Renegade - Tube options for various sounds! Great findings

[diezelboy]

Hey guys
I'm a loud and proud owner of a Renegade 1x12.. love it to death - super mega versatile!!!
OK so here's the deal.

I found the stock tone was great - however I have some suggestions for people!

I put in
Power section: 2 TungSol 6550 in the slots for the 6l6 and put in SED EL34s in the EL34 slots. (I biased it obviously)
Preamp: GT 12ax7-C, TungSol 12ax7, GT 12ax7-C, 2 TungSols and 1 EH in the PI.

The tone improve a lot! An amazing sounding amp sounding even better. wow!

The clean channel sounds flawless perfect - just flooring.

The dist channel: on the deep setting I found it sounded a bit BUBBLY - very full and saturated - super nice tho. The Tight setting eliminated that but you loose a bit of low end.
The bubbly tone works awesome for single coils (strat) on low to mid gain setting. The humbucker wasn't quite there for me and it's gainy to begin with.

So what did I do?

I put the 2 TungSol 6550 in the 6L6 slots, and 2 SED 6L6 in the EL34 slots. I biased the amp and BAM!!!! WOW... no more bubbly tones on the deep setting with the same low end response. I left my preamp section the same.

So there u go!

The amazing thing about this amp is that it's so responsive to various tubes that it will cover pretty much any style you want (unless you're into heavy death metal or something - but you wouldn't play a black and tan amp wouldya?)

So there u have it folks! Happy tubing!

Bruce - you've got a winner of an amp! Love it!

 

[Joeytpg]

interesting results... let me ask you then.... how do the 6550 sound?? I LOVE the way my 6L6 sound (stock tubes) because the amp has a very very Fender Bassman character to it..... do you loose that with the 6550? I was thinking about leaving the 6L6 in the 6L6 side and swapping the EL34 for 6550......

 

[Resonant Alien]

interesting results... let me ask you then.... how do the 6550 sound?? I LOVE the way my 6L6 sound (stock tubes) because the amp has a very very Fender Bassman character to it..... do you loose that with the 6550? I was thinking about leaving the 6L6 in the 6L6 side and swapping the EL34 for 6550......

Joey - if you want to keep that Bassman character to Ch1 of the Renegade, but make it even better - put some TAD 6L6WGCs in there (the small bottle WGC TADs, not the big GCs) - it really makes it even more Fender-y. I'm telling you, that is the best tube for Ch1 of the Renegade, IMO, and I tried several when I had mine.

 

[Joeytpg]

interesting results... let me ask you then.... how do the 6550 sound?? I LOVE the way my 6L6 sound (stock tubes) because the amp has a very very Fender Bassman character to it..... do you loose that with the 6550? I was thinking about leaving the 6L6 in the 6L6 side and swapping the EL34 for 6550......

Joey - if you want to keep that Bassman character to Ch1 of the Renegade, but make it even better - put some TAD 6L6WGCs in there (the small bottle WGC TADs, not the big GCs) - it really makes it even more Fender-y. I'm telling you, that is the best tube for Ch1 of the Renegade, IMO, and I tried several when I had mine.

will give them a try man, thanks! what preamp tubes did you have?

 

[just42dave]

interesting results... let me ask you then.... how do the 6550 sound?? I LOVE the way my 6L6 sound (stock tubes) because the amp has a very very Fender Bassman character to it..... do you loose that with the 6550? I was thinking about leaving the 6L6 in the 6L6 side and swapping the EL34 for 6550......

Joey - if you want to keep that Bassman character to Ch1 of the Renegade, but make it even better - put some TAD 6L6WGCs in there (the small bottle WGC TADs, not the big GCs) - it really makes it even more Fender-y. I'm telling you, that is the best tube for Ch1 of the Renegade, IMO, and I tried several when I had mine.

this

 

[diezelboy]

interesting results... let me ask you then.... how do the 6550 sound?? I LOVE the way my 6L6 sound (stock tubes) because the amp has a very very Fender Bassman character to it..... do you loose that with the 6550? I was thinking about leaving the 6L6 in the 6L6 side and swapping the EL34 for 6550......

Hey The 6550s sound fatter and bigger and smoother than the 6l6 in this amp. The EL34s bring the Marshall flavour in the Renegade. I was after more of a hot rodded American tones with balls so this combination does it for me. Nope I didn't loose the Bassman at all - actually it sounds even more Bassman on the clean channel. I just love it man!

 

[mmorse]

I put KT88s in place of the 6L6s. The 88s increased the sustain of the amp by quite a bit. Notes hold a lot longer now than they did with the 6L6s. I also put NOS Siemens El34s in. Nice balance to the 88s as they are brighter than your usual 34. Changed all the pre tubes to NOS and the amp sounds killer now!

The clean channel still sounds very bassman like.