# The Great Power Tube Debate



## GuitarsCanada

In your opinion, what was the greatest power tube ever made?


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## bcmatt

I chose EL84s because they are in a couple of my MOST favorite amps, but really, it depends on application and style, so I think everyone should have at least an amp with each type (in a perfect world).

Oh, and 6V6s are a very common tube type that you missed.


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## keto

Chose 34's, tho it was close to a toss up with 6L6's. But I have heard *fantastic* cleans from 34's, as well as the well known rock tones....I have heard fantastic cleans from 6's too, but not as good on the rock side (acknowledging however that there are some excellent 6L6 high gain amps).


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## snacker

currently, my main gigging amp has 6L6s, but for the last few years, i've been a hardcore EL84 guy, so my vote is with the EL84


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## hollowbody

I went with the EL34s. I would have said 6L6 a while back, but I love the tone I can get from my Traynoy YGL3 with EL34s. Although they're more typically used in a Marshall-ish application, the cleans I get from my Traynor are gorgeous!


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## Robert1950

Scott, are you sure you meant KT88? Not KT66, the old JTM45 tubes?


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## Robert1950

Les Paul into a Marshall - EL34. Oh yeah.


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## GuitarsCanada

Robert1950 said:


> Scott, are you sure you meant KT88? Not KT66, the old JTM45 tubes?


There is a KT88 as well as a KT66 and KT77 although I think the KT88 got the most use. I was pretty sure that Marshall used the KT88 in those but I could most certainly be wrong.


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## shoretyus

That ain't fair... I voted for 6L6's because this is a guitar forum..*but*....in the Leslie world an amp with 6l6's is a different animal than one with 6550's i.e. single speed vs two speed and a totally different sound.


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## Ripper

The KT-66 is what was in the old JTM45's. A great tube for sure. I run them in mine. I can't pick just one as they are all so different and all have their place.


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## guitarman2

Up until 2 years ago I was strictly a 6L6 guy. My vote went for the EL84.


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## LowWatt

I went EL34, because I can do anything with a good 2xEL34 amp. Still, I love my small bottles a lot (EL84s and 6V6s)


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## torndownunit

7591. My 66 Ampeg Reverberocket II has them, and it's (to me) the best sounding amp I have heard.

Other than that I would have to go with EL84. I don't like every amp I have heard with them, but I like a lot of them. I just find them a nice middle ground between the other tube types.


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## Wild Bill

There's no category for "Other"! :smile:

This to me is one of those unanswerable questions. How can you choose the best tube without knowing for what application?

If you just want to know what impresses me most I have a 4-1000 tube that runs about 2 kilowatts in a ham radio shortwave amplifier. I've always toyed with the idea of using it in a guitar amplifier!

The biggest problem would be the output transformer. I could wind my own or maybe see if a large electrical transformer rated at 2000 watts might be available with the right turns ratio to match to a speaker cab.

Oh yeah, the speaker cab! I could make something like that 10 foot cone in the first Back to the Future movie! Or maybe at least 10 full Marshall stacks.

Oh oh! If I don't shake this idea I'm gonna have a lot of amps for service stacking up while I build this thing!

:food-smiley-004:


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## bcmatt

Wild Bill said:


> There's no category for "Other"! :smile:
> 
> This to me is one of those unanswerable questions. How can you choose the best tube without knowing for what application?
> 
> If you just want to know what impresses me most I have a 4-1000 tube that runs about 2 kilowatts in a ham radio shortwave amplifier. I've always toyed with the idea of using it in a guitar amplifier!
> 
> The biggest problem would be the output transformer. I could wind my own or maybe see if a large electrical transformer rated at 2000 watts might be available with the right turns ratio to match to a speaker cab.
> 
> Oh yeah, the speaker cab! I could make something like that 10 foot cone in the first Back to the Future movie! Or maybe at least 10 full Marshall stacks.
> 
> Oh oh! If I don't shake this idea I'm gonna have a lot of amps for service stacking up while I build this thing!
> 
> :food-smiley-004:


Don't shake the idea! I want to see this!


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## allthumbs56

All of them can sound good ........ or bad, depending. Asked to pick though and I'd have to go with the venerable 6V6. My Princeton, Princeton Reverb and DRRI are all overflowing with that particular magical brand of whoopass :smile:


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## Zacman0126

This poll needs a KT77 option kqoct


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## Archer

I can't really say that I have one. I have tried plenty of amps using many tubes....I favor 6L6 type amps these days but go through phases.


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## Scottone

Wild Bill said:


> T
> If you just want to know what impresses me most I have a 4-1000 tube that runs about 2 kilowatts in a ham radio shortwave amplifier. I've always toyed with the idea of using it in a guitar amplifier


I believe that Kevin O'Connor has put together guitars amps using transmitter tubes....I had a long conversation with him about that a few years back. He was talking about using them primarily for high powered bass amps.

I tend to prefer cathode biased designs with EL84's or 6V6's. My Stephenson 30 has a pair of each so I'm covered :smile:


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## keeperofthegood

kkjuw I was out googling and eBay spectatoring today, there is a site that just gets my ... something, but whatever you want to say, it is good to this thread:










http://translate.google.ca/translat...illa:en-US:official&hs=ub&num=100&newwindow=1


or

http://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=th&u=http://www.htg2.net/index.php?topic=48468.100


(the google translation :/ not perfect but at least somewhat readable)

There are a lot of ... wild individuals doing things with tubes that the tubes had not been designed for. It is a fun thing to sit back and google image search through. Getting a lot of the parts is not easy, or cheep :/ though, to give these notions a try at home. These links though sorta stood out a lot for HOW *something* IT IS to build this kind of equipment on a floor 

OH AND http://translate.google.ca/translat...illa:en-US:official&hs=bv&num=100&newwindow=1










Those speakers look so incongruous against the setup.


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## Milkman

I chose 6L6, but truthfully my favourite is this (or something similar).


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## megadan

El34? Guitar players 

Clearly the GE 6550A is the greatest tube ever made.


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## nonreverb

megadan said:


> El34? Guitar players
> 
> Clearly the GE 6550A is the greatest tube ever made.


I would agree...overall, the 6550 could be used in several different applications within the audio world and outside it....however my first pick would be the Genalex Gold Lion/Gold Monarch KT88 which was superior to the GE 6550A.


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## Wild Bill

Perhaps the greatest tube that never was for guitar amps is the 8417.

It was probably the very last high power audio tube ever invented. It was used in some Bogen amps and a line of audiophile power amps from a company called Quicksilver.

With a pair of them you could run 100 watts easily. Guitar amps would undoubtably pushed them to a lot more. The best thing was that you needed much less drive than other tubes, saving a stage or two of tubes in the preamp.

Using trannies and a pair of 8417's scrounged from a Bogen amp I made a 100 watt Bass amp, cloning the old Marshall MarkII Bass Amp preamp circuit. It worked absolutely great!

You can still buy the tubes but since they're not making anymore the price keeps getting higher and higher. Ebay is still a good bet!

:food-smiley-004:


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## keeperofthegood

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/roadtour14/roadtour14.html

>_>

Them KT88's look tiny


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## megadan

keeperofthegood said:


> http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/roadtour14/roadtour14.html


hehe, I love that they used all that insane audiophile gear and a Playstation for a source


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## Rugburn

I'm surprised that the 6V6 isn't getting much love. With all the Deluxe Reverb freaks, I'd have expected a better showing. I guess there's few, if any, amps that are being made today (other than reissues and reproductions) that use them. The Egnater Rebel 20 comes to mind, but it's got two EL84s as well. I can't say a music store is the best place for me to really get into an amp, but I had a hard time distinguishing big tonal differences between the two sets of power tubes when I gave one a go. This likely has more to do with it's gainy metalish tonal design, than the tube types. Not a big turn-on for me, but I could see how this has become a really popular amp with those that go for those sorts of sounds. 

