Blue Angel 6V6 side comparison

[phyrexia]

Would the sound of a Blue Angel with 6V6s be closer to a Princetony/Deluxe (Blackface) sound or closer to a Tweed Deluxe sound?

Thanks,
Victor

 

[RocksOff]

I think it sounds closer to a blackface deluxe.

 

[Murphy Slaw]

A Blackface Deluxe is 22 watts, right?

Is a tweed deluxe 12? (I'm not sure about the tweed).

With the Blue Angel only getting 15 watts Class A out of the 2;6V6's, it starts breaking up pretty soon. I know a blackface Deluxe with stay clean WAY past my Blue Angel on the 2:6V6 setting. But, the Deluxe was designed to stay clean, and the Blue Angel was designed to break up.

As for tone, I'd say this will have a lot to do with single coil/humbucker.

Murph.

 

[Monsta-Tone]

It would be really easy to change the Bias point of the 6V6's in a Blue Angel to a little hotter setting, or even add an adjustable Bias that could be switched in. This way, you could have the early breakup, or more clean headroom at the flick of a switch.

 

[nemesys]

Is a tweed deluxe 12? (I'm not sure about the tweed).

A tweed Deluxe is cathode biased, so it'll depend on the tolerance of the bias resistor, which is supposed to be 250 ohm, but can drift like any resistor. I think they were originally rated at 15 watts, but they can range anywhere from 10 to just short of 20, depending on the bias, how stiff the rectifier tube is, the quality of the power tubes, etc.

 

[nemesys]

It would be really easy to change the Bias point of the 6V6's in a Blue Angel to a little hotter setting, or even add an adjustable Bias that could be switched in. This way, you could have the early breakup, or more clean headroom at the flick of a switch.

That would definitely be a cool mod, but it wouldn't quite get you to both Blackface and Tweed Deluxes in a single amp. The Tweed has a simpler preamp than the Blackface, but you could probably use something in between the two and get reasonably close. The driver stage and power amp are where the major differences lie, though -- the Tweed uses a split-load phase inverter and a cathode-biased push-pull power stage, where the Blackface uses a long-tailed-pair phase inverter and a fixed-bias push-pull power stage. The Blackface also has a fixed amount of negative feedback, where the Tweed has none.

Such an amp would be doable, I think. Perhaps it could be done along the lines of the Maverick, with two channels, one for Tweed mode and one for Blackface mode, where the power amp is reconfigured when you switch channels. Have the rectifier switchable between tube and solid-state as well, and you would have an amp which could nail a couple of classic 6V6 tones pretty well (the fact that there are some great-sounding new production 6V6s wouldn't hurt anything, either). Mesa does a great job with amps with tweakable power stages and all that, I think they could do an amazing job with something like this. I know I'd buy one.

 

[lyman]

Such an amp would be doable, I think. Perhaps it could be done along the lines of the Maverick, with two channels, one for Tweed mode and one for Blackface mode, where the power amp is reconfigured when you switch channels.

not to derail the thread, as it is already interesting, but what exactly goes on in the maverick's power section when channels are switched?

 

[nemesys]

In the Maverick, the bias, plate voltage, and negative feedback, and maybe some other things (I haven't seen a schematic) are changed when the channels are switched, so that each channel has the optimum power stage configuration for its preamp. I don't know the details of the changes, just an overview -- someone else on here might know more.

 

[waxnsteel]

Definitely closer to tweed, and more so when overdriven if you're using speakers more consistent with tweeds. With the right speaker, you can get sounds closer to that of the 18 watt marshalls, but typically with a lot thicker mid range. But it still sounds like the Blue Angel and nothing else.

At least on my amp, if I set it to just the point where it starts breaking up with 4 EL 84s, and leave all the other settings the same, but switch to 6v6s and route the speakers to the proper impedance output, it's breaking up more than with the EL84s. There's a lot of flex in this amp, and if you wanted you could go from clean to dirty by altering your picking attack, or the volume knob, without altering the output volume wildly.