Do resistors actually make noise?

[KM1H]

I remember when the TS-930 was the latest toy on the block and the term "Phase Noise" was added to ham vocabulary.
A USN ham bored to death in a repair depot on Guam decided to experiment and replaced every 1/8W Jap resistor with mil-spec metal film in the synthesizer and reported a 10dB improvement. Then he heard other noise which turned out to be the score of 3 terminal regulators which he replaced with discrete components.

Audiophools think they can hear a bug fart but its just another brain cell dying off.

Since Im not into EME or extreme audio crap I'll stick to plain old common sense until someone proves using real engineering procedures that the old CC's in my BA's are causing me to miss something. At least Im not worrying about whiskers in SMD gear that will kill all the SDR's in a few years

[Fred k2dx]

I remember as a teenager at my first communications job there was a piece of test equipment to check component noise. I think it was a Heathkit. It worked by applying a B+ voltage to the component (resistor or otherwise) and had a high gain audio amp coupled to let you hear the noise. You could find a resistor that measured within tolerance but would be noisy.

Interesting story about the TS-930.

[N4LTA]

I'm with Carl - I'll not worry about it unless I have someone that is willing to pay for the extra cost for resistor sound enhancement - For that matter if they want to pay for Black Beauties - I'll use those too but no warranty is offered or implied.

[WBear2GCR]

The case of the guitar amp is radically different than something like a phono preamp or a mic preamp for example. In the latter noise is a factor, in the former, not much of a factor.

If you should take a nice classic tube amplifier like say a McIntosh MC-30 or MC-60 and replace all the carbon comp resistors with MF or MO resistors I am pretty confident you will hear a change in the character of the sound, assuming you have high quality gear and source feeding it, and suitably high quality speakers. Of course one's hearing can't be shot either.

There's no doubt that you would hear the change of coupling caps on that amp from old paper caps to new polypropylene. But that's not resistors, or resistor noise.

One can test resistors and see residual distortion, it's been done. The signal path is additive, keep that in mind.

But for ham radio it is clearly not a factor, except perhaps for things like K1MH mentioned...

                            _-_-bear