Tubes Revisited...

[peterd79]

Anyone ever experience a drastic change when changing tubes?
I went from stock Sovotek's to quadmatched Ruby tubes... I like the tone the ruby's put out but i've had to change my pedal settings to compensate for the new tone...

Is this normal?

 

[jappy]

Definitely normal.

 

[jeffrey]

Definitely normal.

Yep, I agree 100%.

Did you get your amp rebiased? Not a bad idea.

I'm a big fan of JJ's (www.eurotubes.com) which most Ruby's are anyway.

 

[candid_x]

Anyone ever experience a drastic change when changing tubes?
I went from stock Sovotek's to quadmatched Ruby tubes... I like the tone the ruby's put out but i've had to change my pedal settings to compensate for the new tone...

Is this normal?

No, not normal. You’ve come down with a case of tubetonefreakasaurius. Ain’t it great!

But yes, as already stated, it’s entirely normal for your amp to change its voice with different tubes.

 

[peterd79]

I did have my amp re-biased and from what i was told my amp didn't have a biasing control so the guy at my local shop is an electronics genius and he put one in for me. He also corrected a sound wave issue that i didn't notice... by adding in some extra part... so it's an amazing tone

And i forgot about using the effects loop as opposed to plugging directly into my input jack... OH MY GOSH! Talk about a whole new level of sound...

From what I hear and can tell the tubes that I got were the newer Tesla/JJ Tubes and they sound amazing...

 

[58super]

I did have my amp re-biased and from what i was told my amp didn't have a biasing control so the guy at my local shop is an electronics genius and he put one in for me. He also corrected a sound wave issue that i didn't notice... by adding in some extra part... so it's an amazing tone

And i forgot about using the effects loop as opposed to plugging directly into my input jack... OH MY GOSH! Talk about a whole new level of sound...

From what I hear and can tell the tubes that I got were the newer Tesla/JJ Tubes and they sound amazing...

What amp do you have?

 

[edensdad]

You guys might want to read Randall Smith's (founder of Mesa Boogie) white paper on re-biasing.


The article is here:

http://www.mesaboogie.com/US/Smith/biasadjust.html

Of course, what do I care - I'm a transistor guy now (I was a loyal Mesa user for 20 years and still love them, but that much power isn't neccessary for me now - tonal flexibiliy is)

>^..^<

 

[Bierschinken]

Biasing is DEFINETLY neccessary!

It´s neccessary to have the poweramp tubes working without clipping.
Mesa does have a clever system, they´re matching the tubes to a special current so that the guitarist just has to swap em. That is the reason they have no bias pot. The drawback is you have to buy the Mesa-tubes, which are expensive.

Anyone ever experience a drastic change when changing tubes?

That definetly depends on the circuitry. In general poweramptutbes ahave less effect on the sound than preamptubes.
In simple circuitrys as a plexi or a Fender Champ switching tubes has a "bigger" effect than swapping em in a Rectifier e.g..

That is because those complicate circuitrys have more parts so that a single element does not that much effect on the sound, the whole thing makes the sound.

 

[peterd79]

What amp do you have?

This one:
http://www.ernieball.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19021

It started out as a Peavey Valve King: But It's now been modded out to a custom amp that is really impressive... I do have a little bit of an earlier break up but i rarely push my amp that much anyways...

 

[Spudmurphy]

I've been toying with the idea of getting a Peavey Valve king to retire the old Marshall.

Where are they made?

 

[robelinda2]

i played a valve king the other day, for some reason i didnt quite enjoy it as much as i thought i would. had an odd tone, need to give it some more time i think, takes awhile to work out some amps.

 

[peterd79]

i played a valve king the other day, for some reason i didnt quite enjoy it as much as i thought i would. had an odd tone, need to give it some more time i think, takes awhile to work out some amps.

Mine has been modded out so much it should be made in Nor Cal... but stock it's not bad... They have a texture control to go from class A to class A/B and anywhere inbetween...

This amp in particular did take some serious tweaking... I was looking at a Supersonic combo but when i realized i could really tweak it i went with the VK... and as you can tell by the pic it's rather unique... and has some sweet tone... I like it a lot... and it took me about a month to decide to go with it... I tried everything out there in my price range and i ended up with this...