5881's in my MKIVb

[ursinus]

Well, I had these in the boxes for a while and I finally decided to try them in my MKIVb. I recently did a jam session with the MKIV with 6v6's and I loved them, but I wanted to explore other possibilities as well. Today the family went to visit some relatives and I got to stay home alone to practice and experiment at stage volume. At first hearing, I was reminded of the Cornford grind in R2 channel, but with nice sustain and smoothness that comes naturally from the MKIV. The cleans were much cleaner than the 6v6's, but not quite as warm and bubbly. I played Hendrix's "wind cries mary" and was quite inpressed that it nailed that sound quite well with my Suhr standard with 60lp pups in it. The lead channel seemed to change tone the most. It was much more midrangey than with the 6V6's. The 6V6's sound more "scooped" in the mids than the 5881's. The one thing I liked but didn't necessarily miss was the headroom you get with 5881's running in full power mode. Verdict: I like these tubes, they are the Mesa "yellow" 10 5881's, and I look forward to trying them out at my next jam session. Hopefully, soon, I'll get to record with them and see what the mic "hears"

I am sure glad we can experiment with tubes......the possibilities truly are amazing!