Shawn


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## overdriver

Man thats like asking what your fav. ice cream or candy bar is.


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## Buzz

I'm going with 6v6's since my Fender Princeton II has them. They have a great clean sound and rock hard. The 6v6 can do it all. I would like to someday have an amp with x4 6v6's for a bit more volume, but for now two 6v6's are plenty. I really enjoy my Seymor Duncan 84-40 which has four el-84's. I've got some great old Canadian amps with two el84's ..Lifco, Thorcraft, Traynor. They all have a nice overdrive but not as powerfull as a 6v6 amp. I would switch them over if I could.


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## JSX/6505

I use and love EL34s, but my vote is for the 6L6. Mainly because of it's wide use in older amps I like. From Fender and Mesa amps to the first Marshalls that used 6L6's. It seems to be a standard and consistent tube type that offers a generally thick and warm sounding output.


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## torndownunit

Buzz said:


> I'm going with 6v6's since my Fender Princeton II has them. They have a great clean sound and rock hard. The 6v6 can do it all. I would like to someday have an amp with x4 6v6's for a bit more volume, but for now two 6v6's are plenty. I really enjoy my Seymor Duncan 84-40 which has four el-84's. I've got some great old Canadian amps with two el84's ..Lifco, Thorcraft, Traynor. They all have a nice overdrive but not as powerfull as a 6v6 amp. I would switch them over if I could.


It just depends on that amp. 2 of my favourite sounding amps are the Traynor YBA2 and the YGM3. Both use EL84's, though neither amps sounds like what you would expect from an amp with EL84's. Especially the YGM3. That amp sounds 'in between' pretty much everything.

I love the Princeton Reverb as well though and it uses 6V6's. I have played one of the YBA2's with 6V6's though, and those 2 amps don't sound remotely similar (both do sound great though).

I just find it really hard to generalize about any tube based on what I have owned. I only know the old Ampegs are my personal favourite tone wise.


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## traynor_garnet

You can make some very crude generalizations about different tubes, but really it comes down to the circuit they are running in. A different circuit will have a much larger effect on tone then simply switching to a different output tube.

TG


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## StevieMac

torndownunit said:


> 7591. My 66 Ampeg Reverberocket II has them, and it's (to me) the best sounding amp I have heard.


+1...even though I can't vote for it here. My '64 Reverberocket had the same tubes and was, hands down, the best tone from a guitar amp I've ever heard. Unfortunately, that amp wasn't loud enough for my purposes....or very reliable.


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## Buzz

Ya the circuit has alot to do with it. The 6v6 is perfect beacuse you can get a loud overdrive sound without going deaf and it has a powerful clean tone...in the right circuit. sdsre


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## Lemmy Hangslong

6L6 is a close second for me and 6V6 comes third... the mighty EL34 is number one in my books.


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## warse22

EL84s - no question for me!


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## Wild Bill

traynor_garnet said:


> You can make some very crude generalizations about different tubes, but really it comes down to the circuit they are running in. A different circuit will have a much larger effect on tone then simply switching to a different output tube.
> 
> TG


Absolutely, TG!

I think a lot of guys don't realize that tubes don't handle sound at all. They handle electrons! They are electrical devices, not acoustic.

Sound is converted into electricity to be fed into an amp. At the other end electricity is fed into a speaker, which moves air to transform the energy back into sound.

That means that tubes may have different gain factors but they are NOT going to colour the sound like different types of wood or strings in an acoustic guitar! Electrical signals are to sound waves as a photograph is to real flesh and blood. That is, you can have a representation but it it NOT the same thing!

That's why I don't buy into the idea that a different brand of 12AX7 might have "a greater midrange presence!" or some such malarkey. Tubes today are not built to the tight specs of the Golden Years so many brands have differing amounts of gain. That difference is what guys are hearing. You are not going to get a better bottom end from a different brand of tube. That tube amplifies from 0 to maybe a hundred MILLION cycles per second! To say that one has a bit more gain at 800 cycles or the midrange of an electric guitar is just silly.

That being said, there ARE overall quality differences! Some cheapo brands will turn microphonic very quickly, due to cheap internal construction. Some output tubes will handle higher plate voltages better than others. Tungsol 12AX7's DO have less hum, but they can't compensate for hum from a badly wired amp. Tone? Sorry, electrons don't have tone!

The gain factor can often mean everything. EL34's need much less drive than 6L6's. So do their little brothers, the EL84's. That's why they give that overdriven Marshall sound in essentially the same Bassman circuits.

6V6's fall in between a 6L6 and an El34 for sensitivity.

6550's are simply BIGGER 6L6's! Just as clean but you can get a lot more power out of 'em!

And as TG said, a different circuit with even the SAME tubes will sound very different! A Vox might use EL84's and so do many little Gibson amps but they don't sound anything alike. Their circuits are VERY different!

However, when you don't know how to change a circuit you can learn how, pay a tech or swap tubes around!

Learning takes time and effort. Techs cost money. Swapping tubes gives the illusion of making changes and really understanding what's going on.

To a tech, swapping tubes is like the difference between someone really playing guitar and someone dinking away with "Guitar Hero"!

:food-smiley-004:


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## Rugburn

It's interesting to note that a lot of players will describe their worn-out tubes as "lacking life"or "tonally flat". The more I listen to folks post and learn about their interpretations, the more complex the inter-relationship between any given player and their gear becomes. There's a quote I've always loved by Aspen Pittman "things that can be measured often don't matter, and things that matter often can't be measured". I always assumed that this implied the old "ghost in the machine" notion, or that there's some kind of "mojo" inherent in a given component or device, yet impossible to pin-point in a conventional sense. Perhaps, more likely, it is the idea that it's impossible to know or reason how a given player interacts with a piece of equipment, especially over many years. Neil Young comes to mind. In an old GP interview, the writer notes that at a sound check, Young asked if his rig was getting enough juice. Low and behold it wasn't. Of course, he couldn't "hear" the electricity, or lack there of, but rather the way his sound seemed to be suffering. Being a technically minded player, he had a gut feeling what might be causing the problem. Other stories involve players rigging their pedals to run on slightly less juice than specified. I might think it sounds like crap, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. I like my strings old, really old!! I've had friends and others imploring that I'm "missing so much", to which I tell them "I don't miss *it*!". There's a difference between myths and mysteries.


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## Bevo

Bill, that was awsome!

I always felt the only thing I notice about changing tubes is the gain, tone very rarely changes to me.
Some tubes I think have more bottom end only because they start to distort earlier.

Bill, do pre amp tubes follow the same discription as power tubes?
When you have say 4 pre amp tube do they all recieve the same voltage or is it staggered or staged as the volume increases?

Thanks


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## ajcoholic

I am very a practical person, and I seldom believe anything that seems at all like "hocus-pocus"...

However, I have tried some various tubes and I am positive I can tell the difference. I am talking all new tubes, nothing old or NOS.

Am I crazy? I would love it if the cheapest tubes sounded best - or at least as good as the more expensive ones. 

AJC


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## Lemmy Hangslong

Interesting comments here. Not sure if I agree with everything and there are many other people that talk about things in a different light and have done so for years based on experience. I believe as many many others do that tubes effect tone. They are not the only thing that effects tone and other things effect tone far greater such as speakers and cabinet design, component selection and circuit design.
I'm not buying the statements that exclude tubes in the tone shaping department. 

