Which Valves??

[keeponehandloose]

I,m toying with the idea of changing the valves in my Mesa Walkabout,one because theyve been in there a while,two because I think I would prefer something a bit cleaner sounding.
It only has 2 pre-amp valves(12ax7's) I think,and they begin to go into distortion around 1 oclock on the input gain and by 3 oclock its full on saturation.
It seems as though there is a lot of gain there which I dont use because it gets too dirty.
Any body know of any valves that would give me more clean range before things get too overdriven.??

[GarethFlatlands]

Seems like there's some good info [url="http://www.musicradar.com/forum/showthread.php?t=48728"]here.[/url]

[geoffbyrne]

5751's are good for this.

Firstly, they are are well-known *good* tone generator.

They are not too feeble, giving about 70% of the gain of a 12AX7 (given that it's 100%)

The JAN Phillips 5751's are pretty decent at the moment.

Beware cheap 5751's as many are simply 12AX7s that didn't pass quality control and aren't 'proper' 5751's at all (coughchinesecoughrussiancough).

Going to 12AT7's & 12AU7s can lead to too great a drop in gain and therefore not enough 'oomph' to push your power stage properly = lack of volume. And they don't sound so good either.

At the end of the day, buy a range of semi-decent valves, they're not too expensive off Ebay, and try them out - see what you like.

I currently have a JAN Phillips 5751 in the pre of my Shuttle 6 which is up for sale, but would replace it with an ECC83 if the buyer wanted.

[url="http://www.guitaramplifierblueprinting.com/index2.html"]http://www.guitaramplifierblueprinting.com/index2.html[/url]

G.

Edited January 17, 2011 by geoffbyrne