Guitar, amp, tubes and clean sound

[Musicante]

Hello there everybody
I am using an epiphone sheraton equipped with 2 SD Seth lover humbucker and a 72 custom telecaster equipped with a fender wide range humbucker and SD vintage for broadcaster through a Carvin nomad 112 50W tube amp. I mostly use the clean channel cause the music style I play require a clean sound. Unfortunately my guitars with amp volume set at 3 and over produce an overdrive sound. Do you think it's possible to improve the clean sound of the amp changing the tubes or something else? Do I need to find another amp? I sure can't afford a twin reverb can you tell me a great low cost (700/1000 $) tube amp with a great clean sound?
thank you

 

[sanrafael]

Re: Guitar, amp, tubes and clean sound

The first thing to check is this: are you overloading the preamp tubes even on the clean channel? Turn the guitar volume down a lot, and raise the amp volume; ignore the extra noise if you can. Can you find a setting that sounds cleaner with your normal playing level?

If so, you might benefit from lower gain preamp tubes. It might be possible to change the tube type to a lower gain triode.

If not, you might want to listen to a lot of amps. It is even possible that a good solid state amp might be useful for very clean playing.

 

[No effects]

Re: Guitar, amp, tubes and clean sound

this should help re lower gain pre amp tubes: http://www.thetubestore.com/gainfactor.html

re changing your amp, 50w is plenty of power, so maybe it's the speaker that's overdriving - what do you have in there?

 

[Musicante]

Re: Guitar, amp, tubes and clean sound

Thanks a lot for the good advice!
The amp has a carvin made speaker, what kind of speaker is the best for clean sound?
thanks

 

[kmcguitars]

Re: Guitar, amp, tubes and clean sound

A JBL or Weber californa series will give a cleaner sound or later breakup.
In Fender amps I use a 5751 tube to lower the gain in the preamp.

 

[Benjy_26]

Re: Guitar, amp, tubes and clean sound

The problem (part of it), I think, is that your Carvin is running on EL84's, and not on EL34's or 6L6's, which break up much later than the EL84's.