New here, just got a Tremoverb!

[Jinx]

Hello boogiemeisters! I am new here so i'll just say hello!

I just got a Mesa Boogie Tremoverb head in the mail today (won it off ebay for 999).. I haven't had a chance to fire her up yet, all the tubes were not put in... so i have a few questions..

1. Of the smallest tubes there is one section that has an aluminum ring around it, it says to use a low noise tube, but the tubes i got with this head, none of them say low noise, do i just use a normal 12Ax7 (or is it 127xA? I dont know, i'm new to tubes, and am not at home with it now).. I just put one of the 6 in there.. Also some of them said fender on them, others did not, but they all said made in russia so i asume its okay? which leads me to question 2..

2. Do all tubes need to be the same brand? the LARgest tubes (from what i've been reading these are the rectifiers?) and 2nd largest, all have MESA on them.. and the 2nd largest appear to be EL34's, the amp has the bias switch set to EL34's , so i think i am doing everything right..

3. Also that tube that goes into that small aluminum slot, doesnt seem to get as low as the rest, i can just barely still see the teeth a tad bit, and the rest i cant really see their feet.. is this normal? Will i be okay? Will the amp explode if i dont have it seated properly?

4. Any way to figure out the date of my amp from the serial? Its in fairly good shape, has a detachable power cord, has a circular blue power light cap (not a gem shaped, like i thought? maybe thats just fenders?), has round knobs with dots (not little points).. and the serial is R-016xxx

Hoping to try this baby out tonight.. I only have one cab tho, its a 4x12 Marshall, with 25watt celestions, I dont know their impediance, but i think each speaker is 16ohms, does that mean i should use 16? I thought i tested the jack on the cab with a multimeter once tho and it said 8ohms.. I'm not really sure and i dont want to fry anything..

any help, suggestions, or idea's or anything in general would be helpful.. I will post pictures soon if anyone would like to see

 

[Platypus]

Hello boogiemeisters! I am new here so i'll just say hello!

I just got a Mesa Boogie Tremoverb head in the mail today (won it off ebay for 999).. I haven't had a chance to fire her up yet, all the tubes were not put in... so i have a few questions..

Congrats

1. Of the smallest tubes there is one section that has an aluminum ring around it, it says to use a low noise tube, but the tubes i got with this head, none of them say low noise, do i just use a normal 12Ax7 (or is it 127xA? I dont know, i'm new to tubes, and am not at home with it now).. I just put one of the 6 in there.. Also some of them said fender on them, others did not, but they all said made in russia so i asume its okay? which leads me to question 2..

Go to Mesa's site and grab the owner's manual. I believe the preamp section of the tremoverb uses 6 12AX7's with V4 being FX, V5 being reverb and V6 being phase inverter (off top of my head, get the manual to be sure) As far as preamp tubes go, mixing brands is just fine

2. Do all tubes need to be the same brand? the LARgest tubes (from what i've been reading these are the rectifiers?) and 2nd largest, all have MESA on them.. and the 2nd largest appear to be EL34's, the amp has the bias switch set to EL34's , so i think i am doing everything right..

As far as power tubes, you want to run them matched. V1 and V4 go together, V2 and V3 go together. Since all your EL34's say Mesa it is safe to assume that they are probably a matched quad and you can just pop them in. If you were to buy other tubes, you would generally want to buy the same brand for each pair, and DEFINETLY want to make sure they are matched. The two largest tubes are most likely the 5U4B rectifiers, just pop those puppies in too. You are correct about the bias switch, always match the bias switch to the kind of power tube you are using.

3. Also that tube that goes into that small aluminum slot, doesnt seem to get as low as the rest, i can just barely still see the teeth a tad bit, and the rest i cant really see their feet.. is this normal? Will i be okay? Will the amp explode if i dont have it seated properly?

I'm really not sure what you mean by this one.. consult the manual definetly. You can do some damage if you're not set up right.

4. Any way to figure out the date of my amp from the serial? Its in fairly good shape, has a detachable power cord, has a circular blue power light cap (not a gem shaped, like i thought? maybe thats just fenders?), has round knobs with dots (not little points).. and the serial is R-016xxx

Call Mesa on this one, unless there is some other way I don't know about.

Hoping to try this baby out tonight.. I only have one cab tho, its a 4x12 Marshall, with 25watt celestions, I dont know their impediance, but i think each speaker is 16ohms, does that mean i should use 16? I thought i tested the jack on the cab with a multimeter once tho and it said 8ohms.. I'm not really sure and i dont want to fry anything..

If the cab is indeed 16 ohms then you run it out of the 16ohm slot on your Mesa. I would look up your cab model online and get the rating if you are unsure. Does it say anywhere along the back?

any help, suggestions, or idea's or anything in general would be helpful.. I will post pictures soon if anyone would like to see

Read your manual carefully and completely Not trying to imply you don't know what you're doing but Mesa's are a different animal altogether. One piece of advice since you mentioned you didn't know much about tubes... never ever turn on your Mesa without a load attached to it (plugged into a cab, power soak, etc).. you'll turn it into a hand grenade.

 

[Jinx]

All good info!! The manual i got was just a printup from the previous owner.. It doesnt seem to say anything about putting tubes in it anywhere i can see.. It does have a diagram of what goes where.. Which is what I followed.. I didnt pay attention to see if the 4 (power?) tubes were matched or not..

Also yes i know to never turn the head on without a cab attached (I actually have a JCM-800 but just never touched the tubes myself, so still consider myself a newbie)..

The cab has NO markings whatsoever.. it has a small round metal plate on the back with a serial number and that is it.. On Harmony-central i think some peoples told me its from 1968-1970, but i am a tad skeptic about that cuz its in prestine condition for that age.. but i do have pictures of the backs of the speakers, definately celestions.. and definately 25 watt.. I just dont know the ohms for sure.. and i dont want to hurt either the amp or the cab, is there any safe setting i can use without knowing?

I've used the jcm800 on 8 and 16 and it didnt seem to kill anything.. So i'm not sure what to think.. what do i get if i dont have it set correctly? loss of power? danger?

 

[Jinx]

fired her up! seems to be all in order, tremo works, (doesnt seem to go very fast even all the way up).. reverb works tho i get HELLA feedback when using the reverb, but that would be my lack of settings, i'm in an apartment so i couldn't turn the volume up to anything even remotely close to approaching 'hearable' so the distortion stuff all sounded ULTRA fizzy cruddy, but i realize without power tube distortion there backing up, its just not gonna sound good so i'm not complaining..

The only thing i'm concerned about is the treble nob on the clean channel, when i turn it up it seems to work okay, then when it hits about 12 or 1 it kind of functions wierd, where anything past that like drops the treble really fast, then if i go a little further past, say 3pm, it' add's a bit more treble, but it 'seems' to me that 12 is the highest treble i can get, there's a little scratchyness to it, so it could be the pot i guess? I guess everything else works okay tho? So i dont think i got sold a bad amp... its definately functional, and i cant wait till saterday to try it out at practice.