Again, this is not just true for music gear - EVERY product with any significant digital integration is subject to rapid obsolesence.
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Again, this is not just true for music gear - EVERY product with any significant digital integration is subject to rapid obsolesence.
The other thing Rhett doesn't mention is that besides lasting until they break, analog devices are repairable, sometimes infinitely so, "Ship of Theseus" style - but if a thing relies on a chip & some firmware to run, it may break beyond repair even if its core function is still working
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Again, this is not just true for music gear - EVERY product with any significant digital integration is subject to rapid obsolesence.
The other thing Rhett doesn't mention is that besides lasting until they break, analog devices are repairable, sometimes infinitely so, "Ship of Theseus" style - but if a thing relies on a chip & some firmware to run, it may break beyond repair even if its core function is still working
️@jwcph As long as we have General Purpose computing (which is currently getting squeezed as hard as they are able and by no means guaranteed without some fighting in the future) Free Software running on said machines handles this well. I'm a #Zynthian user/fan, and they are constantly integrating new engines, including some amp and pedal modellers.
But as far as devices from commercial manufacturers, yes.
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@jwcph As long as we have General Purpose computing (which is currently getting squeezed as hard as they are able and by no means guaranteed without some fighting in the future) Free Software running on said machines handles this well. I'm a #Zynthian user/fan, and they are constantly integrating new engines, including some amp and pedal modellers.
But as far as devices from commercial manufacturers, yes.
@jpaskaruk Sure, but that's not Rhett's point. The problem is that no matter what software you use, it's still software & will be subject to whatever happens all over the digital infrastructure - unlike an old tube amp, which can sit on a shelf for 50 years, or be moved all over the world & used by 1000 different people & still works exactly the same as long as there's electricity, absolutely indifferent to whatever happened with amp technology for all that time, or in the future.
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@jpaskaruk Sure, but that's not Rhett's point. The problem is that no matter what software you use, it's still software & will be subject to whatever happens all over the digital infrastructure - unlike an old tube amp, which can sit on a shelf for 50 years, or be moved all over the world & used by 1000 different people & still works exactly the same as long as there's electricity, absolutely indifferent to whatever happened with amp technology for all that time, or in the future.
@jwcph Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-analog. I still have a Silverface Twin and a Garnet Enforcer (made right here in Winnipeg around the same time as that Marshall!) out in the studio, and the Garnet gets a fair bit of use, I expect it to do its thing forever, more or less. I can use it to play rhythm on Creedence tunes, and I can do Industrial-grade distortion, and lovely crispy reggae skanks. Truly a sonic wonder, and pretty light as tube amps go. 1x12, speaker has no markings on it (he used Marslands and Eminence a lot, I'm told) and a yuuuuuge magnet.
Buuuuuut if you've owned tube amps, you know there's capacitor rot, tube biasing, there's a lot of skilled work involved in their upkeep, it's not as simple as buying new tubes every once in a while. The fender needs its pots cleaned and probably other work too, you can get it doing some nice stuff but it's making cracky poppy ugly while you're dialing it in, sadly.
Speaking as a veteran of bar bands and punk bands, people went to solid state, and then digital, because tube amps are a huge pain in the fucking ass and they will let you down in the middle of a gig at random, and this will never cease. They're fine for studio, but if you intend to take them to a gig, you'd better have at least two heads, and you'd better be maintaining them. You absolutely will be switching to the backup at some point.
Other hand, my digital pedals and processors do not have these issues, though he is right that as soon as something breaks down on my Boss GP-10, which is basically all I take to gigs now, I will need to replace it.
But as I said, I can pretty easily plug my guitar into my Zynthian, and it has many effects and models that I can use, though full disclosure, I have not started to mess around with those much. At the moment, they are probably not better than a pedal from a major brand like Roland or Strymon, but they are usable, and long term, like Blender, they will overtake the mersh stuff through their longevity.
The problem is not that people are using reliable computers instead of unreliable tube amps, the problem is the lack of imagination among the buying public, who continually purchase these expensive commercial products instead of supporting Free/Open Source projects that are technologically just as capable, such as the aforementioned Zynthian, but working on tiny budgets and volunteer labour.
Basically, again, the problem is not the technology, it's how we're producing and using it. the problem he is describing is a capitalism problem, not a technology problem.
edit: he talks about his ten year old modeling thingy being "almost obsolete", and yet, it still does the thing it was designed to do, right? So why is it obsolete?
