New Tubes Coming Tomorrow!!

[Ironklad Audio]

and i'm one stoooooooooooooooooooked SOB!

i've owned my amp for roughly 3 years, and this is the 1st time i've replaced the power tubes....i've always been pretty much satisfied with the tone, but when i tried to record with it a couple weeks ago, everything came out mush. god knows how old the tubes that are in there really are...i can't wait to pull out the dusty fender hot rod-branded EL34's and replace them with a shiny new matched quad of JJ E34L's

this shit's gonna rule!

and my neighbors are gonna hate me!

muwahahahahaha

PS - now that i think of it, if anyone is interested, i can record a couple of tracks of the before and after, just to give the uninformed an idea of the kind of difference some tubes can make

 

[Codmate]

and i'm one stoooooooooooooooooooked SOB!

i've owned my amp for roughly 3 years, and this is the 1st time i've replaced the power tubes....i've always been pretty much satisfied with the tone, but when i tried to record with it a couple weeks ago, everything came out mush. god knows how old the tubes that are in there really are...i can't wait to pull out the dusty fender hot rod-branded EL34's and replace them with a shiny new matched quad of JJ E34L's

this shit's gonna rule!

and my neighbors are gonna hate me!

muwahahahahaha

PS - now that i think of it, if anyone is interested, i can record a couple of tracks of the before and after, just to give the uninformed an idea of the kind of difference some tubes can make

Yeah - do that recording man. for yourself if nobody else!

I replaced the stock 'Groove Tubes' in my Fender Custom Vibrolux Reverb after I had an 'accident' with it on stage...

It sounded much better with a mullard, some EH's and some Phillips NOS (for the power tubes). Far less hissssss and hummmmm and a better overall tone. It also breaks up at really low volumes now. Don't know if this is technically a good thing, but it's what I asked for from the guy at Watford Valves, and from the guy who put the valves in for me - and it's what I got!

 

[Ironklad Audio]

cool beans...

i've already replaced 4 of the 5 preamp tubes with E-H 12AX7's, none of which have much wear on them, but like i was saying...god knows how old the power tubes are, or how many hours they've spent cranked to 12(that's right, my amp goes to 12...eat that, spinal tap!)

i just seriously couldn't believe how crap the amp sounded the other day. i was trying to record this slayer-wannabe band, and their guitarist has a POS solid-state crate half stack, so i was trying to talk him into using my amp, only to learn that the beast is now toothless.

 

[Okra]

JJ's makes some awesome tubes. You'll dig em.

I was using the E34L's, but switched over to the KT77's for variety - and stuck with them. They sound great.

 

[dementedchord]

$.02

dont forget to rebias the outputs.... it becomes even more important when changeing brands... and you did buy matched pair right???

 

[Ironklad Audio]

matched quad, baby!

 

[Ironklad Audio]

oh boy oh boy oh boy

night and day, people

i totally lied about recording before/after clips, though...i couldn't wait to throw the new tubes in there as soon as they showed up

 

[travelin travis]

oh boy oh boy oh boy

night and day, people

i totally lied about recording before/after clips, though...i couldn't wait to throw the new tubes in there as soon as they showed up

now we'll never know though will we?

 

[Ironklad Audio]

sure won't! but i totally didn't feel like moving my 4x12 marshall from the control room to the iso booth, running cables, mic'ing it, letting it warm up, recording some riffs, letting it cool down, then changing the tubes, then letting the new ones warm up and recording more stuff

but yea - the difference in the definition, even at low volumes, is astounding. i play mostly metal, and it had gotten to the point where a palm-muted note or power chord on the E/A strings sounded more like a "dun dun" than a "chunk chunk"...but now we're rolling like campbell's chunky soup!

 

[gbdweller]

Your gonna love 'em. I recently added a set of JJ's to my modded 5150 and was then told by an engineer that my 5150 has the most "recordable" sound he's ever heard. Took a little getting used to at first as they are a little 'darker' than anything I've had in there in the past (stock, mesa's and GT's) but, "OH MY GOD!!!" what a great change.!!!Good luck to your neighbors...