holy crap this rules, but is it safe?

[drew_half_empty]

well, me, being an idiot, was swapping around preamp tubes & testing the tone, and i put an electro harmonix tube in v2, accidently left v1 empty, and turned it on

holy crap, GAIN, and lots of it. I liked it, a lot, brought back the old thoughts of getting a fender rock distortion that you could push & push & push & it'd never sound bad. Ran it with a ts, ds-1 with the level dimed, it just sounded good, prolly sound even better with a pair of v-30's

but, is this safe? I'm guessing it cuts preamp tube life in half, but, anything else?

 

[stevie_bees]

Re: holy crap this rules, but is it safe?

You're probably ragging the living daylights out of your preamp valve.

 

[marvar]

Re: holy crap this rules, but is it safe?

This 'mod' works because without the 'Normal' channel 12AX7 in place, the signal from the 'bright' channel can't bleed back through the 'Normal' channel as much and get loaded down.

 

[jeremy]

Re: holy crap this rules, but is it safe?

in bf fender amps ive known people that pulled v1 and it worked fine

 

[drew_half_empty]

Re: holy crap this rules, but is it safe?

really? hm, sweet

i don't really care if it cuts tube life in half, one 12ax7 is...well, not that expensive

I've also heard of changing the midrange feedback resistor to a marshall value (25mA) to get a more rock & roll crunch, as well as people putting a v30 in a hotrod to make the gain more usable, and i've heard soundclips & it IS pretty usable. Right now i'm using the same speakers that are in the hot rod, I'm thinkin maybe i should mod the bass channel with jcm900 values & all that & get a v30 cab

 

[Scott_F]

Re: holy crap this rules, but is it safe?

Drew, put a variable resistor ( as in a pot!), linear, not audio taper, into the place of that midrange resistor that is on the bass pot. Then dial in the amount of md-range gain you want. When you get it where you want it, unsolder it, being careful not to accidently twist the pot, then measure the resistance. That's your new mid range resistor value. Buy one and solder in place.

DISCLAIMER: tube amps carry very lethal voltages. if you don't know what you are doing, take it to someone that does.

On the subject of that V1 tube, we are all assuming you have a standard blackface layout where you ahve the normal channel and the verb/trem channel. In that scenario, taking the tube out of V1 completely will increase the gain in the other channel. Normal channel won't work as you'd expect, but not too many folks use it anyway.

 

[drew_half_empty]

Re: holy crap this rules, but is it safe?

it's a bassman

and the normal channel works, but the bass channel doesn't

so I'm assuming its the same kinda thing

only runs 3 pres though, 1 being the PI

and no i have no friggin clue what i'm doing. Well, i can do pedals & stuff, but that's just following directions