Because the company decided you need to give them more money, so they're not supporting it anymore. Oh sure, the new machine will have a faster cpu and more resources, but is the modeling actually that much better? I doubt it.
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@jwcph Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-analog. I still have a Silverface Twin and a Garnet Enforcer (made right here in Winnipeg around the same time as that Marshall!) out in the studio, and the Garnet gets a fair bit of use, I expect it to do its thing forever, more or less. I can use it to play rhythm on Creedence tunes, and I can do Industrial-grade distortion, and lovely crispy reggae skanks. Truly a sonic wonder, and pretty light as tube amps go. 1x12, speaker has no markings on it (he used Marslands and Eminence a lot, I'm told) and a yuuuuuge magnet.
Buuuuuut if you've owned tube amps, you know there's capacitor rot, tube biasing, there's a lot of skilled work involved in their upkeep, it's not as simple as buying new tubes every once in a while. The fender needs its pots cleaned and probably other work too, you can get it doing some nice stuff but it's making cracky poppy ugly while you're dialing it in, sadly.
Speaking as a veteran of bar bands and punk bands, people went to solid state, and then digital, because tube amps are a huge pain in the fucking ass and they will let you down in the middle of a gig at random, and this will never cease. They're fine for studio, but if you intend to take them to a gig, you'd better have at least two heads, and you'd better be maintaining them. You absolutely will be switching to the backup at some point.
Other hand, my digital pedals and processors do not have these issues, though he is right that as soon as something breaks down on my Boss GP-10, which is basically all I take to gigs now, I will need to replace it.
But as I said, I can pretty easily plug my guitar into my Zynthian, and it has many effects and models that I can use, though full disclosure, I have not started to mess around with those much. At the moment, they are probably not better than a pedal from a major brand like Roland or Strymon, but they are usable, and long term, like Blender, they will overtake the mersh stuff through their longevity.
The problem is not that people are using reliable computers instead of unreliable tube amps, the problem is the lack of imagination among the buying public, who continually purchase these expensive commercial products instead of supporting Free/Open Source projects that are technologically just as capable, such as the aforementioned Zynthian, but working on tiny budgets and volunteer labour.
Basically, again, the problem is not the technology, it's how we're producing and using it. the problem he is describing is a capitalism problem, not a technology problem.
edit: he talks about his ten year old modeling thingy being "almost obsolete", and yet, it still does the thing it was designed to do, right? So why is it obsolete?
Because the company decided you need to give them more money, so they're not supporting it anymore. Oh sure, the new machine will have a faster cpu and more resources, but is the modeling actually that much better? I doubt it.
@jpaskaruk You're absolutely right, of course & I'm not anti-digital by any means (neither is Shull BTW) - Good Lord, the center of my guitar nook is a laptop
but sooner or later, everything digital hits a compatibility wall & you can't run it anymore, even if it still technically works & you don't care about updates.And yes, incompatibility/obsolesence is very profitable, so greed makes it worse; it might be technically possible to create a digital world witout it but who will pay for that?
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J jwcph@helvede.net shared this topic
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@jpaskaruk You're absolutely right, of course & I'm not anti-digital by any means (neither is Shull BTW) - Good Lord, the center of my guitar nook is a laptop
but sooner or later, everything digital hits a compatibility wall & you can't run it anymore, even if it still technically works & you don't care about updates.And yes, incompatibility/obsolesence is very profitable, so greed makes it worse; it might be technically possible to create a digital world witout it but who will pay for that?
@jwcph well if people stopped giving money to capitalist shits and supported Free Software projects, that is a lot of money that could hire a lot of engineers and devs.
There's a similar dynamic on the Internet, and the fact we're discussing this here means you understand that already.
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@jwcph well if people stopped giving money to capitalist shits and supported Free Software projects, that is a lot of money that could hire a lot of engineers and devs.
There's a similar dynamic on the Internet, and the fact we're discussing this here means you understand that already.
@jpaskaruk I couldn't agree more! In Denmark the administration is - finally! - starting to experiment with switching away from Microsoft & there's certainly enough money to invest in it; taxpayers spend several hundred million DKK per year on MS licenses, which went up about 20% inn 2025 alone
so I don't want to hear a word about how "switching will be expensive"!
