Spicing up my tube setup (Mark IV)

[Bshizzle]

I have a Shortbody Combo that I retubed a couple months ago. I put 5 Tun Sol 12ax7 and 4 Sovtek 6L6.

I keep reading about people putting mixes of different tubes in the preamp section. Mainly V1 being an important one for the gain.

Don't get me wrong I like the Tung Sols a lot, I just want to know if anyone has any suggestions of one or two tubes I could add to specific sockets to improve my sound for High Gain sounds.

As I said I am going for High Gain, I use a Mahogany Les Paul, and my amp has the EV blackshadow or EVM i guess it is.

I'm looking to get it more aggressive sounding, but I want it to be tight and focused.

Thanks.

Also I am getting ready to put the MKIV into a headshell and connect to a closed back 2x12, will this also contribute to the modern gain sounds?

 

[HalfDeaf]

I had a shortbody mkiv combo with EV speaker and did quite a bit of fiddling with preamp tubes. First off - the hard core tubesters out there will all tell you that NOS tubes are better, and they are right. However, I think the differences are not worth the price tag, and I stick to new production tubes.

As far as the new production tubes I tried in the mkiv, I found Tung-Sols to be the most aggressive. They have tons of gain, I only used them in V3, which is the lead gain tube for revA. If you have revB, try the Tung-Sols in V3 and V4, as the lead gain stages are split.

One thing I found is that having all high gain preamp tubes can sound bad, since the gains tend to swamp the tone as they cascade. Try replacing V2 with a new production "Mullard", JJ, or Svetlana, all which have lower gain than the Tung-Sols. Oddly enough, I liked the sound of the Chinese C9 in V1 the best - still lots of gain, but not as sharp as the Tung-Sol.

As fun as it is to swap preamp tubes, it may not get you much closer to the "modern" high gain sound. A better bet (short of buying a modern high gain amp) would be to get an EQ (pedal or rackmount) in the effects loop. Somewhere on the Boogie Board I recently saw a great write-up/tutorial on EQs - check it out. Almost all the pros use these, especially "modern" high gain players. Lamb of God and Chevelle use mkivs, so we know that it is at least theoretically possible to achieve their sound with a mkiv.

 

[Bshizzle]

Cool, I'll try to find that.

Before I got my mark iv i always wanted an EQ, but then it had the 5 band so i didnt think another would do much more. Maybe I should reconsider.

 

[EirikBrandal]

I've been looking for an EQ as well, but I want it bigger than just a 5 band. Thinking more like 15 band or something, just to be ubertweaky