mesa roadster - full re-tube recommendations

[grantcooper2]

(sorry in advance for the long post )

I am looking for advice on completely re-tubing my mesa roadster head. Right now I have the stock tubes in with the exception of the JJ GZ34s for the rectifier tubes, which I am keeping.

Long story short, I looked into the whole NOS thing and with a lot of help from jdurso, and his advice from shredd, I ended up with this:

POWERAMP:
JJ KT77s

PREAMP:
V1- Sylvania 12ax7 short-plate
V2- Siemens ecc83 long-plate
V3- GE 12ax7a Long plate
V4- Mullard 12at7
V5- GE 12at7wc 6201
V6- Matsushita 12ax7a

The recorded tones were cool but in a live/jamming/band situation it was a complete sonic mess. It was EXTREMELY muddy and lacked note definition and clarity at high volumes. And I find the KT77s, for me, don't really work too well with the stock tubes, especially jamming at high volumes...kind of harsh sounding to my ears.

SO, I don't really want to go down the whole NOS road again and I would prefer looking into just getting a kit from eurotubes, or mix and match from dougstubes. I am mostly interested in getting some 6L6s again as I find them a lot warmer and less harsh than the KTs...though I have those for recording still anyways.

This is what I am thinking for powertubes, one of these quads:

- TAD 6L6GC-STR
- Ruby 6L6GCMSTR (recommended by doug)
- JJ 6L6GC
- I would also be interested in the JJ KT66/KT88 combo possibly.

And for preamp tubes I am not sure but this sounds interesting:

"Mesa Roadster & Trem-O-verb Personal Fave Front End
Price: 88.50
Description: We start the front end out with a long plate gold pin ECC803S for V1 followed by a gold pin ECC83S for V2 and a hand picked high gain ECC83S in V3. Then we use two standard ECC83S’s in V4 and V5 followed by a balanced ECC83S in V6 for the phase inverter."

Or some combination close to what Doug recommends:

"V1 - Tung-Sol reissue 12AX7
V2 - High Gain JJ 12AX7
V3 - Penta Labs 12AX7
V4 - Penta Labs 12AX7
V5 - Shuguang 12AX7C9
V6 - Sovtek 12AX7LPS"

For tone, I want my cleans to stay as they are, or get better...not worse. I want my distortion channels to be smoother, tighter, less muddy, and less fizzy.

The tones I have are good, especially the cleans, and I am getting close to what is in my head and by all means I feel that this is the right amp for me, I just want to make it perfect and I am pretty sure the right set of preamp/power tubes will do it.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

thanks,
-grant

 

[grantcooper2]

apparently shredd replied here, but the post isn't showing up

 

[shreddsix]

I did post something.. But here's what happened.

Late last night someone had posted some porn on the forum. I joked around with it,laughed it off.

But I had an under-aged kid (my cousin, who's 11) staying with me this weekend. Early this morning, he runs across my posts, and starts browsing the forums. Well, the porn peddler posted porn in EVERY forum on here. And the kid was looking through the forums.

So great. Now my 11-year-old cousin gets to go back home and tell mommy and daddy how he saw a bunch of naked pictures and vaginas and boobs while he was over here. Sweet! :evil:

Needless to say, I got pissed and decided to spam the spammer with a simple message which read like this:

"Honestly, I hope you get arrested. All kidding aside there are under-aged kids who visit this forum."

I posted it underneath every one of the scumbag's posts. The forum mods thought I was a spammer too and deleted my account. It's cool though. I really don't care. But I do hope the mods actually go after the scumbag. The pics were pretty hard-core.

 

[shreddsix]

It was actually quite a long post. So let me see if I can simplify it.

The setup you're describing is a package I used to sell as a "Classic Rock" package. It's not meant to be used for modern rock or metal. Using a Sylvania in V1 was a recommendation of mine for people who used less gain in their gain channel to achieve more of a brown sound.

The first thing I notice, is that you bought a Siemens LP. Although I did sell Jdurso a Siemens long-plate tube, it's not a typical recommendation of mine for V2. I usually recommend a Mullard, Amperex, or sometimes Matsushita, all short-plate versions.