Tubes amplify audio frequencies.


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## Budda

I posted bill's last post on some forums, and here's what some people have to say:

" "I think a lot of guys don't realize that tubes don't handle sound at all. They handle electrons! They are electrical devices, not acoustic."
He lost me right here.

Yes, tubes are electrical devices. So are pickups, yet no one questions the fact pickups sound different. A 250 meg pot is an electronic device too, that also handles electrons, yet it has noticeably less high end than a 1k pot.

What this Wild Bill guy seems to forget is that an electric guitar changes vibrations into a flow of electrons, which then go into a guitar amp and are changed back into sound waves. He's just looking at the physics of it, and not looking very deeply at that either, and letting what he thinks should happen override what his ears are saying.

My experience has been that my Recto sounds seriously different with EL34s than with 6L6s, in ways that are abundantly obvious even in recorded clips, with the same exact circuit and same settings. They may "just handle electrons," but the way they handle them changes the sound you get when you convert those electrons back into sound energy in _fundamental_ ways. 


"Tubes do make a difference in tone, because of the things he listed. Gain factor changes and different noise floors can alter the tone significantly and create a looser or tighter tone. Yes, tubes don't handle the sound themselves, but they handle the electronic representation of that sound, and therefore change the sound as they do their job differently.

Mainly: If tubes don't make a difference in tone, why can I hear a difference in tone?"


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## Lemmy Hangslong

I have to say to think any different is absurd. It also nulifies the statements of literally hundreds maybe thousands of very experienced musicians, techs, and fans of music in general.

Say it how you like.. sure it's on a molecular level still...

Tubes amplify audio frequencies.


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## nonreverb

Budda said:


> I posted bill's last post on some forums, and here's what some people have to say:
> 
> " "I think a lot of guys don't realize that tubes don't handle sound at all. They handle electrons! They are electrical devices, not acoustic."
> He lost me right here.
> 
> Yes, tubes are electrical devices. So are pickups, yet no one questions the fact pickups sound different. A 250 meg pot is an electronic device too, that also handles electrons, yet it has noticeably less high end than a 1k pot.
> 
> What this Wild Bill guy seems to forget is that an electric guitar changes vibrations into a flow of electrons, which then go into a guitar amp and are changed back into sound waves. He's just looking at the physics of it, and not looking very deeply at that either, and letting what he thinks should happen override what his ears are saying.
> 
> My experience has been that my Recto sounds seriously different with EL34s than with 6L6s, in ways that are abundantly obvious even in recorded clips, with the same exact circuit and same settings. They may "just handle electrons," but the way they handle them changes the sound you get when you convert those electrons back into sound energy in _fundamental_ ways.
> 
> 
> "Tubes do make a difference in tone, because of the things he listed. Gain factor changes and different noise floors can alter the tone significantly and create a looser or tighter tone. Yes, tubes don't handle the sound themselves, but they handle the electronic representation of that sound, and therefore change the sound as they do their job differently.
> 
> Mainly: If tubes don't make a difference in tone, why can I hear a difference in tone?"


What this guy seems to have missed is that comparing two 12AX7's is NOT the same as comparing an EL34 to a 6L6. A 6L6 is a power tetrode where an EL34 is a pentode tube. Their inherent characteristics are different and so is their sound.

It's interesting that the qustion was "What's the greatest power tube ever made?"
Well, based on what criterion? As an audio amp? As an industrial power driver for some machinery? For radar? For transmission? If you look at all the applications that tubes are and have been used for, the field of choice gets much larger....:smile:


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## keeperofthegood

nonreverb said:


> What this guy seems to have missed is that comparing two 12AX7's is NOT the same as comparing an EL34 to a 6L6. A 6L6 is a power tetrode where an EL34 is a pentode tube. Their inherent characteristics are different and so is their sound.
> 
> It's interesting that the qustion was "What's the greatest power tube ever made?"
> Well, based on what criterion? As an audio amp? As an industrial power driver for some machinery? For radar? For transmission? If you look at all the applications that tubes are and have been used for, the field of choice gets much larger....:smile:


My tongue-in-cheek posts in this thread are in a way pointing at the Emperors New Cloths. A Short List of tubes? Only these tubes? There is more to sunshine than heaven and earth.

Sure, there are a few companies that captured the imaginations of a generation... 50 years ago. What comes to me is how much of a mono-culture tube amplifiers then became and stayed. There are far more tubes out there, far more makes of tubes, with vastly varying abilities than just the few of this poll. I had a nice little amp that used three tubes, one was the 117L7GT http://tubedata.itchurch.org/sheets/127/1/117L7GT.pdf (the other two escape my memories, I just recall that one in the line up). Amazing that a one tube radio tube was in a little <3 watt amp!

Wild Bill also pointed to a tube that went "poof!" in the face of transistors (bad historical timing). He has said it was a great tube. You know, I would not disagree, it probably was and is still a great tube. Only, Marshall or Fender with their millions wont make it because then they would have to sell it to people that don't tend to know what they are buying without a lot of glossy ads.

That is why a tube capable of 25 or 50 or 150 watts power out is being put in a 5 or 10 watt amp. Because, it is a mono-culture of thought. The "this is THE tube" thinking, so it gets used. It is not because it was the best tube for the job, but because trying to sell something someone hasn't heard of to a person that didn't take University Engineering is really the point of "no go" for the sales and marketing division of the company making a buck in selling 100 dollars in parts for 1000 dollars and more. 

So, what guitarists are given is a great choice of the variety brought to you by 10 or so tubes. I have an XLS substitution sheet listing 16, 384 or so tubes. http://frank.pocnet.net/other/equivalents/TubeEquivalents_AS.xls


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## Budda

I think keeper raises a *very* good point about the options of tubes out there, and the fact that guitarists are devoted to about 10 of them. 

We won't often listen when someone says "no man, this non-tube amp *actually sounds good!*" (depending on how open minded or snobby the individual is), so I have a hard time believing that people would just simply embrace a new, "unheard-of" tube - unless some seriously big names got some seriously sweet tones out of them.


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## Wild Bill

nonreverb said:


> What this guy seems to have missed is that comparing two 12AX7's is NOT the same as comparing an EL34 to a 6L6. A 6L6 is a power tetrode where an EL34 is a pentode tube. Their inherent characteristics are different and so is their sound.


Exactly!

:food-smiley-004:


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## Wild Bill

Bevo said:


> Bill, that was awsome!
> 
> I always felt the only thing I notice about changing tubes is the gain, tone very rarely changes to me.
> Some tubes I think have more bottom end only because they start to distort earlier.
> 
> Bill, do pre amp tubes follow the same discription as power tubes?
> When you have say 4 pre amp tube do they all recieve the same voltage or is it staggered or staged as the volume increases?
> 
> Thanks


Maybe yes, maybe no, Bevo!:smile:

Your question seems simple but like most simple questions there is no simple answer.

Which voltage are you talking about? The plate voltage the tubes receive to make them work or the signal voltage they are amplifying?

There are two separate voltages at work in a tube amplifying stage. One set is DC. There will be a high voltage on the plate and various other voltages on the other tube elements. These set the parameters of the tube for the gain desired or the type of circuit. This is totally separate from the signal.

The plate voltage is considered most important in the preamp stages but may or may not read the same on each preamp tube section. That's because it is only loosely related to the stage's gain. You can increase the value of the plate resistor, which will lower the voltage at the plate but actually INCREASE the gain! It's because the tube can develop a larger voltage swing across that plate load.

