Roth
Member
I bought my Triple rectifier brand new in March. Have had Mesa send new tubes to replace ALL six of the 6L6 pwr tubes and 1 rectifier tube. It has been such a pain in the @ss considering this is a brand new amp and I have taken very good care of it. The preamp tubes seem to work just fine, but problems with the pwr tubes. Mesa said nothing is wrong with the amp.... its just a bad shipment of tubes from earlier this year.
Obviously I have lost faith in the stock Mesa tubes, so I decided to trash the Mesa tubes, and I talked to Bob at Eurotubes and he recommended several replacement options and here is the result that I decided on:
I replaced all the Mesa 12ax7 preamp tubes (my preference) with some hand picked high(er) gain JJ 12ax7 in V1,V2,V3 and a standard for V4, and a balanced in V5. Bob hand picked and tested these for me.
I replaced the Mesa 6L6 pwr tubes with JJ 6V6 tubes.
I replaced the Mesa 5U4 Rectifier tubes with JJ GZ34.
The amp is run in EL34 bias and Rectifier mode. It simply is beyond words. Channel 1 (which sucked before) has so much warmth, and clarity now. Channel 3 absolutely screams. It has so MUCH warmth and tone that it is unbelieveable. Been running them with NO problems whatsoever, and the sound is THAT much better! I wish Mesa shipped it just like this. It cost me $165.00.... and worth EVERY penny.
BTW - I took one of the original stock Mesa 12ax7 and put it into my Marshall Valvestate Head in place of the Marshall ECC 83, and it really improved the sound of the Marshall.
Obviously I have lost faith in the stock Mesa tubes, so I decided to trash the Mesa tubes, and I talked to Bob at Eurotubes and he recommended several replacement options and here is the result that I decided on:
I replaced all the Mesa 12ax7 preamp tubes (my preference) with some hand picked high(er) gain JJ 12ax7 in V1,V2,V3 and a standard for V4, and a balanced in V5. Bob hand picked and tested these for me.
I replaced the Mesa 6L6 pwr tubes with JJ 6V6 tubes.
I replaced the Mesa 5U4 Rectifier tubes with JJ GZ34.
The amp is run in EL34 bias and Rectifier mode. It simply is beyond words. Channel 1 (which sucked before) has so much warmth, and clarity now. Channel 3 absolutely screams. It has so MUCH warmth and tone that it is unbelieveable. Been running them with NO problems whatsoever, and the sound is THAT much better! I wish Mesa shipped it just like this. It cost me $165.00.... and worth EVERY penny.
BTW - I took one of the original stock Mesa 12ax7 and put it into my Marshall Valvestate Head in place of the Marshall ECC 83, and it really improved the sound of the Marshall.