Just bought a 2 channel triple recto!

[Stevenexp]

Opened it up and one of the rectifier tubes was broken! I have a set of 5ar4's on order and I hope those will be here soon. I was told that as long as I have silicon diode selected I can run the amp... I wanted to make sure nothing else was broken so I fired her up! Everything works fine but I was slightly disappointed with the sound... less gain then I expected and I didn't really like the overall sound so I checked out the tubes. Looks like new JJ 6l6's and what's this in the preamp???? all 5 are Jan Philips 12ax7wa??? My thoughts are that this is the reason for the disappointing tone. Thoughts?

 

[songrider]

I dont know about the Jan's but I never really liked the JJ's in the power stage of any of my mesa's.

I experiment with preamp tubes all the time but for the power section I only use Mesa tubes myself.

When it comes to the gain though that you can control with new preamp tubes (to a degree).

I always re-tube and check the bias on ANY used amp I get. That way I know for sure whats in there how old the tubes are and that its all running smooth.

 

[Stevenexp]

I thought most of your sound comes from the preamp and not the power tubes? Everyone tells me power tubes won't make much of a difference. And it's a mesa so the bias is fixed isn't it?

 

[songrider]

Yes it does have a fixed bias, but the tubes that are in it have to be within that operating range. So in other words... instead of the amp being able to adjust to any power tubes the bias is fixed and the tubes have to be adjusted to the amp.



The preamp tubes will control your gain...

 

[Core9]

Put a good set of Chinese pre-amp tubes in it and you should get you gain back.

 

[scottm]

yea both preamp and power tubes make a big difference to the sound. congrats on the amp - i love mine. just to let you know mine had its original tubes when i got it that were a spax7 in v1 (the one with the cover if its still there) and mesa russian-2 in the other positions. it had mesa str-430's in the power section but ive since only kept 2 in there and put 4 str-440's in to give a more aggressive tone. but i felt 6 str-440 were a little too harsh for my tastes. hope this helps.