FUQ (eff -yu - cue) - FAQ's with an EDGE

Tagged As: Tube Amp Sound

Question:
How many tube amps have I worked on, repaired, tweaked throughout all these years? I'm sure it's got to be in the thousands. Most all of them sound great. The few exceptions were ones with owners who couldn't afford the complete job or thought their amp already sounded great when simply repaired properly. Sure, several were solid state amps and only a few of those sounded good, but for the most part the majority of tube amps I've worked on not only have sounded amazing and exceptional to me but also to the owners and they were and are guaranteed with a reasonable amount of reliability.

Answer:
Tube amps sound great...unless they say Peavey on them, and this may not be true today like it was in the past. I think the 5150 sucks and is the reason why EVH has lousy tone compared to his old Marshall sound. As for your war with LV, well.... so what? I have countless hundreds of tubes laying around..I just try them until the amp sounds best...for the clean socket of the preamp I use Telefunkins, Sovtek LPS and Mesa STR 7025s and for the lead socket sound I use Sovtek made Groove Tubes 12ax7R2. The R2 is tight and smooth without the sag of the great clean channel tubes. Not a blues players tube if you like that dirty tube sound. But, what do I know, amps are just a secondary factor, I play the guitar, not the amp.