tube decisions.. a good recommendation?

[learntofly]

I was recommended the following for re-tubing my mesa roadster head:

Hello,

I think the RUBY 6L6GCMSTR's would be best for death metal. In the preamp, we like a mix pf 12AX7's including a Tung-Sol reissue in the first spot, a high gain JJ in V2, chinese in V3 and V4 and V5 and a Sovtek LPS in V6. If you would like to freshen up the rectifier tubes, we have the Electro Harmonix or JAN Philips 5U4GB's. If you're using your bold switch, then the rectifiers dont matter.


I do play in a prog death metal band.. but we do have a lot of rocky/dream theater type parts and i'm not exactly totally after an all death metal tube.. but i do a ton of fast death metal riffing as well. Just something very versatile. I don't know much about tubes. I'm a big fan of john petrucci's tone [who isn't?] of course that's not achievable because i don't have his guitar, fingers, gear etc. but just something tight, huge, warm and crunchy would be great. any tube reccomendations? or should i go for what was told for me? anyone agree or disagree?

 

[scottm]

well ive personally had experience with RUBY 6L6GCMSTR after i found out from this board that Mesa rebrands those as str440. but after a comparison I found them to be quite different sounding to the str440s. even though you can see they look identical - Mesa screen them and only must keep the ones they prefer and as a result the str440 sound fuller to me and the Rubys were just a waste of time.

with the high gain jj - is that a ecc83s? ive bought a couple of those too and found them to be less gain than the mesa russian-2. I think when they say high gain they mean its ideal for a high gain amps because they are low noise.

i found the str430 (sovtek 6l6wxt+) to be nice and dark sounding - compressed in a way that i like and a tad on the scooped side. again the 6l6wxt+ sound slightly different to the str430 but they still sound pretty nice. or mix both 440 and 430 together which is what i do in my triple (4xstr440 2xstr430).

just my 2c....

 

[learntofly]

cool, thanks for the info... anyone else??

 

[Dusty Rhodes]

If it's still under warranty don't go outside Mesa or Ruby otherwise you will void it.
Also, from what I understand Ruby is a distributor not a manufacturer. They handle more than one pruducer under their name.