Fresh_Start
New member
Just thought I'd share an interesting experience with you all. My first amp is a Blues Jr. I've tried a bunch of different power tubes in it:
Sovtek
Groove Tubes
Mesa
Electro Harmonix
Ei
JJ
The Ei EL-84s were my runaway favorites in the Blues Jr.
I absolutely hated the dark, muddy tone the JJs gave that amp.
So a younger guy has a Crate VC-2110 with a flakey input jack. Took about 5 minutes to fix the jack once I figured out how to remove the chassis (comes out the front... WTF!) Then I started experimenting with output tubes. The amp had the original 15-year old tubes in it - no lettering visible so I don't know what they were.
First I pull the Ei tubes and put them in expected a big improvement in tone. Not really... this amp sounded kind of thin with them. The EH tubes sounded better but a bit sterile. Went through the collection and finally said "What the heck, I'll try the JJs". BINGO! Big surprise for me, but the JJs made the Crate come alive. Nice crunch. (there's not much clean to the amp BTW)
The kid's response when he got here to play the amp was "Yes, that sounds great!"
Moral of the story: tubes which sound like crap in one amp may be just the ticket in another amp and the only way you'll find out is to experiment.
Just for grins, here's what the chassis looks like inside. If you're wondering about the empty socket hole & real estate on the board, Crate made a different version of this amp with reverb. Apparently it was cheaper to make one chassis and PCB for both amps and just change the face plates and leave empty space on the non-reverb version.
Cheers,
Chip
Sovtek
Groove Tubes
Mesa
Electro Harmonix
Ei
JJ
The Ei EL-84s were my runaway favorites in the Blues Jr.
I absolutely hated the dark, muddy tone the JJs gave that amp.
So a younger guy has a Crate VC-2110 with a flakey input jack. Took about 5 minutes to fix the jack once I figured out how to remove the chassis (comes out the front... WTF!) Then I started experimenting with output tubes. The amp had the original 15-year old tubes in it - no lettering visible so I don't know what they were.
First I pull the Ei tubes and put them in expected a big improvement in tone. Not really... this amp sounded kind of thin with them. The EH tubes sounded better but a bit sterile. Went through the collection and finally said "What the heck, I'll try the JJs". BINGO! Big surprise for me, but the JJs made the Crate come alive. Nice crunch. (there's not much clean to the amp BTW)
The kid's response when he got here to play the amp was "Yes, that sounds great!"
Moral of the story: tubes which sound like crap in one amp may be just the ticket in another amp and the only way you'll find out is to experiment.
Just for grins, here's what the chassis looks like inside. If you're wondering about the empty socket hole & real estate on the board, Crate made a different version of this amp with reverb. Apparently it was cheaper to make one chassis and PCB for both amps and just change the face plates and leave empty space on the non-reverb version.
Cheers,
Chip
