Hi All,
I love the sound of the SVT in my studio, but at 300 watts it’s too much for most things including the PS-2A. It would be great if I could really push it while recording. Can I remove some of the power tubes to lower the wattage into a range that will safely work with the Power Station? Will that change my impedance selection, and if so, how?
Thanks!
Hi Rich,
That’s a fun question. Depends on whether you’re actually using 300W or just think you are.
A long time ago I repaired an SVT for the touring bassist from Black Oak Arkansas. Name escapes me ATM.
He didn’t have any complaints. He just wanted it gone over to make sure it was OK for the next leg of the tour.
As it turns out, only two of the six 6550s were operating, and when I told him that it was maxing out at 100W he was very surprised. So I told him to let me know if it had all of a sudden gotten unbearably clean after retubing and getting it back up to 300W. The response was, nope. Sounds just like normal. So either he was stone deaf, or not playing nearly as loud as he thought he was.
In the case of our power amps, we see a similar thing. Steve Vai frequently sends his Two/Ninety/Two power amps in for a checkup between a string of shows to “get them back up to snuff” because of the heavy beating they presumably endure. In 5 years we have yet to replace the power tubes because there is virtually never any wear on them.
You’ll know you’re maxing out the SVT when you hear it getting compressed and bloated sounding on the low end. Not to mention you must be replacing those original 10s on a monthly basis. If that’s not happening and you have the amps volume set to around the first couple of notches like usual, you can usually get away with running it into the PS-2 or PS-100. They both have the same load capacity.
If you are really blasting it, removing tubes will work, but mainly that will prevent the output transformer from contributing the girth that it is capable of.
Cheers,
Dave