Was that number 4 in the test video? I could definitely hear number 2 and not in a good way. Number 4 was more like a tube. Im glad you posted thd video. I expected it was gonna mess me up and prove i couldnt tell the difference so i was gonna have to blame it on my computer and speakers like i usually do...but i actually could hear them...not in the first video because i just couldnt keep listening long enough to that type of guitar playing...my earbuds just switched off before he even played the second sample...but the second video made it much easier
so i dropped one in my amp.... first impression.. it sounds like a vacuum tube. i think i will be happy with this.... time will tell
i put this in an amp that was not working. i have not used this amp in years. i put all the tubes back in and used this new "tube" it sounded really good with my guitar, i played for about 10 minutes, unplugged the cable to try the mic with it. and the amp stopped working. so i did not get to try it with the harmonica. prettty sure the tube did not cause the malfuntion. as i was having issues with it before. possiblt it needs a new rectofier tube, with is an old 35z5 tube.
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Bee i couldnt tell. Maybe if i were in the room. And probably if you heard a whole song played there would be a few spots that may sound off. But you still have it runnin thru the power tubes. So it's not as if it's full ss. ---------- "Trust Those Who Seek The Truth... Doubt Those Who Say They Have Found It."
i am not an amp tech..... i am just guessing here.it blew a screen plate resitor. on both amps ---------- if i type in the correct captcha why is my post lost in cyber-space
i just got off the phone with jet city and explained the issue. he will need to contact the guy that makes them. my guess is there seems to be an impedance mismatch of some sort. any of you amp techs have a clue as to what my possibly be happening here? ---------- if i type in the correct captcha why is my post lost in cyber-space ---------- if i type in the correct captcha why is my post lost in cyber-space
Last Edited by 1847 on Jan 07, 2016 9:31 AM
so now i turn on my amp the champ, it is working just fine. i take the "tube" out and try it in the other amp. it also is working just fine. that is with the guitar.
i am too nervous to try it with the mic. ---------- if i type in the correct captcha why is my post lost in cyber-space
I had an amp once used work fine for a while then fizzle out, like it had been awitched into standby. Next time same deal. This was when I was very very green with amps. Guy in the shop said he ran it for hours with computer plugged in, playing music recordings through it and no sign of a fail. Suggested new tubes...ok. Ouch. The greenhorn fitted the new tubes and it definitely made a difference. Bang! Blew a fuse. Took amp to a real technician who checked connections, bias. Told me fuse was always on the point of blowing. But all he could possibly attribute my original problem to was a carbon smudge on the pcb next to a power tube. He speculated it may be that when the amp warmed up and when the load increased the track may have started conducting. Whatever it was, after the service the amp never did that again and I drove it very hard in quite s few gigs and rehearsals for several years. For you though..2 amps doing the same thing...common factor a 'retro tube'...you'd have to wonder if it wasn't just that particular component breaking down...you got another amp you can blow up I mean try it in? Or another tube you can put in your amps...
Last Edited by SuperBee on Jan 07, 2016 3:29 PM
I am a little confused here. Why use a solid state substitute in a tube amp ? Especially in the preamp position.
Even most hybrid amps use a tube for the preamp
This is there blurb-seems like a solution to a non existant problem
"An older vintage tube amp can be modified with RetroValves® to modify the gain and/or make it more rugged for a touring application. If the user wishes to sell the amp for example and maintain its vintage value, they can just put vacuum tubes back in without having made permanent and potentially expensive wiring changes to the amplifier."
i don't have a real reason for doing so. tubes in my neck of the woods are fairly cheap. my gear is for the most part vintage. i have always used good "old" american tubes. we used to change tubes like you would change socks. so one day i tried 7 or 8 tubes in my amp. i just left whatever was the last one i tried in there. maybe 6 months later, i thought to myself, this amp sounds great, what tube is in there? so i pull it out. it is a russian sovtek. i have no idea where it came from. i obviously pulled this inferior tube from an amp, at one time or another and replaced it with a 5 star black plate triple mica halo getter. as barley would say.... i was a cork sniffer lol what i realized is, it is possible that one tube is as good as another.
so anyway the other day we had a back yard jam and one of the guitar players had a jet city amp, it sounded great, so i went online and saw they had these "tubes" so i just thought why not? they have one model that is excessively high gain, i wondered what would that sound like as a phase inverter tube, it has more gain than a 12ax7. maybe mark can chime in here?
so anyway i thought it best to start with the low gain "tube" first, just to experiment. my first impression is this sounds just like a real tube. it does sound better than i expected, just need to find out what the heck happened. i do know my one amp was acting up to begin with and the other amp is 60 years old so not to surprised when something crops up, just interesting both at the same time acting the same way.
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ok.. i put it back in the champ, plugged in my mic. it is working just fine. sounds good. i can get to about 10 on the volume before feed back.
hopefully my new cab will be ready tomorrow. i am having it sprayed with truck bed liner. ---------- if i type in the correct captcha why is my post lost in cyber-space
my amp is on, it is working just fine. i am playing my guitar thru it for thirty minutes, then it just dies. the red jewel light is on, the tubes are lit, the rectified tube. is new old stock. could that be bad?..... is there something else i am missing?
---------- if you appreciate what you have... it becomes more.
I think you have to establish whether the problem is the retro tube or the amp, so you have to put a normal tube in there and give it time. Long enough for either the problem to manifest...at which point you know there is a problem not necessarily related to the retrotube, or there is no problem, which would point to the retrotube as the problem. If it takes a half hour to show up...is it heat, is it not time but vibration...I mean could be a bunch of things but gonna take time to track because it's intermittent. Could be a pot, could be s socket, loose wire...heat expansion causing a connection to break.. Tha fact it was happening in both amps points at the retro tube, but could be coincidental..,tough one to take to the shop too, being intermittent and unpredictable...good luck!
that was my first thought, but the retro tube does not produve heat. i have a very nice 12ax7, where the heck did i put that? geez. i am thinking perhaps it is the power tube, i have one of those sitting here on my desk. i left the amp on for over an hour it was fine, i played for 10 minutes the sound just dropped out again. ---------- if you appreciate what you have... it becomes more.
the retro tube does not produce heat...ok...but the rest of the amp does...power tube, power transformer, resistors...and it may not be the retrotube at fault... that amp of mine i discussed above...the guy ran it all day with a line level signal going in and no problem...but plug a mic in and run it hard for 10 minutes and it would be fine until it went into shutdown...sound fizzled away to nothing...never did really establish what the problem was but addressed a few suspects and the problem went away. was it that carbon trace that became a conductive path when the thing heated up and the big load came on? i dunno, but Barry cleaned it off the board anyway. was it a connection which failed when things heated up and some expansion happened? dunno but Barry went through and applied some heat to all the possible dodgy joints...and re-tensioned the tube sockets in case a pin was losing contact. One of those things worked, we don't know which it was. It was a devil to chase down because the problem only showed up when the amp was hot, so just pursued likely suspects.
you have a candidate for your problems in that retro tube, so if it was my amp i'd be just getting that tube out and putting any known good preamp tube in and try playing the amp for an hour or so. if it doesnt break down, blame the retro tube and ask for a refund for faulty goods. if it does break down, you get to have fun. try changing the power tube. same deal. if it turns out the power tube was not the problem, maybe then its service time.
