Tube Info (Various)

[TTSTWO]

I'm not a tube expert. While at a show Saturday night, the band we were watching went on break. I went up to stage to talk to one of the guitar players that was having rig issues (pedal board). He was playing through a Marshall DSL100 JCM 2000. I asked him if he was running EL34's, (which is factory spec) in his head and he said no KT88's -hence, the attached web page for my research being a tube dummy.....http://www.jacmusic.com/KT88/kt88.htm

Question: Besides bias adjustment, Would the head need to be modded in any way to accomodate KT88's?

Thanks,

Tom T :mrgreen:

 

[94Tremoverb]

I wouldn't like to try that. The DSL is a fairly marginal design anyway, and KT88s will put extra strain on various components including the transformers and the PCB traces, which are not unknown to fail in these amps... and that's even if you had it modded to get the bias into the right range (I'm almost certain it's not within the scope of the trimmer). Without a bias mod, the tubes will probably survive because a KT88 has so much more power capability than an EL34, but you'd be diceing with death on the rest of it.

It would probably sound good if you could get it to work reliably though - as long as you're not looking for classic Marshall EL34 overdrive. It would make preamp-distortion tones bigger and heavier, and cleans deeper.