US 10,680,562 B2 · Guitar amplifier system and method

Abstract

A solid-state semiconductor guitar amplifier system/method mimicking the audio performance characteristics of conventional vacuum tube guitar amplifiers is disclosed. The disclosed system/method incorporates solid-state semiconductor circuitry implementing an input audio preamplifier (IAP) having asymmetric gain control (AGC) that feeds wave shape transformer (WST) circuitry implementing a piecewise/diode breakpoint (PDB) transform that emulates a conventional vacuum tube voltage-current transfer (VIT) characteristic. A breakpoint threshold controller (BTC) determines the offset associated with application of the PDB operation to the audio signal. Once the PDB transform has been applied to the audio signal, it is further processed by pick attack sag compressor (PAC) circuitry that applies positive sag control (PSC) and negative sag control (NSC) compression envelopes to the overall signal shape before presenting the resulting peak compressed signal through an audio volume control (AVC) and conventional solid-state semiconductor speaker power amplifier (SPA) for application to an audio speaker.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A guitar amplifier system comprising:

(a) input audio preamplifier (IAP);
(b) wave shape transformer (WST);
(c) pick attack sag compressor (PAC);
(d) audio volume control (AVC);
and
(e) speaker power amplifier (SPA);
wherein:
said TAP, WST, PAC, and SPA comprise solid-state semiconductor components;
said IAP is configured to receive guitar audio signaling (GAS) from a guitar audio pickup (GAP);
said IAP is configured to pre-amplify said GAS under control of asymmetric gain control (AGC) solid-state semiconductor circuitry and generate a pre-amplified signal (PAS);
said WST is configured to process said PAS using a piecewise/diodes breakpoints (PDB) transform in conjunction with an offset bias determined by a breakpoint threshold control (BTC) to produce a wave-shaped signal (WSS);
said PAC is configured to peak compress said WSS based on time constants provided by a positive sag control (PSC) and negative sag control (NSC) to produce a peak-compressed signal (PSC);
and
said SPA is configured to amplify said PSC based on gain information determined by said AVC and producing a speaker power output (SPO) that is applied to an audio speaker output (ASO).

11 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Guitar amplifier system and method

Life of this patent

Guitar amplifier system and method

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims20