won a 530 today! it's got the stock tubes in it. jumping the gun a bit because i haven't heard them yet, but ... what do you guys think would sound best in it?

i like a lot of mids vacillating between a raw 5150 kind of sound, and a sweeter liquidy mp1 (if that makes sense). no power amp yet, just going to run it's internal one for practicing on a 2x12.

the only other tube amp i've owned was a tubeworks rt922. it came with mesa's (didn't like, harsh treble) and i switched to jj's (warm, middy) and liked those a lot.

thx

I hate changing tubes, as I can never get a definitive answer as to what tubes are best for 'xxxx'! Anyway, I recently changed the preamp tubes in my Fireball and in the end I went with an EH 12ax7 (gold pin) in V1 and then a JJ and then a Mullard (unsure which Mullard). This seemed to have the best clarity out of the combinations. The JJ was slightly muddier in V1 and the Mullard had too much gain in V1. A lot of people swear by the Tung-Sol reissue in V1 too, which is a variation on the EH. I'd recommend buying 4 tubes and mix and match until you find the sound you want (the 530 only has 3 preamp tubes right?).

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just 2 sockets in the 530.

do you have the 803 (high gain) or 83 JJ?
is the EH high/glassy/shrill at all? how about the mullard aside from the gain what was the tone like?

only tone comparison chart i can find...
http://thetubestore.com/12ax7review.html#summary
mullards aren't on there.

mixing them up sounds like a good idea. i was thinking you had to have matched pairs. with only 2 sockets i could definitely order 4 and experiment.

When I had my E530 I tried a few different combos. Ive never really liked the EH's, and the ones I had were horribly noisy in the 530. I preferred JJ's because the 530 dosent have much in the way of low end.

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JJ ECC83S's sounded way too dark and muddy in my Engl Fireball, I just got Sovtek 12AX7LPS's for it and the sound is much better and clearer, along the lines of a 5150's grind, and I can still get the same amount of low end as JJs, but the JJs cant reach the high end bite of the Sovteks.

Plus the EQ controls are MUCH more responsive now with the sovteks. I couldn't hear the difference between the mids all the way up or on 0 when I had JJ's in it, and lack of treble responsiveness wasn't far behind.

The amount of gain they have is ridiculous though(probably a really good thing since your pre has only 2 tubes), and they sound a weeny tad noisy on super high gain settings, but I think that'll be fixed if I get a low microphonic sovtek/other tube for the v1.

Shugang 8th and 9th generation 12AX7 tubes are really great for dark high gain amps too, and they're cheap. I would suggest tungsols as well but the new ones made by Sensor are coming quite microphonic, so don't bother with those.

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I have 1 JJ ecc83s, in V2. The EH is brighter than the JJ, more high, slightly more gain, but cleaner and clearer. I've never had a problem with EH preamp tubes, the quietest tubes I've ever heard. Used them in my JCM900 and now the Fireball. I like Soeru's suggestion of the Sovtek though. The Mullard was darker than the EH, pretty similar sounding to the JJ except it had more gain. Too mushy and undefined for me, its in V3 I think. My suggestion would be to buy 1x JJ ecc83s, 1x 12ax7EH, 1x Sovtek LPS, 1x Tungsol reissue. See how you go. Get the EH gold pin version if you can, it still works out cheaper than the Tungsol.

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tubes arrived today...

1x Sovtek 12ax7lps (gray band)
1x Svetlana 12ax7 (gray band)
1x JJ ecc83s

[forgot about the EH, sry gorath]

they all sound great, and i would be happy with any of them in any configuration. it's the kind of thing where you'd probably have to do a blindfold test. but i *think* there are slight differences so here's what i noticed.

noise in V1:
Sovtek is the best.
Svetlana is pretty close.
JJ has noticeably more (but it doesn't have a band)

gain:
Sovtek has the most but it's almost saturated and scratchy, pretty extreme.
Svetlana is pretty well balanced with less.
JJ has the same gain as the Svetlana maybe a bit more even, but it's hard to tell.

tone:
Sovtek has an awesome roar slightly saturated ... made me think of swedish death.
Svetlana is bright and balanced ... good for anything.
JJ has reduced highs, very smooth, good for something like Tool.

configuration:
Sovtek + Svetlana = gain
JJ + Svetlana = tone
Sovtek + JJ = something is weird, not a great match

Can't go wrong with the Sovtek LPS. I have them in most of my Engls and I have one in my Boogie as well..

apparently those lps's can blow out cathode-follower stages whatever that means, due to a strangely high amount of voltage in the tube somewhere. Its apparently the big thing for amp techs these days because theyre getting alot of dead amps that have been blow by the lps... just something to watch for.

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Oh well, never had problems in four years. I don't see how a dead preamp tube can blow up an amp anyway. Unless it has no decent protection circuit.

i found it!

http://acapella.harmony-central.com...d.php?t=1849937

basically, the lps has a low voltage which can be overdriven in higher voltage circuit things like FX loops and the like
yeahhhhhh, my previous post was so wrong ahhaha

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