With the signal, we're talking an AC wave. The electrons swing in voltage from positive to negative, making a wave shape. The input comes into the 1st tube section, is amplified and fed to the 2nd one, and so on. Each section amplifies the wave, except for a couple of available sections which may be used for effect circuits like reverb or tremolo. A control may be put in to control the gain of a stage. It may be after the 1st stage, the last stage or both, if you're running a master volume. Doesn't matter. If you use a control to vary the gain from any one stage in the chain it will affect the total gain, since they all run in a cascade chain and they all multiply the gain amount until the end of the process.

Power tubes don't amplify in stages either, 99.9% of the time anyway! In guitar amps you may have one output power tube, usually running Class A, or you will have a pair or pairs of power tubes. With a pair each tube works for half the time, resting and cooling down while its partner is doing it's shift. They are biased in what's termed Class AB and by doing it that way you can get more power from a pair than just double what you get from one. When you add a pair you are just paralleling two 'on each side' to handle more power. That's why you will never see 3 or 5 output tubes.

Incidently, if tubes coloured the sound then every tube oscilloscope, voltmeter or piece of measuring equipment ever made would never have worked as they did! A 'scope does more than just display a signal. It also measures it! It is calibrated so that you can measure how much a signal has been changed in voltage and thus calculate gain or attenuation. It has gain stages inside. If a tube gave different gain at different frequencies that would have totally screwed everything up! All that equipment would have been useless boat anchors!

:food-smiley-004:


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## nonreverb

Budda said:


> I think keeper raises a *very* good point about the options of tubes out there, and the fact that guitarists are devoted to about 10 of them.
> 
> We won't often listen when someone says "no man, this non-tube amp *actually sounds good!*" (depending on how open minded or snobby the individual is), so I have a hard time believing that people would just simply embrace a new, "unheard-of" tube - unless some seriously big names got some seriously sweet tones out of them.


Ah yes, the wonderful world of endorsement and branding. Part of the problem, of course, is the history where this debate stems from. Many are told that the absolute best tubes used in the amps of our heros 35 years ago were Mullard, Genalex, RCA, El34, 6V6, KT88 etc etc etc.Therefore, taken purely on these merits, we believe that these are standards of excellence.
Fast forward a few decades and enter an individual like...oh ....Mike Matthews for instance. He's been in the industry thanks to Electro Harmonics for years. He buys a tube factory in Russia and starts producing tubes.
He turns out to be a very clever fellow indeed. He buys up the rights of the best brand names in tubes from companies that are long defunct and starts using the names for his products....
Now I hear people extolling the virtues of "Tunsol" tubes are "Mullard" tubes.
While they may be decent tubes, I'll bet anyone they're not to the same standard as the origionals...but to the general public who don't know the difference, they think that they're buying into tradition where they are really just buying into branding.....my 21/2 cents:smile:


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## Wild Bill

ajcoholic said:


> I am very a practical person, and I seldom believe anything that seems at all like "hocus-pocus"...
> 
> However, I have tried some various tubes and I am positive I can tell the difference. I am talking all new tubes, nothing old or NOS.
> 
> Am I crazy? I would love it if the cheapest tubes sounded best - or at least as good as the more expensive ones.
> 
> AJC


No, you're not crazy! It's just that you may not know what's REALLY happening!

First off, in the Golden Years every 12AX7 or other tube was carefully made to data book specs. In fact, if they varied outside of tolerances they were scrapped! Industry had to be able to rely on your product, so that it wouldn't matter whose brand of 12AX7 you bought - your circuit or equipment would always work the same. You might exceed the QUALITY asked for in the specs! That's why advertising at the time always had to do with tube lifetime and those sorts of things, not how well they sounded. However, the electrical function had to be as identical as possible or you simply couldn't get anyone to buy your tubes. 

You should also remember that tubes weren't just for audio! They were used in ALL types of electronics! In fact, audio was likely one of the smaller markets.

Nowadays, that consistency is not at anywhere near that level. Different brands might have more overall gain than others. So when you swap in a different tube you will immediately get a shift in gain. Your ears may hear that but not necessarily only as a volume difference, depending on how your tone controls were set and if you were loud enough to be entering distortion.

Also, there is a psychology to how we perceive things. Man has evolved to see patterns, even if they aren't there!:smile:

That's not to be meant as silly! It was a survival mechanism! How many times have you seen someone have ONE experience and think it is true forever? Maybe they had a lemon of a Chevy and think that ALL Chevys are lemons. Maybe they had ONE poor quality service experience at a store and then think that ALL salespeople at that store are bad!

Or sadly, have a bad experience with ONE person of a different race or creed and think that they're ALL like that? It's part of being human to think like that. Scientifically, we know that it's nonsense but in our gut Nature has wired us to make a pattern.

When we were cavemen out hunting, we may have had a lion pop out of a bush darker than most of the others. If we were lucky enough to escape we likely avoided ALL bushes of that shade from then on! In our minds we had identified a pattern. It may not have been true that a lion would more likely pick that shade of bush but maybe that bush also had a shape better suited to hide the lion. Maybe it tended to that shade of green only when it had grown to a certain size good enough to hide the lion. So the colour itself may have had nothing to do with the probability of there being a lion hiding there. 

In fact, there may be NO connection to the type of bush and the danger of a lion! Still, it doesn't hurt to avoid that colour of bush and if there is any connection, for whatever reason, it might increase your odds of not being eaten before you grew old enough to have kids and raise them long enough for them to survive on their own.

We are hard-wired to see patterns, even imaginary ones. That's where most superstitions come from. Breaking a mirror, seeing a black cat, walking under a ladder...we make a connection as to what they mean but that doesn't mean there really is one.

Any 2nd year psych student could certainly explain it far better than I'm doing but - it's true! It's part of being human, not of being 'crazy'.

Thinking totally scientifically is NOT normal for humans! We took thousands of years to come up with the idea and even now it is generally accepted that if you don't learn how when you're a kid you may never be good at it for the rest of your life! Nature didn't design us to figure out enough science to go to the moon. She just wanted us to survive!

Me, if she posted in this forum I would ask her, if you wanted us to survive as a species then why did you evolve disco and ABBA?

:food-smiley-004:


----------



## Pneumonic

Wild Bill said:


> Perhaps the greatest tube that never was for guitar amps is the 8417.
> 
> It was probably the very last high power audio tube ever invented. It was used in some Bogen amps and a line of audiophile power amps from a company called Quicksilver.
> 
> With a pair of them you could run 100 watts easily. Guitar amps would undoubtably pushed them to a lot more. The best thing was that you needed much less drive than other tubes, saving a stage or two of tubes in the preamp.
> 
> Using trannies and a pair of 8417's scrounged from a Bogen amp I made a 100 watt Bass amp, cloning the old Marshall MarkII Bass Amp preamp circuit. It worked absolutely great!
> 
> You can still buy the tubes but since they're not making anymore the price keeps getting higher and higher. Ebay is still a good bet!
> 
> :food-smiley-004:


Here are a set of one of my prized Quicksilver pride and joys, Bill.

Had many top notch tube amps over the years but none sound quite like these Quickies.










These aren't stock and have had Black Gate/Auri Caps added along with Rikens. 

Currently running with original Philips/Sylvania 8417's, 60's RCA 12BH7 grey drivers, Dynaco branded Tele 12AX7 ribbed, Mullard 5AR4 Blackburns. 

These amps easily drive my Martin Logan electrostatic speakers which dip down to under 2 ohm's.


