Something that poeple DONT say that annoys me, and is BS: their room/s. The enviroment/s that you play your gear in have a HUGE effect on its sound. So does where you place it within that environment.
That is a good point. I defo notice it but I don't have the freedom to move stuff around. such is the life of living out of one room.
I think using PCB is fine. Using ribbon cable is potentially problematic because if you designed the amp badly, you could have sensitive, unshielded (I've never seen shielded ribbon cable) signal wires in close and exact parallel proximity to high voltages or high-ish current carrying wires. In that situation you could have increased noise. The kind of amp it is in probably matters too. In a high gain amp noise issues could be compounded.
You'd have to consider separating types of signals from certain ribbons and even where the tracks run on the PCB. I'm not always sure that is done. Just like any design, if the PCB layout sucks then it's probably going to effect a few things in the amp. If the layout is good, then it won't matter. Same rules apply to point-to-point builds!
PCB's can also be thin, poor quality, with traces that lift, break, burn off in a fault. If that happens in an amp you need serious PCB repair, repairing tracks and cleaning carbon off, or a totally new PCB. In an amp that means changing a large portion of the amp (maybe you'd loose your mojo? haha). I guess thats why people like using chassis mount power valves. If the amp was on one whole PCB and a valve burnt out, then you'd have a nice cleanup of the pcb on your hands, rather than a socket swap.
Again, good quality PCB is fine. My Avenger has the power valve sockets on a small PCB, so i guess if ever got ruined I could actually install sockets or order a replacement.
Relating it to other things like jets etc...
You probably would get high quality boards and design practices throughout high cost specialist military equipment or similar. An example, in a Sony XDCAM camera, footage is recorded direct to an optical disc. All the PCB's in the camera are mounted on shock absorbers and all kinds of things. (yes there is an amp company that mounts the internal gubbins on shock absorbing mounts!) They are also built to withstand temperature tolerances that amps usually aren't. I've played in a Montreal winter and the 5150 I used instantly became condensation ridden as soon as it was put in the venue. The fan on the Ampeg SVT we had would barely run due to the cold.
Ribbon cable becomes an advantage in some equipment because if you do have a fault, you can simply swap the PCB with ease. (Provided the gear is designed well)
In work, when I've been adding 5.1 audio decoding boards to HD SDI monitoring gear, its a pretty simple process. helped by the fact that the boards are easily removed and added. If a board breaks, or a capacitor burns out, then the board is not repaired (unless it is maybe a modular power supply unit). The PCB is just swapped for a spare. I imagine this is the same in bigger more complex machines. There would probably be a discussion involving pro's and con's to be had if you wanted to apply that practice to valve amps.
a 5150 is a noisey amp. I have PCB based amps with just as much gain and they are a LOT quieter.
It uses ribbon cable and has a bad PCB layout (allegedly). taking the main PCB out of one is a pain in the backside! 5150's also have big plastic connectors for the transformer wires (kind of like the power supply inputs you get on an old hard disk drive). This makes it a pain in the backside to swap the transformers.
basically it just makes things an issue for a repair guy should your amp ever need to be repaired. The sockets for the ribbon cables are what causes the issue when trying to remove the PCB. That's what I recall anyway.
Other types of wild cable are probably fine if not odd to see in an amp. but doing things like hot glueing wires underneath capacitors that have been pushed together is bad building practice.
I think in conlusion, ribbon cable is useful in certain circumstances, but in amplifiers it seems like it is more often used as a tool to aid mass production through wave soldering and low skilled assembly line workers. Although you do get very high quality hand populated PCB's being used by companies. I think you'd have to look at this on an amp by amp basis. Yes PCB's and Ribbon cable can work in Jets, but in some amps the PCB's and general construction probably look more like what you'd find inside a cheap £30 keyboard rather than a submarine guidance system.
if you want the best of both worlds (PCB contrustion with easy to swap components) then you could always opt for printed turret board!
EDIT: I think it was too early when I started writing this. I think we essentially agree. Bad design is bad design.