But that particular Siemens was a pimp tube, and I sold it to Jdurso along with a Mullard if I remember. I didn't sell him just those tubes. He did his own rolling and decided he liked the Classic Rock sound, which is how I always described it.

My guess is that you're getting a lot of bass tone with your setup.

So my previous suggestion was to try switching your V1-V2-V6 around before giving up on Nos.

V1- MATSUSHITA
V2- SYLVANIA
V6- SIEMENS

V1- SYLVANIA
V2- MATSUSHITA
V6- SIEMENS

And see if one of those scenarios suits you better. There are obviously other combos you can try too.

V1- SYLVANIA
V2- MATSUSHITA
V3- SIEMENS
V4- GE
V5- GE 6201
V6- MULLARD 12AT7

putting a 12at7 in v6 can help tame the amp into a more focused area.

If you're looking to get rid of mud. You'll probably be disappointed going back to modern tubes. I would bet my life that you can get a better sound with your NOS tubes than a modern package. Think outside the box a little. And if you're still experiencing too much bass tone, then one RCA 12ax7a and maybe a Mullard ecc83 should certainly tame that.

My advice would be to do a little shifting around with what you have, get close to what you like, then get back to me.

 

[grantcooper2]

It was actually quite a long post. So let me see if I can simplify it.

The setup you're describing is a package I used to sell as a "Classic Rock" package. It's not meant to be used for modern rock or metal. Using a Sylvania in V1 was a recommendation of mine for people who used less gain in their gain channel to achieve more of a brown sound.

The first thing I notice, is that you bought a Siemens LP. Although I did sell Jdurso a Siemens long-plate tube, it's not a typical recommendation of mine for V2. I usually recommend a Mullard, Amperex, or sometimes Matsushita, all short-plate versions.

But that particular Siemens was a pimp tube, and I sold it to Jdurso along with a Mullard if I remember. I didn't sell him just those tubes. He did his own rolling and decided he liked the Classic Rock sound, which is how I always described it.

My guess is that you're getting a lot of bass tone with your setup.

So my previous suggestion was to try switching your V1-V2-V6 around before giving up on Nos.

V1- MATSUSHITA
V2- SYLVANIA
V6- SIEMENS

V1- SYLVANIA
V2- MATSUSHITA
V6- SIEMENS

And see if one of those scenarios suits you better. There are obviously other combos you can try too.

V1- SYLVANIA
V2- MATSUSHITA
V3- SIEMENS
V4- GE
V5- GE 6201
V6- MULLARD 12AT7

putting a 12at7 in v6 can help tame the amp into a more focused area.

If you're looking to get rid of mud. You'll probably be disappointed going back to modern tubes. I would bet my life that you can get a better sound with your NOS tubes than a modern package. Think outside the box a little. And if you're still experiencing too much bass tone, then one RCA 12ax7a and maybe a Mullard ecc83 should certainly tame that.

My advice would be to do a little shifting around with what you have, get close to what you like, then get back to me.

dude thanks a tonne for the info/advice. and that sucks about your cousin seeing those photos, to his parents it makes you look like the bad guy...hopefully he just forgets about...kids often do.

now for the nos tubes, there is just one problem, I sold most of them already (probably stupid) I honestly did try almost every combination I could think of and it just wasn't working for me.

Now I do still have the mullard 12at7, 2 x MATSUSHITA's, 1 x sylvannia black long plate, 1 x 3M V.STRONG 12AT7. and 1 Raytheon 12at7 . So if I could work with these I would be willing to maybe pick up 1-3 other NOS tubes to give it a go again. But I was kinda hoping to just grab a kit and forget about it (so I could stop fucking around with my amp so much and just play the **** thing!)

 

[212Mavguy]

Shredd, I have empathy for ya. I was also upset about the porn spammer, also reported, and recommended prosecution as well for the exact same reasons you did. You made some excellent recommendations to Grant.

For Grant:

Don't expect instant gratification in tube rolling for such a complex amp design. You will find, however, that your time and money will be well spent. Peace.