Home > Media > Books > Hugo Pinksterboer - Tipbook Amplifiers & Effects: Handy, clearly written, and up-to-date, The reference manual for anyone who uses amplifiers and effects, Includeds Tipcodes and a Glossary
Hugo Pinksterboer - Tipbook Amplifiers & Effects: Handy, clearly written, and up-to-date, The reference manual for anyone who uses amplifiers and effects, Includeds Tipcodes and a Glossary
buffoonery's Full Review: Hugo Pinksterboer - Tipbook Amplifiers & Effects: ...
Hugo Pinkerstboer has written an excellent introduction to amplifiers and effects called, coincidentally, Amplifiers and Effects. Part of the “Tipcodes” series, its seventeen chapters (plus glossary) and 220-some pages contain informative discussions on guitar, bass and keyboard amps, effects, microphones, cables, and maintenance as well as a number of important technical terms. It is particularly useful for intermediate guitar players who are starting to get serious about their craft and are considering investing in a decent amp and set of effect.
The first four chapters are a handy introduction to amps and their features. The meat of this material is in Chapter 4, “Features”, which discusses some very important points such as power, equalizers (tone control), frequency ranges, plug-ins and –outs, gain, effects loops, amp amplification (sounds redundant, actually very important), speakers, and tube vs. solid state.
Another very important chapter is Chapter 5, “Figures”. This is extremely important material about what the various statistics mean that are contained in amps. For example, what does the power rating of an amp mean? Why is an amp rated at 50 watts not twice as loud as one rated 25 watts (because to double the volume, you have to multiply power by ten)? Especially important is the discussion about decibels as well as the one about speaker impedance.
Chapter 7 is “Guitar Amps”, a very nice guide through the world of those machines that make your guitar sound the way it does. Here, you’ll find why you might want to buy a solid-state amp instead of a tube amp (lighter, cheaper at a cost in sound quality), a discussion of the different amp component such as the preamp, rectifier (converts AC to DC power, modeling amps, the role of different amp channels (usually a question of gain), and why different tubes create different sound.
Also useful is Chapter 12, “Effects”. Here, you’ll learn about the four broad categories of guitar effects: Ambience, Tone, Pitch, and Dynamics. It explains the difference between plate and spring reverb, the components of delay, cool effects like Chorus and Flanger, and how the different knobs on a stompbox affect the sound (for example, how the depth and speed knobs make the chorus effect move anywhere from a slight out of pitch sound to something from Mars).
The rest of the book covers a number of interesting topics including acoustic amps, sound and PA systems, cable and wireless systems, and gives a lot of performance tips.
As the series promises, this book is not an in-depth examination of any of the topics discussed within it. Rather, it is designed to provide fast answers and fast information to someone who has a specific interest in a topic. It’s not meant to be read cover to cover and even if you do so, you won’t be an expert. But it’s a fast and useful source of information as well as providing the reader with a broad overview of amp and effect sounds. For these services, Amplifiers and Effects is easily worth $10.
Here's a pretty solid selection of other guitar instructional and song books:
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