Soft pins on preamp tubes?

[Little Pigbacon]

Re: Soft pins on preamp tubes?

Yep. So are Ruby C5's, a few TAD's, Penta Labs, and ARS's. The infamous Shuguang 9th generation.

They are good-sounding tubes, IMO.

I'm using them for V3 and V4 in my JVM, so they're on cathode followers on either side of the tone stacks and channel volumes, plus parallel FX loop recovery and reverb mixer. V1, V2, and PI are EHX, and power tubes are JJ EL34's. I haven't rolled tubes at all, so I don't know what characteristics of which tubes are in play. But I love the way the amp sounds.

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[Gtrjunior]

Re: Soft pins on preamp tubes?

I'm using them for V3 and V4 in my JVM, so they're on cathode followers on either side of the tone stacks and channel volumes, plus parallel FX loop recovery and reverb mixer. V1, V2, and PI are EHX, and power tubes are JJ EL34's. I haven't rolled tubes at all, so I don't know what characteristics of which tubes are in play. But I love the way the amp sounds.

View attachment 82968

Be careful about what you put in V3!! You're aware of the need for a tube that can withstand the higher voltage cathode follower in this amp.....right?

 

[Little Pigbacon]

Re: Soft pins on preamp tubes?

Yeah. What I kept reading was that the Chinese tubes could take it, which was my reason for picking that Groove Tubes 12AX7-C. The vote seemed split on whether V4 had similar high voltage requirements, so I used one there, too.

 

[Gtrjunior]

Re: Soft pins on preamp tubes?

There is some debate about this but from what I understand the spiral filament type should generally be avoided. I looked up the spec chart on several tubes (because I kept blowing them out) when I was researching. The CF puts out about 105V...not altogether super high but many 12ax7'a can only handle 100V. I ended up using TAD...good up until 180V.

 

[Little Pigbacon]

Re: Soft pins on preamp tubes?

I'd about the spiral filament thing, and that puts most New Sensor right out.

 

[Rex_Rocker]

Re: Soft pins on preamp tubes?

Shuguang C9's can take it. AFAIK, it's just the Russian tubes with the spiral filament thingy that can't.

 

[Gtrjunior]

Re: Soft pins on preamp tubes?

Shuguang C9's can take it. AFAIK, it's just the Russian tubes with the spiral filament thingy that can't.

Yeah, this is what I understand as well.