my tube journey

[guitardude05]

so i bought the mark iv and it had 3 mesa boogie and 2 sovtek preamp tubes. i bought a kit from dougstubes hoping to improve the tone a few months ago. his "preamp cocktail". i just never got the tone to what i wanted it to be, and i thought it was my pickups or i needed a cab... but i was wrong.

today i switched around the preamp tubes, a tung sol was originally in v3 of my amp, and i put it in v1. wow... utter ****. no wonder the lead channel sounded like ***, this tube is terrible in a mark iv. there was huge loss of gain and saturation using this tube and i never knew it. next i had a jj in v2 and swapped it to v1. its decent on lead, but i switch to R1 and WTF, its buzzing and distorting the channel very slightly. eww, piece of junk! so i ended up with mesa boogie 12ax7s in v3 and v4, a sovtek in v1 and sovek lps in v5, and a penta labs in v2.

SOO much better. the gain is there and its not painful and ice picky to the ears, i dont need an overdrive pedal anymore. this leads me to believe that i should buy and use only mesa boogie 12ax7s. i cant believe i went so long with such a crappy tone. its not completely the tone im after, but ****, ive been missing out. :shock: maybe this will help some of you decide when it comes time for tube swap.

 

[JimmyB]

Sounds like your Tung Sol was one of many from a bad batch. The reissue TS's are either raved about or ragged on, not much in between. Sadly, New Sensor's quality control leaves a lot to be desired.

I'd heard almost entirely praise for 'em, but the first two I got were popped in V1 of my DC-5 and... ouch... harsh, grainy... sounded like bad 8-bit digital audio from some cheesy 80's video game!

Back to The Tube Store, and Jon grabbed a pair from a different batch (the originals were May 07, the replacements July 07)... back to the DC-5 and voila... the best cleans I've ever heard from an amp that wasn't an original blackface Fender... crisp, punchy, full, warm... all good. :mrgreen:

Now, I've recently acquired a 'project' Mk IV, and you know that a "good" Tung Sol reissue was crammed into V1 asap... in spite of the slightly larger glass envelope of recent production versions!

Send that Tung Sol back and complain about it... it likely won't make much difference in the long run, but it juuuuuuuust might... and when you get a good one (like most but not all TS reissues) it'll put a smile on yer face.