Preamp tube recommendations for OD SE+ ?

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i play mostly high-gain stuff but i like fat mid-gain sounds too. currently running JJ EL34s in the power section. any recommendations for current-production preamp tubes to try?

the amp is sounding a little loose right now, with the stock JJ in v1. i'm thinking maybe a Tung-Sol reissue to see if that will tighten it up some, or a Mullard RI to see if it's just as thick but not as loose.

thanks for any recs.
 
here's the answer I posted for you on the Suhr Forum:


turn the Feedback up on the back of the amp.. the higher the feedback, the more modern/tight it will feel. The lower the Feedback will give you a loose feel.

Call Suhr if that dont get you where you want. They are on the ball all the time.

Buy some new tubes from Suhr. If you amp has the factory tubes in it, there are numbers hand written on them... call Suhr with those numbers and they will get you new tubes that match the ones in your amp so you dont have to re-bias

Best of luck

Matt V
 
boneyard":i1ljrwsi said:
turn the Feedback up on the back of the amp.. the higher the feedback, the more modern/tight it will feel. The lower the Feedback will give you a loose feel.
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yep, i've got the Feedback cranked. it's through a Bogner OS2x12, which isn't a super-tight cab but isn't super-flabby either.

the amp has some of the stock preamp tubes but other power tubes. i've tried EL34Ls; i think i'll try KT77s too. and i may be giving them a call too. :)
 
JJ's while not perfect are about the tightest sounding tubes out there. They simply produce less bass response and in effect , sound tighter than most other tubes which might sound fuller. If you aren't getting the tightness you want out of JJ's I don't think you'll find success with other tubes.

I've played 3 different OD 100's and all of them have a very fat bass response and a pretty spongy feel no matter where you set the knobs. I also played a OD100 prototype that I might be able to get more info on for you.It was significantly tighter and crisper than the production OD's I played and perhaps John might be able to do some tweaks for you but you'd have to ask him.

The prototype that i played was in a marshall headshell I think and didn't look anything like a production model and if I remember correctly , it was a 1 channel amp. I'll get back to you on that .
 
Paul Secondino":23v14psv said:
I've played 3 different OD 100's and all of them have a very fat bass response and a pretty spongy feel no matter where you set the knobs. I also played a OD100 prototype that I might be able to get more info on for you.It was significantly tighter and crisper than the production OD's I played
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iiinteresting. :yes: there are a bunch of different OD100 models--Classic, SH, etc. i don't know anything about the others and haven't played them, but the SE+ is supposed to be more modern sounding than the others.

it's also not out of the question that the SE+ i've got has been modded or messed with. :confused: i'm talking with Suhr's techs to try to find out.

it would rule if you could get more info on that prototype. :rock: feel free to PM me if you like. thanks man.
 
The prototype that your referring to wasn't the one I brought to Chris,s gear fest was it Paul? ;)

If so, it's a 50w custom board, whomp #2 with a solid state fx loop. It is a total custom job that John did that inspired the PT series of amps. It does have a huge, tight bass response to it, but you need a cab that can handle the responce. It has a high and low input, with a foot switchable boost. The high input is like channel #2 of the PT, and the boost gets you the same as the boosted channel of the PT.

It's a monster......it does have the drakes in it, the only thing Marshall is the chasis,headshell, and tranny.

Fwiw

Matt V
 
Yeah , that's the one . That amp's bass response had a crispness and tightness that you just don't get out of the production SE+ or PT amps. And it was the best sounding high gainer of the day. If Scott's amp is working properly and Mr Suhr can tweak it to those specs , it might be the ticket because tube changes only do so much.
 
if the amp in question does not have the whomp#2 that could be some of the issue... every OD or PT that i have played had a serious amount of bass... maybe no as tight or crisp as mine, but that could be due to the cab i played it thru. I use ported cabs

I would be intrested to do another gearfest with a curent production PT50 and mine side by side.

:rock:
 
thanks very much, dudes--this is all great info. :thumbsup:

it's not that the amp has too much bass and that's why it's flubby; it's that the whole mid-lows and low end is very loose, regardless of Bass setting or Whomp setting. palm-muting a note on the A-string doesn't sound like a tight thud; it sounds like bluhhhhh, and that boomy decay rings for a second or two.

yep, tube changes aren't going to fix this; the amp either has something wrong with it or it needs to be tweaked.

i like tightness, but i like crunch sounds that are the darker sorta crunch like a Bogner Ecstasy, rather than the brighter/sharper sorta crunch of a modded Marshall. i've read that the PT sound was inspired by a 5150, more "open" and less compressed than the SE+, so i'm guessing that the PT is the brighter type of crunch.

so my initial idea would be to have the existing SE+ circuit in my amp modded rather than have the whole amp converted to a PT.
 
It's not just you , all the OD series are like this. I played a SE+ at the first Chicago land gear fest and the low mids are over powering and extremely fat. I also played a PT 50 at Indoor Storm in North Carolina and had the same issue .I also owned a 3+ SE preamp and had the same issue with that . I actually sold my 3+ preamp for that reason and the horrible pots it came with . I think they were Alpha pots.

There's simply way too much sonic information coming from down below and the more gain you use, the more it gets amplified.I attended the Egnater amp class and one of the things we went over was how to bleed off certain frequencies to ground so that they don't get amplified and tubbed out and this is the kind of mod that . It's exactly the kind of tweak that is done to Rectifiers to tighten up the bass response.

As for what parts to swap, that isn't my expertise . But I am sure that something can be worked out with John to mod the amp.Having played / heard Boneyard's OD prototype tells me that John has the formula already .
 
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