2 new questions - Trem-o-verb head power tubes and serial #

[guitarprof]

Is there a power tube option to limit power a bit so that I cna push the volume and thus the tubes?

I am running 6L6 and 5U4G

2 - how does one read the serial # (year, prod #, etc....)

Phil

 

[bunyok23]

you can take out a pair of power tubes. either inner or outer. and also remove one 5u4g rectifier. that will cut power in half. but remember it will only cut 3db. and its not super noticable

 

[Russ]

The serial should be on a sticker on the chassis. Then the year should be labelled inside the chassis in sharpie as inspection dates. The latest date inside is the year of the amp.

 

[guitarprof]

No other indications I can see other then serial #.

Is there no possibility of using power tubes with greater impedance (for lack of a better word) to take the power 'edge' off?

Phil

 

[Russ]

To get to the inpection dating you would have to remove the chassis and look insde it at the PCB's and the chassis itself.

 

[Russ]

You could try a different color grade than the one you are currently using. This will give more clean headroom and later power tube distortion if that is what you mean. If you don't want to use Mesa tubes you can try GT's. Their similar ratings would be their hardness of 4-7 with the early breakup occurring near 4 and the higher headroom towards 7.

 

[jbird]

I would'nt look into altering the tubes or the head, it is what it is! Why not consider the air your moving, or not! 4x12 > 2x12 :idea: Isolation box :idea: A speaker emulator with headphone out :idea: I'm not a fan of any type of hotplate, but it is an option! :idea: You never really stated why/what your going for here, but a 5 watt amp blasting it's tube(s) is gonna drive the wife/kids/dog/cat out of the living room anyways, sooo?? :?:

 

[guitarprof]

No - looking for a way to push the tubes a bit more without blowing out the front end. Most mid-big venues mic the crap out of you. I want to push the tubes more without overpowering.

PH

 

[dap9]

Taking the middle or outer tubes out is a waste of time. As mentioned above, it barely makes a difference. I tried it and wasn't impressed then even had my amp guy do a mod so I can just flick a switch. He didn't charge me much, but it wasn't worth it. All I notice is that there's less headroom on the clean settings w/ 2 tubes. I DON'T notice the amp breaking up any sooner.

Still love the amp, though! But it would be cool to have that feature that they're putting on the newer MESAs.

 

[vitor gracie]

Ok. I proudly own a Trem O Verb...that said...they are way loud, period.
To get it to "push" I have to do the following...

Set the "Bold/Spongy" switch on the back to Spongy
Set the Rectifier to "Tube"
Turn on the FX Loop (with out anything in the loop)
Turn the channel volume up (1/2 way)
set the master volume on the front of the amp to the desired volume.

If you like you can also remove a couple of tubes but, yeah...I dont do that either.

This gets the amp working very hard and pushes the preamp a little. The loop acts like a master volume controll to get some preamp level gain.

Lastly and most importantly...
The BLUES mode is high gain "pushed tone" HEAVEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Learn to use this channel and it will fulfill all earthly desires (well almost all, my wife takes care of the rest for me

The blues setting with all that stuff set as described will be extreamly loose and spongy. You have to back off on the gain because it will just flop out. There is a major amount of controll on that setting. The knobs do crazy stuff. Turning things up all the way on that mode yeilds gnarly sounds so you have to be carefull. You can get away with the "smile" curve on the normal "red recto" mode but the blues mode does drastic stuff.

I mainly use that for leads and if I'm recording solos. I lean heavy on the orange channel with some red channel stuff for rythms.

The TOV takes a long time to nail good sounds. (took me years of live and studio use for me) but once you get em, there ain't no amp currently mass produced that gets those sounds.
ENJOY... -Def

 

[RR]

Taking the middle or outer tubes out is a waste of time. As mentioned above, it barely makes a difference. I tried it and wasn't impressed then even had my amp guy do a mod so I can just flick a switch. He didn't charge me much, but it wasn't worth it. All I notice is that there's less headroom on the clean settings w/ 2 tubes. I DON'T notice the amp breaking up any sooner.

Still love the amp, though! But it would be cool to have that feature that they're putting on the newer MESAs.

Exactly, you are not necessarily going to get the 'drive' sound of lower power guitar amp when removing two of the power stage tubes or even 100/60 watt switch amps. Amps sounds best at full.

The output transformer is still a 'clean' 100 watt output transformer. A lot of the lower power guitar amp mojo tone not only comes from driving the power stage tubes but from the output transformer.