Re: Thinking about a speaker swap
Try an Eminence Swamp Thang. It's big, warm, and clear.....a really big sounding speaker with no harshness in any frequency.
Also, see if your amp has a bias pot. Maybe it's driving your 6V6's into distorting too early, killing your clean headroom.
I didn't think of the Swamp Thing? I saw the rating of 150W and figured it was too big. Is that even something you can do with speakers? Or does it just give you a ton of clean headroom? Also, I'm fairly sure there is no bias pot. At last not a visible one, I've never had the chassis open. There's a weird hum in the reverb that sounds like a grounding issue, so I need to get some work done on it, maybe it'd be worth having them tweak the bias a little bit at the same time.
I've always preferred a 5751 over a 12AY7 for 'taming' the gain. Consider that if the 12AY7 doesn't give you what you're after.
As far as speakers....higher efficiency (sensitivity) speakers give more volume at the same setting (or same volume at a lower volume setting) resulting in more headroom. Check the sensitivity of your current speaker and as you look for a replacement, make sure it has a minimum of 3db additional sensitivity.
And additionally, other than a bias check, as mentioned above, if these things don't get it for you, you probably have the wrong amp for what you're after.
I just looked and the current speaker has a 98db sensitivity rating. The Cannabis Rex is 101db, so that's a nice jump. And the Swamp Thing is even higher.
I really love this amp, I love the way it breaks up and it's overall tonal characteristics. However, I'm coming to view it as slightly a one tick pony. It does that one trick extremely well, but it still struggles with versatility. I'm eventually going to get a 30-40 watt cleaner amp to use in situations where this one just doesn't have enough uumph. Also, part of the problem is that our drummer is really loud, and our other guitar player has a Mesa Mark III and uses Les Pauls, which is tough to keep up with on a Deluxe with a Telecaster.
i play an old deluxe reverb and use a crex. ive tried other speakers but i keep coming back to the crex. also try a nos 12at7 in the pi slot, the modern 12at7 dont seem to hold up as well as the old ones. a 5751 is a fine tube for your first preamp stage to keep the tone pretty much the same but drop the gain. a 12ay7 changes the tone but you may like it. dont think ive tried a 12ay7 in my dr but its a cool lower gain option ive used in my tweed amps. joes suggestion to check the bias is a good one as well
I'd used a 12ay7 in a tweed Champ with good effect, which was why I was leaning that way. I may try the 5751 first. Although, this amp does have some tweedy characteristics, so maybe I'll just grab both and see which one works best.
I'm leaning toward a Cannabis Rex at this point, but since actually pulling the trigger on this is still a month or so off, I'm not super worried.
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