daav
Flailing up a storm.
I recently ordered 3 new 12AT7 tubes to replace the original 12AX7s in an early 90's fender blues deluxe and wanted to share my experieinces a bit.
I personally am not for great amounts of distortion, and found that the 12AX7's made the amp break up really early and thwarted my desire to get a fat warm sound with an edge, but little fuzz. I really don't like washed out tones, and wanted something that could be chimey on the higher strings, fat from the lower end, and when i would bite into the strings hard with a pick, that would translate to the amp.
I had bought an attenuator, but that didn't give me much of what i really wanted, but turning up the amp, i get more fuzz at lower volume. This isn't a knock on attenuators, my point is that i wasn't getting the right tone from the amp at any volume really.
The new preamp tubes have opened that up pretty nicely however. Basically, with the overdrive on i have an actual range that i can swing the overdrive knob through, and then adjust with the master volume and can dial in some good stuff. Before, i felt like the sweet spot occupied about an eighth of an inch of movement in one knob and beyond that, everything was fuzzy, washed out, lacking definition.
Anyway, thought it might be a good suggestion for those getting used to tube amps themselves. I feel like in the past few years i learned (via my ears, as opposed to reading stuff on the web for instance) the difference between tube and solid state, then after getting a few tube amps to try out, i now have a better feel for what i am really looking for in a tube amp, and have gotten probably 80% of the way there with my current setup.
I feel like i could probably try out some really NICE amps now and tell if i was hearing what i wanted or just something different than i am used to.
Daav
I personally am not for great amounts of distortion, and found that the 12AX7's made the amp break up really early and thwarted my desire to get a fat warm sound with an edge, but little fuzz. I really don't like washed out tones, and wanted something that could be chimey on the higher strings, fat from the lower end, and when i would bite into the strings hard with a pick, that would translate to the amp.
I had bought an attenuator, but that didn't give me much of what i really wanted, but turning up the amp, i get more fuzz at lower volume. This isn't a knock on attenuators, my point is that i wasn't getting the right tone from the amp at any volume really.
The new preamp tubes have opened that up pretty nicely however. Basically, with the overdrive on i have an actual range that i can swing the overdrive knob through, and then adjust with the master volume and can dial in some good stuff. Before, i felt like the sweet spot occupied about an eighth of an inch of movement in one knob and beyond that, everything was fuzzy, washed out, lacking definition.
Anyway, thought it might be a good suggestion for those getting used to tube amps themselves. I feel like in the past few years i learned (via my ears, as opposed to reading stuff on the web for instance) the difference between tube and solid state, then after getting a few tube amps to try out, i now have a better feel for what i am really looking for in a tube amp, and have gotten probably 80% of the way there with my current setup.
I feel like i could probably try out some really NICE amps now and tell if i was hearing what i wanted or just something different than i am used to.
Daav
A 12au7 in the driver position doesn't hit