I have an old DL60 (VHT still) that I recently retubed as it was in the manual (Sovtek 12AX7WB in V1, then 3x Chinese - Psvane - 12ax7, and since I couldn’t find Sovtek KT88 I went with Psvane KT88). Bias seems right. However, The amp is a bit more shrill and high mid heavy and I am not managing to correct this with the EQ.
Any tips on possible tube changes to address this?
I was also looking at experimenting with the PI tube. Instead of a 12ax7, try out lower gain alternatives. 5751, 12au/at/ay7… is there anything that is telling me not to?
Thanks a lot! Long time VHT/fryette lover, just never took time to do a little tube dance with my amps.
I will try your suggestions. I guess Shuguang are really close to Psvane, but I think I have a few JJ ECC83S around that could be worth a try. I never gave a shot to 6550 so if I find a good deal on them I might pull the trigger… I will let you know if/when I do it and what the results are.
Just wanted to drop by and say thanks! I haven’t followed all your recommendations just yet, but I have found a leftover JJ ECC83S I had and put in in V1, moved the Sovtek 12ax7WB to V2, Psvane in V3 and a TAD 7025 in the PI and already noticed a good improvement. It kinda put the frequencies back where I expected them to be and they are now much more manageable with the EQ. I just have a tad (pun intended) more noise but it’s not bad.
Hi Dave,
in spite of the UL2 around the corner i could not hold back to buy a second CL50 but with EQ this time. I looked around the tubes and what is written around but i´m not so in tube swapping and so on…
But i would be curious if this recommendation of yours is the same for a CL50 (except the power tubes of course).
Thanks
my experience with the 50CL and D60 is that they like different tubes in v1. shuguang 12ax7 work well in both outside of v1.
I’m a little bit surprised no one’s mentioned the tung sol 12ax7 for v1 in the deliverance, as that’s what used to be recommended in the manual. It’s what I’ve always run in mine, even after experimenting with a bunch of different tubes for v1 that’s what I ended up with anyway.
don’t necessarily recommend the tung sol for the pittbull, though. stock v1 for that amp is the sovtek 12ax7wb, but I really don’t like that tube in v1, as a personal preference. if you like smooth smooth warm sound (as opposed to a crunchy sound) then you might like the wb. I ended up with a ruby hg+ (which is a shuguang 12ax7 selected for certain characteristics) in v1 for my pittbull, but if I recall, the EHX 12ax7 was pretty close.
I’ve tried the JJ ecc83s in both amps and they sounded fine, pretty middle-of-the-road, but definitely didn’t lead the pack.
all these experiments on my part were like at least 5 years ago. production does change, so who knows how valid any of this is for buying new tubes.
Thanks for sharing your experiances. Every day i swich a little bit around and now i have almost the same wildness of my old 98 CL50 in the CLX. Very impressive. I want to share my observations too but i have to double-check first with some tubes and will do that tomorrow. And i dont wnat to hijack this Deliverance theard. I will share a link to my old CLX CL50 thread. My new CL50 is currently not priority until i have changed the power tubes. Best
I had accidently a Highgrade JJ83 tube from Tubeampdoctor at hand and i can confirm what David is sharing here. The rest of the tubes were highly likly all Chinese… and yes from my ears it gives the increasing Punch and the Chines tubes fill up… Unfortunatyl this tube was in V1 a little bit to noisy in my CLX but it will be V1 in my new second CL50.
It was a great experiance weekend switching the tubes on the other hand i have enough now new songs are more important but i will share my experiances in the other thread. Learned a lot how this effects the sound in density (this is how i would describe it). Thanks