprouts built by a blind woman named Bernice to have good tone.
You just need a nice tube amp that turns on when you push the damn power button.
Yep. The amount of hype and bs in the guitar world is beyond the pale and often plain dimwitted af.
_Non-specified Clergyman_ : Do you think it is wise to call your baby boy Bumble, Mrs Dumble ?
so this is where it all comes from, the crystal lettuce...
What's the difference between Alexander Dumble and electrons? Electrons survive.
Not very nice. But funny 😆
What does electrons survive even mean?
Who would dare to do a blindold test of a Dumble vs. a Kemper?))
Someone with a lot of money
John Mayer has a couple Dumble amps in his rig. Not sure if he uses them a lot or not.
“I don’t understand a word you just said.” - Farmer on Napoleon Dynamite. 😂
I'm sorry, but Dumble's explanation sounds like the packaging for Airborne "immune system booster" pills.
Michael Garcia that's what makes it so good
LOL
That company was sued and forced to refund
Maybe it's snake oil but if so the dude has so many guitar players convinced that it's made him rich! I read he makes 3 amps a year and sells them for $70-150k each!
You just need an amp that sounds nice to you, whether it be SS or Tube.
tone starts in your head and is then filtered through your fingers.
I found out the man has passed away just recently. No better place to leave him a RIP Mr. Dumble.
"Here, hold my beer." - Ax Effects
Eh! That's like comparing Emily Ratajkowski to a blow up doll
'Electrons survive in a a vacuum tube where they cant in a crystal lattice' is absolute BS. Harmonics are not fragile either.
It is simply that solid-state devices never generate the musical harmonics in the first place in the same combinations and proportions.
However, the vacuum tube does naturally produce musically pleasing harmonics, which can be preserved and enhanced with careful circuit design and by use of top quality components, especially output transformers. Great circuit layout is also vital, because the capacitance inside an amp can kill those higher harmonics very easily if the layout is wrong. That's why point-to-point wiring is often considered best. But a well thought-out PCB layout can also be good.
@@3eyedcyclops many electronic components have parasitic capacitance, including vacuum tubes - you're missing the point.
is this a legit clip or some kind of spoof?? bordering on funny.....
@reallycrazynines I know....the man has a good guitar, and a KILLER amplifier. All the tools necessary for great tone, and yet he covers it up with a shitpot of effects and noise that would make Robert Fripp look like a bluesman.
Alexander Dumble makes a great amplifier, I love the richness of the OD....but the prices he charges are beyond obscene. Do I think he's fisting his customers like meat puppets? Oh yeah...but how bad do you want the tone?
Why a Klon for $1500 when you can get one for $150 from some guy with a soldering iron? Or even read and learn about effects design-building and build whatever drive pedal you want for much less...
the funny thing is that many of the guitarists with dumbles and trainwrecks seem to be rather unskilled on the instrument. there are exceptions of course (I.e.- eric johnson.) but- the first guy (actually named "guy") that came up on you-tube when i wanted to hear a trainwreck sounded like started strumming a damn C chord and them playing some sloppy sequences. to make matters worse- he was playing a real 1959 Les Paul. the tone was rancid...absolute proof that tone is in 100% in your hands.
@punkmusicmetal What amp do you play, sir?
No disrespect to his amps, but that explanation was hilarious!!
Is this a SNL skit? It can't be real, coments is misspelled.
This easily could’ve been an episode of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.
Yeah, except no Joe Negri whom is still a great jazz guitarist and is currently 95 years old.
Someone has been making fantastic tube amps....while putting down a few tube steaks...
Dr. D?
best explanation i ever heard
...dind't even hear him talk...was all filled with thoughts: "i'll bet he is thinking of donuts or peanut buttter and jelly"...
This is from the greatest guitar video of all time.
podcast? cade o som?
I don't think I've ever heard a more unmusical player than Henry Kaiser. I think you have to be on bath salts and PCP to actually enjoy his crap.
or maybe that's not your style (or you have heard him only in this video). By the way, he's one of the most knowleadgeable persons I've read about guitarists, with incredibly eclectic tastes.
@@davidfaustino4476 yes he is, have you ever read him talking about guitarists? He knows A LOT about the instrument and music.
@@ptose He's a musical hack with very little talent but he is a trust fund baby with a very large amount of money to spend on gear and he could pay good musicians to play with him. That does not change the fact that his musical ability of his own was really REALLY bad at the time that this video was made. But to be fair, Henry did improve. He's still not great but what he plays these days is at least listenable.
@@Turboy65 Henry's hackery is just his little way of telling the world he's got F-U money and can do whatever the hell he wants LOL.
That is Henry Kaiser. I've heard he is an acquired taste.
what parts are no longer available which makes it impossible to build to original spec?
Goop.
Overdrive dead special?
I plugged a klon into a dumble and my entire town went bankrupt
The difference comes down to this... BEEFCAKE
Just wish Mr. Dumble would have shared some of his secrets, techniques, ideas, etc. Sadly I think they all went with him. But that's the way he wanted it.
Just got done reading most of the comments to this video. I am in tears!! Lol! 🤣🤣🤣
rest in peace sir Alexander Dumble😢🙏🏻
Those electrons are referred to as mobile charge carriers and derived from thermionic emission as a result of heating a metal
Thank you for postin g this
I live in a box under a bridge, but at lest my head is resting on my dumble amplifier....
that is about the funniest goddamn thing i have ever read....
