Valves/Tubes

[M.Bison]

What's your experience of different brands of valves?



For me I've only ever had amps with 12ax7/ecc83's and 6L6GC's and I've always just bought JJ's based on the decent sound and reliability I've had.



Now i'm wanting to try something different, been reading up a little and alot of people seem to like putting Tungsol's in there v1 position and JJ's in the rest. Anybody do this?



Is there any kind of 'standard' rule of thumb combination for maximum gain and definition in hi-gain amps? Or is it totally different for each amp?



It's all very

[Lavabug]

I hated JJ preamp tubes in my Engl Fireball, too round, no treble. Sovteks were cheap and sounded br00t3l but they picked up more noise than a fucking radio telescope. Quality and lifetime varies a lot apparently.



I didn't notice any difference in sound when I changed poweramp tubes though (stock engl vs JJ 6l6gcs), but I think the differences are only supposed to become apparent when you turn it up very loud, which I never got to do when I had the amp.

[M.Bison]

[quote name="Lavabug"]I hated JJ preamp tubes in my Engl Fireball, too round, no treble. [/quote]

Really? They sounded good too me, I got plenty of treble and bite without it becoming harsh, though I was free to crank it. Really nice and punchy at high volumes, shame you never got to



What are you using these days lavabutt?

[vO)))id]

Most of the time those tubes begin to work their magic when the amp is cranked up a bit.

I played an old model of the Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier at the studio a week ago, and I really liked the sound. The hard-on bearer who owns it generally plays black metal and had the treble setting a bit too high for my taste, but after I fucked around with it a bit I got a really nice distortion that wasn't too fuzzy and neither too clean. The clean channel was also amazingly beautiful! I was able to get a really nice warm sound from it, which I hadn't gotten before out of the newer models.

I'm not sure which tubes he had in it, I'll see if I can ask him next time.



But so far the best sound I got was from an Engl Screamer 50 top. That thing matched perfectly with the Gibson LP I had in my hands at the time.

[Lavabug]

[quote name="M.Bison"]
[quote name="Lavabug"]I hated JJ preamp tubes in my Engl Fireball, too round, no treble. [/quote]

Really? They sounded good too me, I got plenty of treble and bite without it becoming harsh, though I was free to crank it. Really nice and punchy at high volumes, shame you never got to



What are you using these days lavabutt?[/quote]

The loudest I ever had the volume knob was 9 O' clock (both with a mesa mark 4 4x12 and a framus 2x2), it was painfully loud already, but not enough to induce poweramp distortion apparently. It was fun while I had it, but it was terribly impractical for my purposes.



I now use a 4€ guitar interface (unbranded Behringer USB thingy) and amp sim software like amplitube 2, 3 and GTR3.0. I've been using them for years and given the insane variety and quality of sounds I get from it, I won't be needing an amp anytime soon. I can get it to sound just that good into headphones/hifi speakers. I hated the sound of my fireball at low volumes tbh, whereas I can play through this thing for hours and not get tired of the sounds. Plus being able to play along tracks by dragging/dropping, slowing them down if necessary, and record on the go is a huge plus. Imo you can get it to sound waaaay better than any hardware based modelers like PODs and such.