Olaf, help me choose something here please

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Joeytpg

Joeytpg

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I'll post this in a general thread instead os a PM to Olaf because people might benefit from Olaf (and Peter if he wants so participate) opinion.

two of my 4 KT77 blew, so I gotta order some tubes (I have 4 6L6 which I'll put in there for now, but I like to have spares, specially now that I'm recording)

I was a tube-town dot com website and came across a VERY interesting PDF, it's Tube-towns Tube Map. Here they give a clear explanation on how each tube sound and what are some good combination of preamp/poweramp tubes for dif. things, like heavy tone, classic, vintage, etc...

Now, to my question(s) Olaf....

I'm a 6L6 guy...I like the Marshall growl, but I prefer the 6L6 cleans which are VERY important to my overall sound (I'm playing 60% of the time in clean) so, I see that in the family of 6L6 we have 5881, KT66, and 6V6. Which one would you recommend me get? JJ 6L6?, SED 6L6?, Sovtek 6L6?

I'm after a nice round, but chimie clean tone (think Fender Bassman mixed with Dumble), a nice CLEAR overdriven tone in channel 2 that'll give me that TS808 type of drive with a low gain, but with the gain cranked and bright switch on will still deliver a nice punchy JCM800 tone. In ch.3 I'm basically after the mid/heavy clear tone ch.3 is known for, I don't want more compression, no more gain than it already has....if I want more gain I'll go to ch.4

so, what should I get? I've been hearing all this great things about 6550, but I see in the tube-town map that 6550 belongs to the EL34 fam. and I don't wanna make my amp based around that tone

For those that wanna check out the tube-town map, here it is

http://www.tube-town.net/info/doc/tt-tubemap.pdf

VERY NICE and informative.
 
Tone is made in the preamp with you guitar and fingers, Joey. The power amp just adds nuances to it IMO. If you want a bastard of 6L6 and EL34, go with the KT77s (as I suggested before you ordered from TT).
I'm not too experienced with 6550 so far (although I have a duet waiting for a test), so you need to ask Peter about that. You know that he uses them for reliability AND sound (when biased up that far), so I say: either KT77s biased like EL34s or 6550 biased as Peter recommends it.
As far as the Tube Map goes: well, TT is selling tubes, so I would "mystify and differentiate" the sound of (power)tubes too if I were a seller, you know what I mean.
Today reliability, non microphonics and durability esp. in amps with a lower influence to the sound by the power amp than lets say a Plexi are more in the focus than subtile nuances of types. All IMO.
Could be I'm too pragmatic with tubes - part of that is that in all those years of playing I had one (!) powertube going bad. I'm a lucky guy, you know . . .
 
Sorry to disagree .......... but the 6550 don´t belongs to
the EL34 family soundwise.

It´s a beam power pentode also as the 6L6.

I get the best cleans out of the 6550-SED with 50 milliamps
bias each tube.

If You like the Dumble cleans You will like the tube.

Peter
 
Great points, since I was scratching my head on having a new tube quartet to be ordered soon. So I was deciding between 6550 and EL34s.
Lately put KT77s in Einy, but I must admit while they do sound great for cleaner applications, I was thinking of actually going back to EL34s, which just sound best for distortion in Einstein 100W head in my (not so) humble opinion. So EL34 will be as it seems.

Niki
 
alright...thank you guys, I'll go with 6550 then.

btw, they improve the headroom, but that means the amp will be THAT much louder?



Olaf, mind reminding me where to set the Multimeter to bias the VH4? it's dif. from where I had to place the wheel for the Einstein but I don't remember :(
 
Why don't you ask TT to send you two new KT77s, They weren't that old . . .

Set DMM to 200mA DC, instructions on the website. Be careful. 500V, lethal voltages.
 
duesentrieb":1aj8x8s1 said:
Why don't you ask TT to send you two new KT77s, They weren't that old . . .

Set DMM to 200mA DC, instructions on the website. Be careful. 500V, lethal voltages.
Click to expand...


yeah I thought about that too, but I'm afraid the other two go down on me too :(

thanks but remember I have the probe thing :) I don't have to do it the regular way.
 
thanks my friend.

I'm sending you the L.J. pedal this week to get the Stereo thing in it. Cool? :) should I send you anything else?


OH btw...I wanted to ask you something...... check your PM
 
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