is this safe?

[drew_half_empty]

well, all this talk about paul burlison i've been doing has made me wonder

he pulled a powertube out halfway (and it was a deluxe so 2 6l6) to get distortion, so, could i do the same with my bassman & not hurt anything?

 

[aleclee]

Re: is this safe?

It puts additional stress on the transformer. As hard as you like to push your amp, I would advise against it.

 

[Jeffrec]

Re: is this safe?

well, all this talk about paul burlison i've been doing has made me wonder

he pulled a powertube out halfway (and it was a deluxe so 2 6l6) to get distortion, so, could i do the same with my bassman & not hurt anything?

He happened on to that accidently when the tube got pushed out slightly during set up for the gign and kept doing it. There's no need to do it if you have a gain channel or a good stomp box. You're just looking for distortion.

 

[drew_half_empty]

Re: is this safe?

yeah, i know it was an accident, but when they recorded they intentionally pulled one halfway out to get that sound

and i don't have a gain channel...it's a bassman

stompboxes jsut...aren't the same

and i was just planning on doing it at home for a few minutes, i'd never gig with one half out

 

[B2D]

Re: is this safe?

Basically what's happening is you're making the amp work harder and overloading the available power of the amp, and the result is a distortion tone that, while sounds good, is harmful to the amp.

I knew a guy while while working at GC that would run a 50w Plexi with only one power tube sometimes in the studio and he DID get some badass tones that way but he kept having to replace the back panel of the amp because it caught on fire occasionally.

 

[Quencho092]

Re: is this safe?

holy crap!!!

Don't do this to your bassman! I get great tones out of my bandmaster by simply putting it around 5, with my tubescreamer with drive on 3, level on 6, tone at 7.

A good transparent overdrive does exactly that-if you want more clean pushing to kick up your tubes, just put the level nice and high, and roll a little bit of tone down....

 

[drew_half_empty]

Re: is this safe?

heh, i don't own a tubescreamer.

I'll go post a new, less harmful thread now

 

[Quencho092]

Re: is this safe?

a well spina modded tubescreamer will satisfy your thirst for great fender OD tones. It doesn't color the sound with artificial crunch at all if you set it up right.

My BF bandmaster rips with this thing on, and I've compared that tone with my amp on 8 and they're very similar.

If you want some good earlier overdrive, throw a set of TAD 6l6wgc tubes-they're the same thing as the 6L6GE tubes that Groove tubes is making in china with the original machinery. These smaller bottle tubes help your huge headroom bassman 50 breakup really nicely at lower volumes, check out my thread on power tube smoothness, or search the forum for scott_F's praises of this tube. It's only 32 bucks a matched pair!

 

[drew_half_empty]

Re: is this safe?

I'm not sure if power tube distortion is really what I'm after, i mean yeah i wanted to check it out & see how it sounded but ultimately I'm not sure if thats the tone I'm after. Help me out on the bassman thread, haha

 

[Jeffrec]

Re: is this safe?

heh, i don't own a tubescreamer.

I'll go post a new, less harmful thread now

There was no harm in asking the question. It's just that it would be a shame to injure your Bassman. I would go play around with a few stomp boxes (I'm not crazy about them either) and see if anything suits you. Some of the overdrive pedals like the Tube Screamer (as Quencho02 suggested) are pretty good) The other thing would be to get a power soak, but they're expensive. Try the boxes first.

I used to have the same problem with a pre-CBS Twin Reverb I had years ago. It sounded great clean, but you had to crank it into oblivion to get good distorted sound).

Jeff

 

[drew_half_empty]

Re: is this safe?

yeah, right now I'm cranking the master, setting the regular volume at about 2, and using an EQ pedal for a 15db boost, and it sounds...okay i guess, it's pretty stale, unresponsive, and lacks some sustain, even with gt 12ax7c's in there