i thought 100 for a tube is ok? good tubes like those from russia seems to cost alot more. 12AX7 tubes are generally so much cheaper compared to bigger tubes used in the power amp sections. imagine the mantainence cost for those owning a half stack with lots of tubes

yeah man...puts lots of us off immediately from owning an all tube...

i was expecting 50 for...a preamp tube..

It's okay for preamp tumes, cos they last a lot longer than power amp tubes. Imagine having to change a head's worth of power tubes AND rectifiers... Worse, summore got to get nicely matches ones, too...

i bring my amp to band practice at my drummer's house sometimes. and i notice that the amp is a little underpowered when trying to match a full band, unmiked of course. its just in his bedroom, his drums, my bassist and me..and its abt a few notches to full already.

yes , it can be heard , but has to push up the volume a little. and my presets at home come up too thin in the mix, so i have to fatten it a little. also..on those hi gain crunching passages...it sounds very..grainy..sandy..and lacks definition...maybe i should back off the gain or something...

anyone else with the same thing..?

This post has been edited by nick_drake: May 12 2006, 04:46 PM

cutting through the fray during jamming almost always require some retweaking of the settings, especially when you're using the high-gain amps. for cleans it doesn't really matter.

my amp settings doesn't really require alot of tweaking. almost maximum bass and treble with scooped mids, whaddaya expect? but when i'm using the UK moderm amp, which i do increase the mids, i have to tinker around with the EQ a lil and sometimes go a lil easy on the master volume.

grainy? i don't know, my ears can't differentiate grain and gain.

one thing bout the uk modern
its sounds terrible with my guitar [LP]....

but it sounded awesome with nick_drakes tele
[to me that is]

me thinks uk modern not really suitable for dark sounding guitars
matches very well with bright tho....

@nick_drake
i love those grainy sound! sounds like tubes being saturated! well, on the uk 80's on higher volumes it has great balance of grain and definition,
but definitely i prefer the sound on medium volumes... better for my ears as well

WTF!!! Modern production tubes doesn't cost RM100 for one.

Power tubes are less then RM50 for one and preamp tubes are usually less than RM30 for one.

Don't buy groove tubes from Bentley, they are rebadged china tubes anyway.

You can get tubes from here www.ceriatone.com, they deals mostly with Sovtek and JJs.

My favourite is JJs, warm full tone.

VOX AD30 user here...

Using a greg bennett samick AV3 (lp copy)..

Clapton's Bluesbreakers tone (not exactly, but close)

UK '70s
Volume and Gain : Max
Bass : 10 o'clock
Mid : 12
Treb 2

Thanks

This post has been edited by dilin: May 14 2006, 12:35 PM

ah..that sounds more reassuring. ceriatone eh... ok..

You scoop your mids, how stand out do you expect your guitar sound to be LOL?

woot!!
im planning to retube with a JJ ecc83 when my tube fails that is

Forgot about Nik... I gotta go back there one day. If there's a good affordable tube amp to be had, it should be there.

I don't see Bents moving their tube stock. Same tubes there for, what, years? I guess people know better...

my bandmate scoops his mids too. so same la

is there a significant change in the sound when changing to different tubes?

Class A amplification is the least power efficient of all amplifier classes.. but has the best fidelity.

For all tube amp, definately but for a hybrid I highly doubt it.

Of course, some people would argue otherwise. They'd say that since the tube in the AD operates to simulate a power amp, the tube may actually make a difference.

I say they should ask Eric Johnson's opinion. Then write a 12 page report on it.


Anyways, I'm thinking that a more efficient speaker would be a more worthwhile investment. Get the AD30 to sound that little bit louder.

alot of them recommended the celestion G10 as a speaker upgrade for the AD30.
but it's a bomb to be shipped here. might as well get a new amp or a bigger amp.

I've got one, AD50VT.

I use UK Modern and UK 70s, gain at 2/3 and max, respectively, with whatever settings I tweak them to on the day. And always with reverb.

To be honest, while I think the AD series is a great amp for beginners, highly affordable and fantastic for experimenting, it still suffers from the same problems as most modelling amps.

After the first few months, when I was playing around with the settings for everything, I realized that I really only use two amp models, with reverb and delay effects. Also, while I like most things that come out of the speaker, I don't really love anything.

Basically, what I really want is an all-tube amp that rules. (Don't we all.) As such, I shouldn't have bought the AD50VT, not because its bad, but because it doesn't fit my requirements. I should have bought the AD15VT or AD30VT instead, to just use for practicing and experimenting, while saving up for another amp. When I do buy this other amp, I'll be stuck with a huge 50-watter, what am I going to do with that? (Other than sell it off, of course.) If I had one of the smaller models, it would still be useful for small jams and portability.

Moral of the story: don't buy a bigger amp just because you can afford it.

Oh, and the one thing that really annoys me is that the speaker and line outputs mute the internal speaker.

from what i've read, yes.....

we'll know when time comes to change the tubes tho...