Need some tube wisdom

[gaco]

I have a 2001 TR that I bought new. I had been playing a '78 Marshall 2203 for years and wanted to try something new. I have always struggled with the Mesa tone since the beginning. I never heard anyone around me talking about NOS. I used Groove Tubes in my Marshall in the 80's and 90's and thought they sounded really good though. I just put new 5u4gb EH and Mesa EL-34 STR 447 tubes in my TR which did improve the tone a bit, but still very lacking in clarity. I like alot of the 80's sounds such as Dokken, pre Black Album Metallica, 70's KIss, Hendrix, Alice in Chains, to name a few. I have stock 12ax7 russia 2 right now and want to upgrade. What would be the best thing to get starting with $100-$200 range?

 

[R_ADKINS80]

If thtose are the tones you are used to, and having owned the marshall for a long time.....I'd be messing with the raw settings on your amp. (it is a 3 channel isn't it?) If those are the tones you are going for then I'd stay away from the modern modes. I would also be playing in spongy mode as well. You are trying to get very vintage british tones out of a very modern american amp. You'll only get so close, but you are headed in the right direction with the EL34's and using the tube rectifiers.

 

[stokes]

Simply put,the "old" Marshall tone came from cranking the amp to ear splitting levels and pushing the output tubes into saturation,modern high gain amps with master volumes get the overdrive from the pre-amp tubes.Mesa amps have the output tubes biased so cold,you cant get them to saturate,and if you bias them hot enough to saturate it will only get close pushing the clean channel to the max,if you use the lead channel,you will still get that preamp distortion which,IMO, will sound like crap when added to the power tube saturation.I do like my Boogie amps biased on the hot side,but I generally use the clean channel more and to counteract the effect on the lead channel I use lower gain 5751's in the pre-amp.

 

[R_ADKINS80]

Yeah that just reinforces what I recomended. Using to Raw modes will get you the lowest possible preamp gain and power, causing you to need to crank it more. Mesas are biased rather cold in 6l6 mode but el34's are actually quite warm in them. He's on the right track he just needs to experiment more. I'd recomend a NOS RFT for your V1 preamp tube. You can get them for like $39 from www.thetubestore.com or you might find one for less on ebay but there's no guarentee it would be a good one.