The Tube Amp Book

Rating:
Summary: Poor Image Quality Ruins Book's One Attribute
Review: Aspen Pittman, whom I have met and talked to at several industry conventions such as NAMM and AES, is not a highly technical individual: in fact I doubt he even understands basic electronics. His book is therefore a compilation of a lot of schematics and (on Fenders) parts layouts for guitar amplifiers, and a few articles written by various tech writers, some of which are of merit and some of which aren't.

The schematics are not very legible and many contain known errors. For this price, he could at least get that part right. I don't recommend this book unless you cannot find a needed schematic or layout anywhere else.

Rating:
Summary: Image quality issues
Review: Be warned that the image quality of the circuit schematics on the cd-rom will leave you angry and frustrated as many of them are simply illegible. The values of resistors et al are IMPOSSIBLE to see in many of them.
Quite a few of the printed schematics in the book are extremely hard to read (even with a magnifying glass.)
I have the 4.1 edition and will have to hang onto it as the images printed there for the most part are superior to those in the new edition. It's a shame that the Quality Control is so poor in this critical/essential publication. Did no-one check this out before it was shipped for production?

Rating:
Summary: Image quality issues
Review: Be warned that the image quality of the circuit schematics on the cd-rom will leave you angry and frustrated as many of them are simply illegible. The values of resistors et al are IMPOSSIBLE to see in many of them.
Quite a few of the printed schematics in the book are extremely hard to read (even with a magnifying glass.)
I have the 4.1 edition and will have to hang onto it as the images printed there for the most part are superior to those in the new edition. It's a shame that the Quality Control is so poor in this critical/essential publication. Did no-one check this out before it was shipped for production?

Rating:
Summary: Great for someone with no tube amp knowledge
Review: I orderd this book because I had no idea about tube amps. I became interested because I recently purchased a Blues Jnr 15W amp. Every thing about this book is quality. If there is a downside, it's the use of rings for binding, which means care has to be taken when turning the pages. The info in this book is amazing, if not a little bit overwhelming for a newbie. I'm sure that with time I will understand the majority of the technical stuff. I can't say if there are any "bad" technical articles, because I have no knowledge at all at this time. The History section is both fascinating, well written and set out with many quality photo's. The text draws from the authors personal experiences and knowledge. He seems to know his stuff. Although not exhaustive, it seems to be a well rounded history of amp manufactures. The circut diagrams are fascinating, if not overwhelming for there number. The supplied disk has 801 diagrams, with 330 odd reproduced in the book itself. They seem to be fairly reasonable quality, but some are hard to read. The magnifing function of adobe acrobat can be used to overcome this (at least for the diagrams I looked at). I was after a book on guitar tube amps that was not to specific or specialised. This book seems to cover just about every base (including maintanence tips). Absolutely facinating book. Highly recomended!



Rating:
Summary: Good Book but...
Review: This book has to be on the bookshelf of every electric guitarist. But I am sitll giving it only 3 stars because the title of the book is VERY MISLEADING. This book is not about "tube amps" it is about tube "guitar" amps. For anyone looking for historical, pictorial collection type of book about guitar amps then this is it. I liked the technical section of this book where the author talks about popular tube types used in GAs and there are also tube characteristics and curves! Also schematics which may or may not be useful to anyone.
So if you think this book is about "tube amps" and will teach you tube theory and even how to build one then you will be thouroughly disappointed - like me.


Rating:
Summary: Great book covering the history of amps.
Review: This is a great book for anyone interested in the history of guitar tube amplifiers. Its especially great for the hobbyist tube amp builders because it contains 801 schematics on the CD that comes with the book. This book is the follow up of Aspen Pittman's book the Tube Amp Book 4.1th edition and 4th addition as well. This book is smaller than the previous editions because a lot of the schematics have been put on the CD-ROM that comes with the book. But more schematics have been released with this edition on the CD-ROM so it actually contains more info than the previous editions. The CD-ROM contains 801 schematics of vintage amps. All of them are in PDF format and viewable on any machine that can run Adobe Acrobat. The pictures and descriptions in the book give you a great idea of how the vintage amps looked and how they evolved. This book is a must have for any tube amp afficianado.