I did some experimenting today with new tubes - I found a very good UK supplier of tubes who allowed me to buy a load of pre-amp tubes on sale or return so I could try them out and see which ones I liked!
Just so you know, I was looking to tighten up the low end as well as experiment and try other tubes to see what I thought.
So the first thing is I put 4 JJ 6L6GC power amp tubes in (pulling 2 - as it's a triple rec). These were immediately better than the stock tubes (the stock tubes have been in there for about 18 months). More rounded, less whooly and clearer overall.
For preamp tubes, I had these to play with:
JJ ECC83s
JJ ECC803s
Tung-Sol 12AX7
Shuguang 12AX7B
Originally I had 3 Harma STR ECC83 Cryo valves from Watford valves and 2 original stock mesa tubes.
I found the Tung-Sol valves to be my least favourite - high in noise and not enough gain. When I turned the gain up I got so much noise I didn't like them at all.
The ECC803s weren't noisey - they had a nice crunch to them, but not enough gain and weren't smooth enough for my liking.
My favourites were the JJ ECC83s - the were nicely rounded and had a nice smooth gain - I only had two of them in v1 and v2 position.
The Shuguangs were also quite good, second favourite to the JJ ECC83s.
The Harma cryo valves were the brightest and sounded quite compressed, but mixed in with the other tubes they added some bite.
My favourite combination was:
v1 - JJ ECC83
v2 - JJ ECC83
v3 - Harma
v4 - Shuguang
v5 - Harma
Most of my testing was done with Channel 3 modern as I use that the most, but the above combination made a really nice improvement to my ch1 and ch2 as well. My clean and crunch sounds were much better as well - cleaner, more rounded without sounding harsh.
Just wanted to post my feedback - I'm not recommending my findings as everybody has their preferences!
however I can wholeheartedly recommend trying out different valves if you are still searching for the sound in your head and tweaking your amp controls isn't finding it! I'm even more surprised how much difference different tubes in different positions, and different combinations of brands made such a difference. For example some combinations caused a lot of feedback even at low gain settings.
Anyways I can definitely recommend Nic at http://www.voc-rock-guitars.com for people in the UK, who supplied the new tubes to me at a really good price and also spent some time discussing it over email with me.
Just so you know, I was looking to tighten up the low end as well as experiment and try other tubes to see what I thought.
So the first thing is I put 4 JJ 6L6GC power amp tubes in (pulling 2 - as it's a triple rec). These were immediately better than the stock tubes (the stock tubes have been in there for about 18 months). More rounded, less whooly and clearer overall.
For preamp tubes, I had these to play with:
JJ ECC83s
JJ ECC803s
Tung-Sol 12AX7
Shuguang 12AX7B
Originally I had 3 Harma STR ECC83 Cryo valves from Watford valves and 2 original stock mesa tubes.
I found the Tung-Sol valves to be my least favourite - high in noise and not enough gain. When I turned the gain up I got so much noise I didn't like them at all.
The ECC803s weren't noisey - they had a nice crunch to them, but not enough gain and weren't smooth enough for my liking.
My favourites were the JJ ECC83s - the were nicely rounded and had a nice smooth gain - I only had two of them in v1 and v2 position.
The Shuguangs were also quite good, second favourite to the JJ ECC83s.
The Harma cryo valves were the brightest and sounded quite compressed, but mixed in with the other tubes they added some bite.
My favourite combination was:
v1 - JJ ECC83
v2 - JJ ECC83
v3 - Harma
v4 - Shuguang
v5 - Harma
Most of my testing was done with Channel 3 modern as I use that the most, but the above combination made a really nice improvement to my ch1 and ch2 as well. My clean and crunch sounds were much better as well - cleaner, more rounded without sounding harsh.
Just wanted to post my feedback - I'm not recommending my findings as everybody has their preferences!
however I can wholeheartedly recommend trying out different valves if you are still searching for the sound in your head and tweaking your amp controls isn't finding it! I'm even more surprised how much difference different tubes in different positions, and different combinations of brands made such a difference. For example some combinations caused a lot of feedback even at low gain settings.
Anyways I can definitely recommend Nic at http://www.voc-rock-guitars.com for people in the UK, who supplied the new tubes to me at a really good price and also spent some time discussing it over email with me.
