Valves for a Laney VC30 guitar amp?

[EssentialTension]

We understand that matched sets is good but if I want a quadset of EL84s and three ECC83s (one hi-grade and two standard) and the guitarist concerned likes a clean sound what manufacturer should we be buying?

Thank you.

Laney manual here: [url="http://www.laney.co.uk/uploads/6e5d65fafa037bb79a8cc5080ce11fa6.pdf"]http://www.laney.co.uk/uploads/6e5d65fafa037bb79a8cc5080ce11fa6.pdf[/url]

[strtdv]

The only modern production el84s worth talking about are JJ.
Gold lion are nice as well but twice the price and I prefer the cleans on the JJs.

For 12ax7s you can take your pick. I tend not to like the 9th generation Chinese ones, in fact, I would recommend getting some reasonably priced old stock ones, Brimar and Mazda sound very nice and won't cost the earth. They last ages and ages too.
You can still pick up slightly used old stock Mullards for fairly reasonable money if you keep an eye out.

I find the 9th gen Chinese valves woolly sounding, most modern production tung-sol 12ax7s are unacceptably noisy, ehx are fine but bland, some of the higher grade sovteks are pretty good (the ones TAD market as Hi-grade). The sovtek LPS 12ax7 gets good reviews but the long plate makes it prone to microphony in combo amps.

[EssentialTension]

Thank you for that.

[brensabre79]

+1 for JJ - I've tried lots and they are easily the best for power stage - well for me anyway.

I also like their ECC803s too.
It's a special long plate version of ECC83 but doesn't seem to suffer the microphonics like many LP ones do.

[EssentialTension]

Thank you too. It's looking like JJs then.

[EssentialTension]

OK, got some JJs.

Can I just pop out the old ones and pop in the new ones or do I require an engineer?

[VTypeV4]

AFAIK these are Cathode biased amps (I have one too, the 2x10) so all power (and pre) valves should simply be plug and play..

[EssentialTension]

[quote name='VTypeV4' timestamp='1418060594' post='2626439']
AFAIK these are Cathode biased amps (I have one too, the 2x10) so all power (and pre) valves should simply be plug and play..
[/quote]

Thanks ... and it is the 2x10.

[VTypeV4]

Let us know how you get on..

Mine has a collection of Sovteks in at the mo. I think they're a lovely sounding amplifier for guitar, they do that lovely glassy thing very nicely..

[strtdv]

Yes, they're cathode biased so you can change the valves without biasing.
It's not actually true class a, just very hot class ab.
The Lionheart range are the only amps they make that could be described as true class a.

To be honest, even in a fixed biased class ab, biasing is less of an issue than you think, it's unlikely to damage the amp in any way unless you run something that's way out of range like a kt77 in an el34 amp.

[EssentialTension]

[quote name='strtdv' timestamp='1418371344' post='2629564']
Yes, they're cathode biased so you can change the valves without biasing.
It's not actually true class a, just very hot class ab.
The Lionheart range are the only amps they make that could be described as true class a.

To be honest, even in a fixed biased class ab, biasing is less of an issue than you think, it's unlikely to damage the amp in any way unless you run something that's way out of range like a kt77 in an el34 amp.
[/quote]
Thanks again bu no further action due to valves in Brighton and amp in Liverpool.

[EssentialTension]

Valves now in Liverpool and also valves in amp and apparently ... 'fixed amp, sounds great'.

Excellent.

Thanks for all the advice.