Do you always crank power amp tubes??

A

Alexxxander

Member
Hi
Power amp tubes add additional sweet distortion. But do you crank them up when you use overdrive or distortion pedals?
I’ve got a valvstate 120watt amp with a solid state power section. I like how versatile and sweet the preamp section is. Is it possible to get a stand-alone tube power amp module to replace my transistor power amp? Do such things exist??
Cheers bros
 
The majority of my amps are lower power (15 to 30 watts). I do use a Tube Screamer from time to time but usually just drive the amp. Above that is too much for me
 
Generally speaking power amp tube saturation sounds better than preamp tube saturation in my opinion.
A cranked up marshall just sounds so much better than that same amp achieving distortion at bedroom volume levels where only the preamp tubes are cooking.

Just my opinions
 
Alexxxander said:
Hi
Power amp tubes add additional sweet distortion. But do you crank them up when you use overdrive or distortion pedals?
I’ve got a valvstate 120watt amp with a solid state power section. I like how versatile and sweet the preamp section is. Is it possible to get a stand-alone tube power amp module to replace my transistor power amp? Do such things exist??
Cheers bros
Click to expand...
Yes they exist. Marshall MP1, Mesa Boogie had one, VHT used to make one.
 
I have several tube amps. None of them ever get loud enough to get into "power tube distortion". It's simply too loud for the few places that I've played. These include a 65 Princeton clone, Peavey Classic 30 and Marshall DSL401. I would have to go to a Champ to get into power tube distortion.

My 1953 National Supreme will distort. It distorts very easily, but I can't say if its power tube or preamp distortion. It only had 2 knobs, volume and tone. It might even be the speaker (an original field coil speaker).
 
I used a power soak to limit the volume when driving the amp, it's just a variable resistor load bank between the amp and speaker(s). I had a problem at practice getting the volume right. It went from too soft to way too loud. The power soak was adjustable so I put the amp volume where the drive sounded good and adjusted the volume with power soak.
 
Tube dual mono block. Marshall. Mesa.

remove the tubes to get down to 20 watts. Then match it with a 6-8-" speaker of appropriate ohm and watt.

Get that Gain knob up around 60%+. Normal volume. Beautiful breakups.
 
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