General Music Chat

Alright.. So I told Sanshouheil I'd tell him about why I all of the sudden got so interested in tubes.

In case some of you don't know, I'm pretty well versed in preamp tubes these days. I've been studying hard, I experimented like crazy with my amp, and now I'm able to give descent sound advice, and on occasion, I can identify where a tube came from, what kind it is, and what it sounds like with minimal labeling to go by.

And this is why..

Back when I was in the "Burn" band, I was already axed as the singer, but was still the lead guitar player. We had 3 finished songs musically.

One day a friend of mine let me know that a friend of his wife was an A&R rep for Sony Records and that he was in town and probably more than willing to come over and hear us play.

I was apprehensive about it, but I met with the rep (and his friend who was another rep) and they agreed to come by in..oh.. 30 minutes.. The rest of the band knew nothing of this yet. So I frantically called them up, they dropped whatever it was that they were doing, and came over as fast as they could. It was freakin CRAZY!!

So when the reps showed up we played for them, and immediately after we were done with our 3 songs they both turned to me and said, "dude your amp sounds like S**T!!! You either need a new one, or a new guitar, or something. But you sound like Hell!!"

Then they turned to the other guitar player, and said, " Your solid state Marshall sounds great though.." I couldn't f**king believe what I was hearing. My amp was a $1,500 amp, his was a $200 amp. How the HELL is that possible??

I didn't know what to tell them.. I'd just re-tubed my whole amp with Groove tubes.. But I would have to say.. They were right. I just didn't understand why my amp was so s**tty!!

Needless to say, the band kicked me out shortly after. They all just treated me like I was an idiot, and I sucked, and they had to move on to bigger and better things. Even going so far as to say '"You're really not a very good guitar player, you should stick to your acoustic solo stuff." (even though I wrote all of the important melodies myself)

Well I packed up the amp and later I joined One Day Broken.. And there were nights when I would ask people, "did you just hear that?? My amp is farting!!" So I'd had enough.. I was gonna get a new amp!! This amp DOES suck!! I actually bought a Line6 modeling combo amp, but soon returned it, it wasn't good at high volumes.

But one day.. I went to move my amp head and I noticed that one of my rectifier tubes was moving like a freaking Bobble-head!! WHAT THE F**K!!

Well.. as it turned out BOTH of my rectifier tubes were literally BROKEN!!

To this day I have no idea how it happened, or how I never caught it. I guess because I'd just re-tubed it, I never thought to look in the back anymore.

HOW LONG HAVE THEY BEEN LIKE THIS ?!?!?!?!

***FLASHBACK ALERT*** The Sony A&R night!!! HOLY S**T!!!

It could have very well been that I missed out on a good opportunity because of my broken Recto tubes..And I had no idea. A lot of what ifs just flooded my brain.

Nowadays... My amp is KING!! After extensive research, months of countless experiments, a stock of over 70 NOS preamp tubes, 30 power tubes..And a freaking hole in my pocket the size of Texas. My amp f**king kicks ass and takes no prisoners!!

I made a pact with myself to always pay good attention to my gear so that something like that never happens again.. And to educate people to the best of my ability when it come to tubes, so it may never happen to them either.

Say hello to my little friend!!


My first NOS Tube.




My 1999 Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier Solo Head.

Funny part though.... I play lot's and lots of big clubs with my crappy Line 6 Solid state and all the bands that open up for us have either their Marhalls or Mesa tube amps but at the end of the night I'm always amazed at how their guitarists come up to me and tell me how awesome I sounded and how the hell did I get that sound through a solid state..... One night I done did a gig with a $300.00 Epiphone and a $75.00 pig nose and I won the "Battle of the Axes" night.... If you master your craft with intense discipline and precision, you should be able to kickass on any freakin' amp you use!

Well.. Yea.. I did like the Line6, but at practice levels to get above the drummer, it just wasn't working. It just sounded like a farting mush when it was pushed. But at a club gig where you can mic it. I agree. They're good amps. That's why I bought the one I did. It was great at lower levels, but the store I bought it from wouldn't allow me to pump the volume level for a tryout.

It was a cool amp. You could model each speaker seperately. One of the speakers could have a tweed sound, while the other could have a Recto sound instead of a blended sound. It's too bad I didn't have the money to be able to afford both. The Line-6 would have been a cool recording amp as well. It was a $700 combo. I forget the name of it though.

You're right about the craft part Crip.. But no amount of musicianship will get you very far with broken Rectifier tubes. My amp was in bad shape, and I'm lucky I didn't do serious damage to it. One thing's for sure.. My mesa takes a beating pretty well.

That's shitty luck.. But I guess you wouldn't have had half the knowledge/experience you know now, eh?

Sounds like a freakin major learning curve for me in both aspects of understanding the relationship of my equipment and the CRAFT.
Aw shoot. Back to practice.

Good post Shredd. I've been fortunate in that I own a few different amps. My Marshall JCM 2000 DSL has been my main amp and does a good job as a dual purpose amp. It does the job for the heavy stuff and has a decent clean channel for the classic/blues stuff. Any weaknesses it has has been easily taken care of with different pedals. I love my Line 6 ( these are good little amps ) and when I was playing the coffee house circuit I used my Fender Twin Reverb with my Strats. I just picked up a Peavey 5150 head not long ago and this is the one I'm going to retube. For the type of music I play I like the 5150 a bit more than my Marshall. I Like my Marshall and if anything I might play with the bias as apposed to changing tubes. When I get ready to retube the Peavey I'm going to be drilling you for info my friend!

Did you get the 5150 III ?

Shredd, no it's the first or original 5150. Here's a pic of me using the head at one of our shows.

Then they turned to the other guitar player, and said, " Your solid state Marshall sounds great though.." I couldn't f**king believe what I was hearing. My amp was a $1,500 amp, his was a $200 amp. How the HELL is that possible??

It's possible because Marshall owns.
Great post.

He had a Marshall 8100. They're actually really cool amps, since then I did buy one. You can get them all day log for $200 on ebay.

An 8100 is a hybrid solid state/ tube amp. It has 1-12ax7 for it's distortion.

If it wasn't for me buying that amp, I wouldn't have been able to hear each tube individually. So it became a big asset in my tube experiments. I always recommend them to anyone who's looking for a good cheap amp head.

I put my Line6 150watt combo through the Stereo Cabinet for large venues and believe it or not, half the times we aren't miked thru the PA and still this thing just blows the doors off the Place.... No trouble whatsoever at high volume... just took me about 3 months to tweak each channel to my own liking.... Problem is, everybody uses tooo much bass and mids on these amps and that's what I found out causes the "crappy" sound!

Here's my set-up from this past Saturdays gig:

Cool man. I'm glad you like your amp. That's all that matters really.

But trust me when I say this..

Your Line 6 Recto emulation isn't very accurate. It certainly doesn't come close to a Mesa loaded with NOS tubes.

I'm not saying your amp is bad. But that setting just isn't like the real thing. A Recto sound is supposed to have those Bass and Mid tones. I don't see Line 6 putting Mesa out of business anytime soon with that model.

I like your playing style, and your amp works for you. But for my playing style, it just doesn't work for me.

Ive never owned a Line 6 but have used a couple recently and I got to agree with Crip, with a little tweaking they work pretty good. The presets all seem to have too much gain and bass for high volume work. Thats just my take on them. But that being said Im still a tube head. I dont know why cause they can be a pain in the ass to get sounding good. Im going thru that now with a new combo I picked up. I spent a couple of hours sat afternoon going thru all the old tubes I have trying to find a good one for the V1 slot. It worked ok sat night, but I think next time Im going to roll out the halfstack.