It’s not about playing the wave form but creating the wave form.
Guitarists today still use tube amps and germanium transistors (in guitar pedals) for two reasons. The first is that most guitar amps back in the day used tubes (mostly) and the early guitar pedals used Germanium. Guitarists wanted to sound like the earlier musicians that used that technology [1] so they want to use that technology to achieve a certain tone with their instrument. The generation after them wanted to sound like them, so that means old tech for them, too! Repeat until today.
The second reason is that an electric guitar is a combination of a physical and electrical system, and the distortion that is essentially synonymous with electric guitars [2] comes from pushing an amplifier out of its “intended” linear regime [3] into the nonlinear regime where it stops amplifying and starts clipping the signal. The way this nonlinear regime varies with the choice of tubes and transistors, but in general you can’t really replicate one with the other. These unique non linearities impact both the output sound and, most importantly to me as a player, the way the amplifier responds to my physical technique (e.g., how the sound varies with how hard I hit a string). I have played solid state amps that aim to emulate tube amps, and to me the biggest difference isn’t the sound but that physical response. I haven’t played the top of the line modeling amps, but this has been my main problem with the practice amps I’ve tried. As a result, if I’m not playing in my bedroom (pushing a tube amp to distort at apartment friendly volumes is hard), I play through a tube amp. The differences between silicon and germanium transistors are similar, but more subtle and I’m someone who owns a lot of pedals and is constantly switching them out to fit my mood.
[1] an interesting counter example is that the Beatles used early solid state amps on at least some albums
[2] Plenty of people play “clean” without distortion, but if you spend time on guitar forums, you see a lot of beginners who ask a question of the form “I just got my first electric guitar, why doesn’t it sound like an electric guitar?”
[3] Early on the goal was to produce high headroom amps that didn’t distort, but this was very challenging. Rock musicians latched on to the distorted sound and then that became a design feature in later amps. However, if you try to make like a 59 Bassman distort, you have to play it loud enough to kill someone. You can also achieve distortion in other ways, e.g. clipping diodes, but that’s not really germane to this discussion.
Guitarists today still use tube amps and germanium transistors (in guitar pedals) for two reasons. The first is that most guitar amps back in the day used tubes (mostly) and the early guitar pedals used Germanium. Guitarists wanted to sound like the earlier musicians that used that technology [1] so they want to use that technology to achieve a certain tone with their instrument. The generation after them wanted to sound like them, so that means old tech for them, too! Repeat until today.
The second reason is that an electric guitar is a combination of a physical and electrical system, and the distortion that is essentially synonymous with electric guitars [2] comes from pushing an amplifier out of its “intended” linear regime [3] into the nonlinear regime where it stops amplifying and starts clipping the signal. The way this nonlinear regime varies with the choice of tubes and transistors, but in general you can’t really replicate one with the other. These unique non linearities impact both the output sound and, most importantly to me as a player, the way the amplifier responds to my physical technique (e.g., how the sound varies with how hard I hit a string). I have played solid state amps that aim to emulate tube amps, and to me the biggest difference isn’t the sound but that physical response. I haven’t played the top of the line modeling amps, but this has been my main problem with the practice amps I’ve tried. As a result, if I’m not playing in my bedroom (pushing a tube amp to distort at apartment friendly volumes is hard), I play through a tube amp. The differences between silicon and germanium transistors are similar, but more subtle and I’m someone who owns a lot of pedals and is constantly switching them out to fit my mood.
[1] an interesting counter example is that the Beatles used early solid state amps on at least some albums
[2] Plenty of people play “clean” without distortion, but if you spend time on guitar forums, you see a lot of beginners who ask a question of the form “I just got my first electric guitar, why doesn’t it sound like an electric guitar?”
[3] Early on the goal was to produce high headroom amps that didn’t distort, but this was very challenging. Rock musicians latched on to the distorted sound and then that became a design feature in later amps. However, if you try to make like a 59 Bassman distort, you have to play it loud enough to kill someone. You can also achieve distortion in other ways, e.g. clipping diodes, but that’s not really germane to this discussion.