- Kerry


----------



## Wild Bill

Budda said:


> I think keeper raises a *very* good point about the options of tubes out there, and the fact that guitarists are devoted to about 10 of them.
> 
> We won't often listen when someone says "no man, this non-tube amp *actually sounds good!*" (depending on how open minded or snobby the individual is), so I have a hard time believing that people would just simply embrace a new, "unheard-of" tube - unless some seriously big names got some seriously sweet tones out of them.


Budda, there is only one reason why we have only a small number of tube types available today and that is...MONEY!

Tubes are a volume product. If you can't sell bucketfuls then you can't possibly sell them at a competitive price. You can't just turn a few out on a lathe in a shop. You make them by the thousands or you just DON'T!

By the time transistors took over tubes had had a 40 year plus run. They were a mature technology and in markets like audio certain types had become standards. 12AX7's, 6L6's and the others had become the usual choice. Their sales volumes were huge in comparison to some others.

Over the 70's the only tube factories left were in the USSR. They were slower at getting into the solid state world, since their system just wasn't good at making changes.

For a long time we survived on the boxcars of old stock that was still around but by the 80's some folks began to realize that in some applications like audio tubes were NEVER going to go out of demand! New factories sprung up, usually by people who had bought the old production machinery when the old names got out of the game.

Those new factories knew that they were never going to see the type of sales volumes that happened in the glory days! Nobody was building tube TVs, test equipment, power and motion control stuff in factories and so on. Just audio folks, like musicians and audiophiles.

They realized that they could only make their money with the standards, like the 12AX7 family and the output tubes like EL34 or 6L6. The entire list might be very short but there would be enough volume of just those types that they could expect to make a profit.

So if the sales volume isn't there, it ain't gonna happen!

Incidently, a friend found me some old ham radio QST magazines at a flea market recently. One was from November, 1945! It was a big kick from a history standpoint to read articles about hams drafted as radio operators manning stations during the Battle of the Bulge!

What was also interesting was the ads! There were ads for tube types that I had never heard before! I realized that in those days designers didn't think in terms of '6L6'. They just needed a power tetrode type of tube and would look at any tube that fit that description and had the specs they needed. Some of those market offerings became very popular and some didn't. So today we all know certain types and the others just faded away from memory.

The 8417 I had posted about earlier was not picked because of tone differences! No real electronics engineer believes that there are tone differences. Only musicians and audiophiles, it would seem. No, it was attractive to a designer because it could handle more power with only two output tubes in an amplifier, and was more sensitive so that you could also save the cost of one preamp tube. You saved on sockets, resistors and capacitors, space in the chassis...MONEY!

:food-smiley-004:


----------



## Wild Bill

Pneumonic said:


> Here are a set of one of my prized Quicksilver pride and joys, Bill.
> 
> Had many top notch tube amps over the years but none sound quite like these Quickies.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> - Kerry


Posilutely everlovin' gorgeous!kksjur

:food-smiley-004:


----------



## Pneumonic

Bill, I have another pair that have been converted to 6550/KT. Here's a nudie shot of the guts. 










Am running Gold Aero platinum KT99A's (rebranded Ei KT90's) in them and though they sound excellent they lack the magic that the 8417's have.


----------



## Pneumonic

Another intrernal picture


----------



## Wild Bill

Pneumonic said:


> Another intrernal picture


Now THAT'S amp porn!

To quote MASH (the book) "Epileptic! Finest kind!"

:food-smiley-004:


----------



## Wild Bill

Budda said:


> I posted bill's last post on some forums, and here's what some people have to say:
> 
> " "I think a lot of guys don't realize that tubes don't handle sound at all. They handle electrons! They are electrical devices, not acoustic."
> He lost me right here.
> 
> Yes, tubes are electrical devices. So are pickups, yet no one questions the fact pickups sound different. A 250 meg pot is an electronic device too, that also handles electrons, yet it has noticeably less high end than a 1k pot.
> 
> What this Wild Bill guy seems to forget is that an electric guitar changes vibrations into a flow of electrons, which then go into a guitar amp and are changed back into sound waves. He's just looking at the physics of it, and not looking very deeply at that either, and letting what he thinks should happen override what his ears are saying.
> 
> My experience has been that my Recto sounds seriously different with EL34s than with 6L6s, in ways that are abundantly obvious even in recorded clips, with the same exact circuit and same settings. They may "just handle electrons," but the way they handle them changes the sound you get when you convert those electrons back into sound energy in _fundamental_ ways.
> 
> 
> "Tubes do make a difference in tone, because of the things he listed. Gain factor changes and different noise floors can alter the tone significantly and create a looser or tighter tone. Yes, tubes don't handle the sound themselves, but they handle the electronic representation of that sound, and therefore change the sound as they do their job differently.
> 
> Mainly: If tubes don't make a difference in tone, why can I hear a difference in tone?"


Pickups sound different because they CHANGE the waveform as they convert it into electrons! And they DON'T directly deal with the sound! They have a metal string vibrating in a magnetic field, with a large coil of wire. Those mechanical vibrations cause similar waves to be induced into that coil, which results in an electrical signal.

Is that signal a totally true representation of the original sound wave? NOT! If it were, it would sound like an acoustic guitar! The magnets, the coil and a lot of other parameters influence the PROCESS of converting mechanical string vibration energy into a wave of electrons! The differences are technically distortion, by the very definition. It just so happens that a lot of us LIKE distortion! However, there are many, many kinds of distortion and what one likes is a personal choice.

A 250k pot does NOT sound different than a 1Meg! At least, not by itself! A resistance attenuates ALL signals equally, regardless of frequency, which again by definition rules out tone.

Now, if you change a 1 meg TONE pot in a guitar with a 250k, you WILL hear a change in tone! Only it's not because the pot itself is different. That tone pot is in series with a capacitor. That makes what's called an R/C network, which has an AC signal REACTANCE! 

Reactance is the AC version of resistance. It IS frequency dependent! Change the resistance or the capacitance and you change the overall reactance value AT ANY GIVEN FREQUENCY! Capacitors pass high frequencies better than low ones. Resistors set the starting point, or the 'slope'.

I could leave that 1 meg pot alone and change the capacitor and to you it would sound the same as with the 250k. The RANGE of the tone cut action would be different but if I didn't let you try it it would sound the same to your ears.

Nonreverb has already pointed out that 6L6's sound different than EL34's in your Recto because they are totally different kinds of tubes! You must have missed the many times I've posted that EL34's need a LOT less drive than 6L6's. That's precisely the reason that the Marshall sound was discovered! The original JTM45 with 5881/6L6's has essentially the same circuit as the later Plexi. It's just that when Marshall switched to the more sensitive EL34's the amp could be driven to get that wonderful Marshall 'grind'. That's the reason your Recto was designed to give you the choice.

What forums did you refer to? The "I never read an electronics book in my life Forum"?

Sorry, I don't mean to get testy. It's just that when people give me that "You're being too technical! Can't you hear the magic? Use the Force, Luke!" stuff that just does NOT fit the facts I get cranky. My job is fixing amps and if you try to do it totally by ear without paying respect to physics and how Mother Nature's Universe operates with it's physical Laws the amp just CAN'T be fixed!

I don't try to tell somebody who has spent years of honing his guitar chops how to make music. I just don't know enough myself. For that matter, I won't believe in magic instead of electronic physics either.

You're perfectly entitled to your opinion, just not your own set of 'facts'!


----------



## Pneumonic

FWIW.

I hear far less differences when using different tubes of the same type (ie 6550 Sovtek versus 6550 SED) in my guitar setup than I do with my audio rigs. In my audio setups the differences are night and day, very significant and easily heard whereas I really need to concentrate and focus with my guitar setups to hear the differences and many (most of the ?) times they are subtle.

