Any Success Using THD Yellow Jackets in a Dyne

[map]

Hi all,
I was really hoping we would see a low power version of the Electra Dyne, maybe powered by 6V6 of El84 tubes. Didn't happen so I'm curious to know if there is anyone who has used Yellow Jackets in their Dyne for an extended period of time. If so, what are your impressions? I am looking for a sound somewhere in between the LSS clean sound and the Rectoverb channel 1 set to clean. Dark but defined with a great reverb. I think this will be hard to accomplish with the El84's but the LSS sounds great so I thought I would ask. Thanks in advance for your comments.

 

[J.J]

Hi, I have not tried any yellow jackets in the ED, but one thing I know is that it will still be very loud. 6V6 or El84 tubes will only drop the power in 45 watt mode by about half. For giging that may just work out well, but for at home not so good. Both my 5:25 (5 watt mode) and Vox AC4 are way to loud to crank at home.

Not being big on attenuation the only thing that does work for me is a very low efficiency speaker. What I have is a very old Fane PA speaker which not only offers the low efficiency , but sound really good. The volume reduction is about 10 dB

Tone wise it would seem that the yellow jackets would pull away from what you want rather than getting closer. Does the ED with the stock tubes or El34 tubes have the tone you want ?

 

[YellowJacket]

Yellow Jackets are not suitable as an attenuation device. They are more of a fully reversible tube mod for high power amps. I like running Yellow Jackets + my Dual Rectifier through a greenback 2 x 12 which is both lower efficiency and low wattage handling. EL-84s and Greenbacks pair up really nicely. The Yellow Jackets in general sound brighter with an enhanced midrange and less bass. They do an astounding clean tone but the crunch is not so modern or aggressive. One thing they will let you do is reach power tube clip at lower volumes so if you find you like them, it may be worth it, at least for gigging applications.
As for volume with preamp generated tones, if I run 2 EL-34s with the variac set to spongy, the amp is actually the same if not a bit quieter than the Yellow Jackets.

 

[map]

Thanks to both of you. First, I very much like the tone of the ED with 6L6 tubes. I would love for Mesa to do something similar with a 6V6. I agree that the el84 will make it brighter, but it will also allow a little breakup/saturation at a much lower db level than a 6L6. That is sort of what I was thinking. Your suggestion concerning a low efficiency speaker is well considered. I will have to try it. I ended up purchasing a used Stiletto Ace head this week end, and while I miss the reverb and single channel layout, I really like the amp. It has great clean tones and I am having great success using a Blackstone Appliances pedal with it. I may still purchase an ED down the road, but I decided that trying to transform it into something it wasn't really designed for was ultimately going to be unsuccessful. I just really like the sound of the ED.

 

[YellowJacket]

If you want power tube breakup at lower volumes, you should look into London Power's Power Scaling technology. In layman's terms, you have an knob added to the amp which allows you to dial in 'power amp distortion'.