Tubes Question

[guitarmaniac]

I have a Mesa DC-5v 50Watt Combo.It has the Mesa 6L6 Tubes.I understand that Mesa amps never need biasing.How does this effect the variety of tubes selection? Can someone just take out the 6L6's and put in other types of tubes and other brands for a different tone with no issues?

One last question. How do I know what other tubes would work or fit in this amp? There are all these different numbers etc.

 

[FunkenGrooven]

I second your question Is that right Mesa amps don't need to be biased I have a Nomad 45 that uses 4 EL84's and a Rectoverb with 2 6L6's can I just put in any set of tubes JJ's, Groove etc.? Thanks for your help. 8)

 

[jgventura]

are you sure mesa amps never need biasing? or is it just the amps that have the switch on the back for 6L6s and EL34s? Or do ALL mesas have those switches?

 

[guitarmaniac]

What if I buy a matched pair of JJ/Tesla 6L6 GC Tubes,would it be a drop in installation and function/sound properly?

 

[diamondschwin]

for a 6L6 amp you can swap in EL34, E34L, or 5881s or KT77 (for the last one you should look at eurotubes.com as he is the only seller of these tubes as far as i know)

now these are all safe swaps, if you have the right grade of tube. the mesa boogie is not SELF biasing, its FIXED bias, if you buy a tube that cant handle its bias current, youll toast the tube and your amps fuse. any REAL tube dealer should be able to provide you tubes that fall in the safe range, not guitar center, try dougstubes.com or eurotubes.com, they are the most popular and can help you although eurotubes sells one brand of tubes and is slightly biased (no pun intended) on what he thinks is good

 

[Micah]

Im all for messing around with different tubes and the tones they can bring (fundage provided!!) but as soon as I have to start messing with modifications to the amp to acomodate the changes it starts compromising the reliability of the amp, and when it comes down to it I just want to play..... Not wait 2 weeks for it to get out of the shop and then get rammed with the cost of frying it or possibly even replacement of the amplifier. I know that you can safely change out mesa tubes with mesa tubes EL34-6L6-5881 but beyond that Id change other brands of preamp tubes safely and rectifier tubes. After that you understand that your walking aqn unstable path for both your tone and reliability of your amp--I would like to try the Tung Sol Preamp tubes out myself because of the ratings and I dont believe preamp tubes to be much of a threat to my amp. :wink:

 

[guitarmaniac]

Thanks for the help and great information.I appreciate the responses.

 

[RoCk4souls]

-I would like to try the Tung Sol Preamp tubes out myself because of the ratings and I dont believe preamp tubes to be much of a threat to my amp. :wink:

Not trying to hijack the thread but I tried a tung-sol in V1 of my triple rec and I would definately reccomend it. It's a very good sounding pre. I use a lot of gain and boost the front end of my amp with a TS9 but there is always some kind of top end fuzz that I can't quiet get out, no matter what kind of tweaking I do.

The tung sol cleans everything up yet I still maintain that heavy crunch that I get from boosted high gain settings. awesome preamp tube.

 

[RR]

... the mesa boogie is not SELF biasing, its FIXED bias, if you buy a tube that cant handle its bias current, youll toast the tube and your amps fuse. any REAL tube dealer should be able to provide you tubes that fall in the safe range, not guitar center, try dougstubes.com or eurotubes.com, they are the most popular and can help you although eurotubes sells one brand of tubes and is slightly biased (no pun intended) on what he thinks is good

That pretty much sums it up what I was going to say 8)