2 Electra Dyne Questions; Tubes, and reverb related...

[smogfalls]

Ahoy there!

I am the proud new owner of an Electra Dyne, and I must say it is fantastic! I just have 3 questions that I was hoping could be answered here.

1. I want to try EL34's and I already have a matched quad of winged C's sitting around, but being new to Mesa's I don't fully understand how the tube swapping process works with the fixed bias... Do I need to find "mesa-branded" winged C's to be able to use them in my Electra Dyne?... do Mesa winged c's even exist?! Or can I just pop the ones I already have in there?

2. I'm currently using a footswitch to turn the reverb on and off when needed. Does muting the reverb with the footswitch have the same effect as bypassing the reverb all together with that little switch on the back?

3. Has anyone found that different pre amp tubes have improved this amp at all? At the moment I can't imagine it getting much better, but if there's more on offer, then I'll certainly try it!


Thanks in advance,

Xan

 

[tubby_cosmos]

1. I haven't done this myself, so I can't speak from experience, but I do know that other ED owners have tried non-Mesa tubes and had no problem. However, by putting in non-Mesa tubes, you void the MB warranty, which you might not want to do since you just got the amp. Mesa tubes are tested for the fixed bias settings of their amps, so they guarantee that they won't do any harm. However, since other tubes may not match those settings, there's a risk they may run too hot and cause some damage. Guess it depends on how much of a risk taker you are!

2. A good way to test this would be to set the volume (gain) to maximum and compare the reverb on/off sounds at low volume (bedroom volumes <75 dB). When you play with the reverb on, you'll probably get a really harsh, muddy distortion that sounds awful. Reverb off, distortion should sound a lot better. Compare that to your switch settings.

3. Unless your preamp tubes are particularly noisy, I wouldn't suggest fooling around with them that much, since you can sometimes cause more problems than good by fooling with preamp tubes. That said, people do swear by certain preamp tubes, so if you have a gem of a 12AX7, stick it in a couple different positions and see if it helps! I had preamp tubes when I first got the amp, and changing them cleared a lot of things up, but I didn't notice a huge tonal difference.