I'm 100% positive the reason for the discrepancy boils down to the degree of revelation that each setup affords. My guitar setup simply isn't capable of revealing the differences that my audio rig is capable of. I believe this is due to the limitations/nature of guitar speakers.


----------



## keeperofthegood

Wild Bill said:


> No, you're not crazy! It's just that you may not know what's REALLY happening!
> 
> First off, in the Golden Years every 12AX7 or other tube was carefully made to data book specs. In fact, if they varied outside of tolerances they were scrapped! Industry had to be able to rely on your product, so that it wouldn't matter whose brand of 12AX7 you bought - your circuit or equipment would always work the same. You might exceed the QUALITY asked for in the specs! That's why advertising at the time always had to do with tube lifetime and those sorts of things, not how well they sounded. However, the electrical function had to be as identical as possible or you simply couldn't get anyone to buy your tubes.
> 
> You should also remember that tubes weren't just for audio! They were used in ALL types of electronics! In fact, audio was likely one of the smaller markets.
> 
> Nowadays, that consistency is not at anywhere near that level. Different brands might have more overall gain than others. So when you swap in a different tube you will immediately get a shift in gain. Your ears may hear that but not necessarily only as a volume difference, depending on how your tone controls were set and if you were loud enough to be entering distortion.
> 
> Also, there is a psychology to how we perceive things. Man has evolved to see patterns, even if they aren't there!:smile:
> 
> That's not to be meant as silly! It was a survival mechanism! How many times have you seen someone have ONE experience and think it is true forever? Maybe they had a lemon of a Chevy and think that ALL Chevys are lemons. Maybe they had ONE poor quality service experience at a store and then think that ALL salespeople at that store are bad!
> 
> Or sadly, have a bad experience with ONE person of a different race or creed and think that they're ALL like that? It's part of being human to think like that. Scientifically, we know that it's nonsense but in our gut Nature has wired us to make a pattern.
> 
> When we were cavemen out hunting, we may have had a lion pop out of a bush darker than most of the others. If we were lucky enough to escape we likely avoided ALL bushes of that shade from then on! In our minds we had identified a pattern. It may not have been true that a lion would more likely pick that shade of bush but maybe that bush also had a shape better suited to hide the lion. Maybe it tended to that shade of green only when it had grown to a certain size good enough to hide the lion. So the colour itself may have had nothing to do with the probability of there being a lion hiding there.
> 
> In fact, there may be NO connection to the type of bush and the danger of a lion! Still, it doesn't hurt to avoid that colour of bush and if there is any connection, for whatever reason, it might increase your odds of not being eaten before you grew old enough to have kids and raise them long enough for them to survive on their own.
> 
> We are hard-wired to see patterns, even imaginary ones. That's where most superstitions come from. Breaking a mirror, seeing a black cat, walking under a ladder...we make a connection as to what they mean but that doesn't mean there really is one.
> 
> Any 2nd year psych student could certainly explain it far better than I'm doing but - it's true! It's part of being human, not of being 'crazy'.
> 
> Thinking totally scientifically is NOT normal for humans! We took thousands of years to come up with the idea and even now it is generally accepted that if you don't learn how when you're a kid you may never be good at it for the rest of your life! Nature didn't design us to figure out enough science to go to the moon. She just wanted us to survive!
> 
> Me, if she posted in this forum I would ask her, if you wanted us to survive as a species then why did you evolve disco and ABBA?
> 
> :food-smiley-004:



ROFLCOPTERS I LOL'D 'N PEED A LITTLE [email protected]

Ok, internetesse over for now. Is it wrong that, in reading that post, I could not help thinking of a nice big BBQ lion with all the fixings :/ 

Patterns do help in dealing with a lot of things. I have NO idea at the front of my head what my pin code for my bank card is, I know it by the pattern my fingers make. I have NO idea the names of half the streets here or in Hamilton even though I lived nearly 14 years in Hamilton and another 3 years here in Burlington. I grew up in Niagara Falls, the other day I had to spell the name of the street I lived on for 16 years. I had to look it up  though had I been asked to draw a pic of the street I could have done that without even thinking!


@Wild Bill, if you had a pair of 6N9S's (6SL7's), and wanted to go about building an amp, where would you start for planning one? I know, I can google very well, however, I've never built an amp from raw parts and I got shoppy on eBay today and I figure you may be best to offer some suggestions  

Hmmm B-B-Q >_> gosh I wish I had kept my BBQ when I sold my house in Hamilton :/


----------



## mhammer

1) *"Our" tubes vs the universe of possible power tubes*: In the world of high-end "glass audio", a broad array of tubes can be exploited. One basic reason is that the listening volumes and associated power needs vary considerably, but more importantly one assumes that the tubes will be used under optimal conditions and not need replacing very often or very urgently. In contrast, people WILL throw their tube amps in the back of the van, WILL use them at high volumes much of the time, WILL use them under adverse thermal conditions, WILL need to replace them for a gig later that night, and WILL need to replace them wherever they happen to find themselves when the van pulls into town. The consequence of this is that one should expect a much smaller palette of tubes to capture the guitar-amp market than capture the _sound reproduction_ market. Musicians will want to know they can find tube X where and when they need it (which may be often), and music store-owners will not want to carry the sort of stock that caters to every conceivable amplifier design (hell, try finding a 12AY7 in any music store these days!). The trend will be towards homogenization of tube-use for some very practical reasons.

2) *The origins of the current tube market*: Where transistors fail to function during a nuclear holocaust, tubes _will_ function. As a consequence of this difference, the former Soviet Union maintained production of tubes during the Cold War years precisely to have an upper hand in the event of a nuclear war; largely with respect to having viable telecommunications equipment and communicate internally. Although the Cold War (and Soviet Union) ended, the production facilities remained. This is why they are found in (the former) Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, China, and Russia, and not India, Egypt or Spain. Those same Iron Curtain countries also remained behind the curve with respect to environmental stewardship and pollution laws. As a consequence of that, the environmental regulations that would make setting up a North American production facility very expensive were sidestepped by simply resurrecting an Eastern European facility. To hear Mike Matthews tell it, the big turning point came when he was dating a Russian woman in the early 80's, whose father had been a Russian general. On a trip to Russia to see the family, he was given a tour of a tube-production facility, courtesy of the girlfriend's father. He realized what was feasible, and the rest is history.

3) *Context is everything*: One should never EVER mistake the "sound" of a particular tube with the sound it provides under favourable/unfavourable plate voltages, through favourable/unfavourable transformers, into favourable/unfavourable speakers. A great many of the "also-rans" during the 1960's used the* exact same* tube complements that so many of the most sought-after amps use, but fed them with inappropriate voltages, through crappy transformers, into poorly chosen or mismatched speakers.


----------



## Wild Bill

keeperofthegood said:


> @Wild Bill, if you had a pair of 6N9S's (6SL7's), and wanted to go about building an amp, where would you start for planning one? I know, I can google very well, however, I've never built an amp from raw parts and I got shoppy on eBay today and I figure you may be best to offer some suggestions
> 
> Hmmm B-B-Q >_> gosh I wish I had kept my BBQ when I sold my house in Hamilton :/



6Sl7's? Easy! Treat 'em like 12AX7's, only with a smidgen less gain. Not enough to matter.

The same resistor values will work close enough. If you really want to go vintage then google over to www.schematicheaven.com and look at the early Ampegs. They used 6SL7's a lot!

:food-smiley-004:


----------



## Pneumonic

Hey, Bill.