Goddamit why is this the only clip of Howard Dumble I can find speaking about amps on the internet
The full version of the video is bizarre
*the man!*(long drawn out with gradual release)
If the electrons didn't survive in a crystal lattice, current doesn't flow....meaning it is not electrically operational.
Well said. And they sound F**king awesome!!!
@F3FisGoodforYou hey, you should elaborate on your comment. why is what he said bullshit? i am interested in the physics if you could explain it a little bit, i'd appreciate it.
For those who don't know any better, you've captured what will turn out to be a rare bit of history.
14 yyeeaars ago
I can see how this is a perfect meme quality video now ...decades after it was made.
But a proper understanding of the PHYSICS of how electrons and sound reproduction actually works, understands what he's trying to get across here.
Dumble obviously had a great here and strong intuition for what values to tweak to create a good sounding amp, but what he actually said is here is nonsense.
Would anyone be interested in a new line of custom tube amps? I'm toying with brand names and "Crystal Lattice" seems like it might be a winner. 2024, the Crystal Lattice DE (DE stands for Dumble Effect). I was also looking at the Fragile Harmonic Electron Electric Harmonica amp as a potential second product?
Since when did zach galifianakis review tube amps?
My next tattoo 'electronics have trouble in a crystal lattice'
Was that a young Mr. Rodgers asking Alex the questions?
I wonder if Dumble has ever built a bitchin' Leslie amp? Not for guitar, but for organ. I encourage you to listen to the record I uploaded of Jesse Crawford playing a Hammond organ circa the late 50's, He is joined by harpist Ann Stockton and the album is call 'Jesse Crawford Remembers'. No overdrive here, but the tone is incredible. The Hammond organ is nothing more than an electric guitar with 91 individual pick-ups and spinning metal wheels instead of vibrating strings...plugged into an amp.
Now I understand the whole Dumble ethos and why they demand such prices. I’m off to Clitheroe to see if there are any more with my first born under my arm.
Many idiots making fun of Mr Dumble his comment...he is saying "more fragile harmonics can survive in a vacuum tube, where they seem to be squashed in a transistor", is a 100% correct statement, harmonics make a tone rich, the less harmonics, the less "fat" or "thick" it sounds, makes total sense. That is also why digital sounds, sound "thin"... not as much harmonics :)
What a load of bloody twaddle, lol
Did he also use unicorn tears as flux when he soldered them up with his 'lectron neutral soldering iron?
That, my friend, was and AWESOME comment... One of those you're that hits you when just reading the normal responses and then you see it and bust out laughing... Good call!
Alex Dumble knows FAR more about amps than people think. He's truly far beyond what most people who "design amps" understand. That being said - his amps aren't always for everyone. Like most high-end things, they don't do it all for everyone. A Rolls Royce may not be the fastest car, nor does the Ferrari carry groceries well!
@StratsRgreat ...and Leo got his amp designs originally from the RCA Receiving Tube Manual. Everyone learns something from somewhere!
Duuuuuude...my Unk had a copy of that and my Dad and I built an amp out of one of the simple circuits in that book and I went WAIIIIIIIIT a minute. I was grown by that point...Dad was in his sixties I guess, late 60s...I kept thinking about how damn good this generic circuit sounded.
He didn't use TS9 for longer than a year.. In fact, most people, who think he used a TS-808 aren't right either! I've heard René Martinez himself talking about what pedals he used, he said he never saw him using a TS-808, so he didn't use it after 1985. He preferred TS10, which takes less low notes away.
He explains it perfectly. One way has a ‘more free passage’ than the other.
No way to get there any other way, despite what today’s manufacturers tell you.
The Thomas Pynchon of guitar manufacturers
Dumble copied Fender, Pynchon copied Joyce
RIP Howard Dumble. Randomly googled Dumble pedals this morning and found out he died yesterday.
Is it just me, or does that kind of make sense? The wording was needlessly verbose, but the core idea seems accurate.
Not only he doesn't make any sense but also his amps are scam.
@@ThomasShatter What he was saying about electrons traveling differently through a vacuum (i.e. cathode tube) than through a transistor (solid state) makes sense from a physics perspective. If the electricity is the signal, then different flows could affect the tone.
Dumble knew what he was talking about. I bought an Amplified Nation Overdrive Reverb, in search of that tone, and was gobsmacked. Almost all of my pedals are now pointless, as plugging directly into the amp sounds better than any pedalboard/amp setup I've used in 40 years. Modelers don't come close, and unfortunately, neither do most of the amps I used to consider the best.
@jsh09d
What I find strange in all of this is the sheer number of people who came here to listen to a Dumble amp also actually know who Solid Snake is...just sayin.
Gist/paraphrase:
The more {that} fragile harmonics can survive in a vacuum tube, (where they seem to be eliminated or squashed) in a solid state crystal lattice. They can survive in a free space vacuum better
@TimeLordGuitar i hope you are not talking about Glen Kykendahl and his '59 standard & trainwreck amp.
he is quite a player and gets an awesome tone..one of the best i've heard... oh you said his name is Guy-ok
i don't know who he is but i'll have to check him out now..
Video summarized " Electronics can survive in a free space vacuum better than a crystal lattice."