Speaking of best power tubes ...... any comment on 6C33's?

Heard a pair of Quicksilver triodes that used 6C33C and boy did they sound awesome. Had all the SET triode glory but with balls to boot. Been toying with the idea of getting someone to build me up a pair. 

Heard they also are excellent as OTL designs?


- Kerry


----------



## Wild Bill

Pneumonic said:


> Hey, Bill.
> 
> Speaking of best power tubes ...... any comment on 6C33's?
> 
> Heard a pair of Quicksilver triodes that used 6C33C and boy did they sound awesome. Had all the SET triode glory but with balls to boot. Been toying with the idea of getting someone to build me up a pair.
> 
> Heard they also are excellent as OTL designs?
> 
> 
> - Kerry


Never worked with 6C33's so I have no informed opinion. I remember a few old ham radio designs that used them as transmitting tubes but that's a different application.

My only caution would be to make sure the tube is still being made by someone. It would be a shame to find yourself unable to get replacements.

:food-smiley-004:


----------



## 4345567

__________


----------



## Blueskidd96

Hmmm, I voted 6V6; due to me liking the traditional Fender sound of 6 style tubes [6L6, 6V6], but wanting better tone at lower volumes. right now I am using 6L6's in my Fender Blues Deluxe.


----------



## gtone

Best tube is very subjective - depends on what tone you're going for. Personally, I like the "bloom" and chiminess of the EL84 best, followed by the EL34 as a good all around choice. 6V6's can sound very sweet when not pushed too hard, but tend to get quite stringy and harder edged when they are. 6L6's and their ilk have an airy, glassy quality to them in lower gain modes which is very pleasing. Vacuum tubes rock!! :rockon2:


----------



## NB-SK

They are all good if you ask me. In my opinion, the only ones that don't sound good are defective.

But, I voted for the 6L6 because that's what I'm using right now, some 5881s. I've got a reissue Tungsol 5881 in my 20 watt amp and I have a small stash of NOS GE and Tungsol 5881s. 

The Tungsols have this great nasally sound. The GE are a bit smoother. The reissue Tungsol 5881 is somewhere between these two in terms of tone.


----------



## jmb2

late to the party ... voted for *6V6* .... whether playin' thru a Deluxe Reverb, Z-28 or a Remedy .... I like 'em .... alot .... 'course I also like 6L6 and EL34 tube amps .... and okay, even some EL84 tube amps :smile:


----------



## dtsaudio

Pneumonic said:


> Hey, Bill.
> 
> Speaking of best power tubes ...... any comment on 6C33's?
> 
> Heard a pair of Quicksilver triodes that used 6C33C and boy did they sound awesome. Had all the SET triode glory but with balls to boot. Been toying with the idea of getting someone to build me up a pair.
> 
> Heard they also are excellent as OTL designs?
> 
> 
> - Kerry


These are a relatively low voltage high current tube. Plate voltage is typically 150 Volts at 400ma. Original used in MIG fighter radar systems. I don't believe they are still made, but there are tons of them out there. They run really hot


----------



## hollowbody

i voted EL34 back in the day, and I still love the sound of EL34 amps, but lately ever since I retubed my JTM45 with KT66s, I can't stop loving the tone coming out of it!


----------



## gtrguy

I'm curious about the 8417 now... have to do some reading. One tube that I don't think has been mentioned is the 6CA7- equivalent to the EL34 but sonically disctinct and in my opinion, one of the best possible matches for older Marshalls.... maybe new Marshalls too but I've only heard/played them in older JCM800s and JMPs.


----------



## Steadfastly

The best tube would be a high quality solid state amp and a Digitech RP1000 effects pedal.


----------



## Guest

FlipFlopFly said:


> The best tube would be a high quality solid state amp and a Fractal Audio Axe-Fx.


 Hey FFF! I fixed that for you!


----------



## Rugburn

FlipFlopFly said:


> The best tube would be a high quality solid state amp and a Digitech RP1000 effects pedal.





> The best tube would be a high quality solid state amp and a Fractal Audio Axe-Fx


There's help for both of you, you just have to _*want *_to be helped


----------



## jammers5

Gotta be EL34's cuz that's what my Marshall DSL 50 and Traynor Custom Special 100 uses!


----------



## mrmatt1972

iaresee said:


> The best tube would be a high quality solid state amp and a Fractal Audio Axe-Fx.
> 
> Hey FFF! I fixed that for you!


Wow, those video demos were pretty good, I'll admit that! But you'd need a nice _tube _power amp to go with the Axe-FX for live use.


----------



## SaxonCabs

EL34's for big venues where you can work 'em.
EL84's for smaller venues where you can work 'em. 
I love them both cranked but would have to say the 84's are my favorite. More chime with that grit.


----------



## washburned

mrmatt1972 said:


> Wow, those video demos were pretty good, I'll admit that! But you'd need a nice _tube _power amp to go with the Axe-FX for live use.


Like the Atomic....made to work with the Axe FX


----------



## Archer

Wild Bill said:


> <snip>
> 
> Also, there is a psychology to how we perceive things. Man has evolved to see patterns, even if they aren't there!:smile:
> 
> That's not to be meant as silly! It was a survival mechanism! How many times have you seen someone have ONE experience and think it is true forever? Maybe they had a lemon of a Chevy and think that ALL Chevys are lemons. Maybe they had ONE poor quality service experience at a store and then think that ALL salespeople at that store are bad!
> 
> Or sadly, have a bad experience with ONE person of a different race or creed and think that they're ALL like that? It's part of being human to think like that. Scientifically, we know that it's nonsense but in our gut Nature has wired us to make a pattern.
> 
> When we were cavemen out hunting, we may have had a lion pop out of a bush darker than most of the others. If we were lucky enough to escape we likely avoided ALL bushes of that shade from then on! In our minds we had identified a pattern. It may not have been true that a lion would more likely pick that shade of bush but maybe that bush also had a shape better suited to hide the lion. Maybe it tended to that shade of green only when it had grown to a certain size good enough to hide the lion. So the colour itself may have had nothing to do with the probability of there being a lion hiding there.
> 
> In fact, there may be NO connection to the type of bush and the danger of a lion! Still, it doesn't hurt to avoid that colour of bush and if there is any connection, for whatever reason, it might increase your odds of not being eaten before you grew old enough to have kids and raise them long enough for them to survive on their own.
> 
> We are hard-wired to see patterns, even imaginary ones. That's where most superstitions come from. Breaking a mirror, seeing a black cat, walking under a ladder...we make a connection as to what they mean but that doesn't mean there really is one.
> 
> Any 2nd year psych student could certainly explain it far better than I'm doing but - it's true! It's part of being human, not of being 'crazy'.
> 
> Thinking totally scientifically is NOT normal for humans! We took thousands of years to come up with the idea and even now it is generally accepted that if you don't learn how when you're a kid you may never be good at it for the rest of your life! Nature didn't design us to figure out enough science to go to the moon. She just wanted us to survive!


That is my favorite post of all time on this forum...by a wide margin.

I can address this from an evolutionary standpoint. I just woke up so please excuse a lack of formal sentence structure.

First of all I dont want this to sound like an attack because it is not. I do realize that you even note that this isnt your area of expertise. That point is *really* important to me.

First and most importantly...nature doesnt design anything. Nature is not designed and evolution dos not have a goal in mind. Nothing is 'higher on the evolutionary scale' there actually is no evolutionary scale there is merely evolution. There are more complex forms and less complex forms, depending on the environment one or the other form will be in a better place to pass on genetic information. Evolution is, simply, defined as evolution can be precisely defined as any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next. The term 'Cultural evolution' or 'Social evolution' are not really used by academics. In academia the word development the more apt word when addressing cultural 'evolution' or social 'evolution'. 

You mention hard wiring a lot but what is ACTUALLY hard wired according to the theories of evolutionary biologists? Answer: sex drive, the need to eat and not be eaten. That is pretty much it arguments have been forwarded to make more hard wired instincts but they all boil down to those two in my opinion. 

Seeing a lion jumping out of a bush of a certain color then avoiding that sort of bush is not hard wired...that is a learned behavior that may be passed on to children and others in a population. "Sonny boy....lions will hide in bushes and they want to eat us. So be careful"---no hard wiring there. If a population stays away from a type of green bush that is 2 meters wide by 1 meter high in the fall to avoid being eaten for thousands of years that knowledge will NOT become hard wired. A child that is not taught that will become lunch if he passes in front of a bush with a hungry lion crouched behind that bush a that certain time. The hard wiring is "I want to eat not be eaten" basic survival instinct. There is no patterning that applies to passing on information unless you label the passing on of information itself as a pattern...which has nothing to do with the passing on of traits and genes per se'.

Superstitions are not cross cultural and humans do not have superstitions that cross cultures across the board. Superstitions are taught and then passed along and eventually will be accepted by the society or discarded as the group gets past the need for superstition. Breaking a mirror, seeing a black cat, walking under a ladder are tied to practicality derived from experience (heavy things can fall off a ladder and hurt you) or mysticism which is the result of religion or the occult (black cats are tied to witches etc) or just flat out strange beliefs that make no sense (mirrors) Superstitions are taught, most have ties to something that is (arguably) hardwired which is a fear of death and/or the unknown. Once again, there is no patterning unless you call the passing on of superstitions as a form of pattern. 

We are not wired to see patterns that may or may not exist in the manner that you are speaking. What you have described as patterns can be better described as biases based on experience ("Chevy sucks" and racism based on an experience) there is no pattern in holding a bias based on experience. The only 'pattern' here would apply to an individual that develops a lot of biases....in other words a person with a complex.

Scientific thinking comes out of basic problem solving which is ABSOLUTELY something that comes from the primate mind. Primates in general (and remember that humans are a primate) are inquisitive and have good problem solving skills. Basically, science is a form problem solving. The scientific method is a formal process but it was derived so that biases are not going to influence the resultant conclusions of the application of science. Seeking patterns to formulate explanations for that which is demonstrable and observed is a key part of science....but that really didnt come until well after we developed a good set of problem solving aptitudes. 

Consider this concept, which is held as accurate by, almost, everyone in evolutionary studies:
Making a stone tool, sharpening a stick or making club etc are causal factors of what he now call science. The first hominid that made a stone tool or sharpened a stick was onto something that was, proportionately, as significant and complex as humans making spacecraft in the modern world.


By the way....I like EL34s.


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## screamingdaisy

I like all of them.


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## Buzz

Ya try them all, tubes are good! 7591 tubes arent on the list. Seems like it would be a good in between tube. I guess its hard to find an amp with them.


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## salvatruco

for jazz 6L6's work for me and EL34's for everything else......


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## FrankyNoTone

I used to know the spec's on a lot of those tubes 30 years ago, but I need some help for present day relevance: which one is the most reliable infrared heater?


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## keeperofthegood

Lol I do not know. I would hazard the guess the metal can 6L6 as I've left skin on them 

Now if I were to engineer a tube today I would not use a wire to heat the cathode I would use a laser led.


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## bluzfish

Wild Bill said:


> There's no category for "Other"! :smile:
> 
> This to me is one of those unanswerable questions. How can you choose the best tube without knowing for what application?
> 
> If you just want to know what impresses me most I have a 4-1000 tube that runs about 2 kilowatts in a ham radio shortwave amplifier. I've always toyed with the idea of using it in a guitar amplifier!
> 
> The biggest problem would be the output transformer. I could wind my own or maybe see if a large electrical transformer rated at 2000 watts might be available with the right turns ratio to match to a speaker cab.
> 
> Oh yeah, the speaker cab! I could make something like that 10 foot cone in the first Back to the Future movie! Or maybe at least 10 full Marshall stacks.
> 
> Oh oh! If I don't shake this idea I'm gonna have a lot of amps for service stacking up while I build this thing!
> 
> :food-smiley-004:


I think you may need your own planet to play it on! Like "The Loudest Band I The World" from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.


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## nonreverb

I think this might be the coolest tube amp of all time...1000 watts!!! Awesome! 3000 volts B+!!
Bach Toccta D-Moll on 1000W Audio Tube Amplifier EL6471 - YouTube


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## BEMUSofNrthAmra

I play a '77 Marshall Super Bass 100 MKII with 4 Winged C EL34 power tubes.

What are my options on what tubes I can put in this amp? I really like the way it sounds, I'm just curious as to what a quad of 6L6s' or KT66s' would do for the sound/power of my Super Bass?

Can I use any power tube so long as I have it biased correctly? What are the limits?

Thanks


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## butterknucket

I like 6V6's.


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## Wileyone

The 6v6's in my 5e3.


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## dtsaudio

> What are my options on what tubes I can put in this amp? I really like the way it sounds, I'm just curious as to what a quad of 6L6s' or KT66s' would do for the sound/power of my Super Bass?


Looking at a similar schematic (Super Bass 1992) you should be able to run 6L6GC, KT66, KT77, KT88, 6550. assuming you can bias them correctly. I can't testify to the sound you would get, but you won't gain any power


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## corbo

KT-66 tube of choice, amazing how a older Marshall sounds with those tubes , when biased


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## gpower

I voted 6V6 because all my favorite sounding amps use that tube. EL84s would be right behind.


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## nevernamed

I voted 6L6, but think EL84 are right there with them.


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## corailz

Really hard to choose, i would like to go with all of them! I like tubes!!!!


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## loudtubeamps

I try to use tubes in my designs that are readily available and not crazy expensive. Personally, I like the mid range presence of EL 34's, and 6L6's for a flatter response. I have a set of RCA 6L6GC's that I use every day in my guinea pig amp. These ones in particular would get my vote. They are approx. 40 years old and still in tip top form!


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## elliottmoose

My vote sits with the EL84 (though I find they don't last nearly as long as the KT-66's in my other amp) the sound is just perfect for me. Always been a fan of the sound they produce, don't know why...


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## Paul Running

Wild Bill said:


> If you just want to know what impresses me most I have a 4-1000 tube that runs about 2 kilowatts in a ham radio shortwave amplifier. I've always toyed with the idea of using it in a guitar amplifier!
> 
> The biggest problem would be the output transformer. I could wind my own or maybe see if a large electrical transformer rated at 2000 watts might be available with the right turns ratio to match to a speaker cab.


Hey Bill, this post was a while ago so, I don't know if you are still toying with this idea. I've had a similar thought except at a lower power. I was considering a 300W version with a pair of 4CX300s. I was looking at the transfer curve for these tetrodes and would appreciate your thoughts on what the kink might sound like for a Bass amp? Do you believe the distortion would be unacceptable for a Bass application?


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## Midnight Rider

1961 xf2 Amperex Bugle Boy El34 with medium brown bakelite base made in Eindhoven, Holland.
I'll put the 1964 xf2 Mullard EL34 made in the Blackburn, UK plant in second place.

I still by these NOS tubes from sellers in Europe. Not cheap,... but the tone,... ahhhh, the tone is worth the ear candy pushed through the amp to the cones, 👂🍭🍬


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