I have both winged C el34's and JJ e34l's.  I find that the winged C's have more treble response overall than the JJ's, my ears prefer the JJ's in a D-style amp, but I'm sure if you biased them a bit hotter that the Winged C's would sound fuller in the mids and bottom.  I know that their 6l6's benefit from a slightly hot bias as well. 

As far as increased heat from hotter bias is concerned, I'm really sold on the tube coolers thang for power tubes.  I have both IERC and Pearl types.  Apparently in the 50's cold war era some pretty thorough research confirmed that when regular tube glass gets very hot, that it becomes more porous than when cold, lets air molecules pass through, compromising both quality of vacuum and overall tube life...significantly.

I have a 50w HRM, it has a pair of old stock Siemens el34's in it, bias is currently at 33-36mv, not a perfect match between those tubes.  It goes into a 1/15 using an old Jensen Vibranto...it sounds absolutely wonderful clean or dirty.  I would say that the mids are more, bass is less than a pair of 6l6's.  Gorgeous upper mid harmonic bloom with the el34's.  With the bias set hotter, around 39-42 it goes into harmonic feedback/bloom sustain at slightly lower volumes, along with slightly less top end and more bottom/lower mids.  I stuck some pearl tube coolers on them as well as the preamp tubes, they really do work...both for cooling and slight microphonics reduction.

PVB,

keep the faith and surf eBay daily.  Look for auctions that close midweek, mornings, or other odd times.  Sunday evenings yield the highest prices for tube sellers.  Memorize the RFT mica and plate structure and getter deposit shape, they are found with many different brand labels.  The ones with the orange Amperex globe label and fat bottle are bulletproof for microphonics and IMHO the most desirable.  I have one with the Realistic Lifetime label with gold pins, although it has the normal bottle width. 

The Amperex and Philips Miniwatt types will last longer than the most recent JJ's.  They are more harmonically rich.  Look for that right triangle etch low on the bottle side, signifies that they were made in Heerlen, Holland.

 

Went on a tube buying binge last week on eBay.  Picked up 3 pairs of true NOS 6bg6ga's, one pair of Sylvania, about 21 bucks including shipping, they are 3mv apart for matching, a pair of GE 6bg6ga blackplates for 22 bucks shipped, they are less than 1mv apart, and a yet to arrive pair of 6bg6ga GE blackplates for about 13 bucks delivered.   The Sylvanias have the 7581a's guts, the GE's plates were pretty beefy looking as well, in my Marsh 50w OTS type the GE's were a bit smoother than the Syl's, but the Syl's sounded their best when I biased them up a bit on the hot side, between 40-45mv...they seem to be able to run a bit hot, and for that kind of price, which is less than a pair of new production 6l6gc tubes I don't worry about slightly reduced life.  Will be getting a pair of Pearl tube coolers for them, which undoubtably will greatly help longevity.   The 6l6/6bg6ga adaptors I got from ayumitubes on ebay came apart when removing the tubes, so I reglued them with a generous, carefully applied gel type CA glue and they are staying together now. 

@ PVB, for that Blues Master circuit, I'd try a lightly used shortplate Amperex Bugle Boy or Philips Miniwatt, with the right trangle etch in V1, followed by an RFT 12ax7 in V2.  Another strong shortplate Amperex or possibly Siemens in the PI will yield a very sweet, harmonically rich tone set.

@ mcinku, I tried a Philips ecg labeled long smooth grayplate EI in V1 in my OTS with similar results as yours, I yanked it out.  The Canadian version of shortplate Amperex, Electrohome 12ax7, is wonderful sounding and dead quiet for microphonics.   That is my current V1.

@ tone, sometimes I'll roll tubes for a particular guitar or speaker cab!  Don't have as many amps as you, but have 7 or 8 great ones, mostly heads.  Liked your post, reasonates with my experiences.

Vintage old stock tubes and in the case of the power tubes, can be affordable, and very nice sounding.  I have read that HAD favored the Sylvania 6l6gc and 7581a's as well as the GE short grayplate 12ax7a/7025.  I like the Siemens shortplates or aforementioned Amperexes better, they are more harmonically rich and not as bloated on the bottom end.  The Siemens can get a bit spendy.

@ mcinku


Sez the tiny mouse to a real lion of tone...after much forethought and thankful patience in time, waiting for others here to post, ...................................................................

;~)

Respect to you first of all...

...Beg to politely disagree about the need to tweak circuits of a particular amp after subbing so called NOS tubes... also your opinion about un-aford-ability of same...true NOS is unwelcome, they need to be broken in at least to offer their best, just like burning in amp parts, then they aren't NOS anymore.  VOS (vintage old stock) far better IMO.  Stick them in and listen, if you don't like lots, yank and sub again, just like certain parts for certain places, like tone caps and resistor types for instance.

Umm,

Have read in Merlin's book (yep, I bought it and am glad) and yep, it's more than a bit above my admittedly tiny but tone oriented brain to digest... the idea in his pages about (paraphrasing) tube rolling  not very important compared to circuit design and measurement of actual voltages/currents in circuit,

well, yep, up to a certain point, and then...

I disagree, strongly. 

Selecting certain vintage tubes for certain roles in exquisitively fabricated circuits is the other side, like the frosting within and upon a fantastically prepared layer cake for a special and wonderful wedding of tone, a small part of the whole production, just like a wedding...which can be compared to a Dumble type circuit as...

the sacred or not so...act of playing elecrtric guitar, as if on stage, whether for one in you home or an audience of millions.   Hope that guitar is well set up and the rest of the chain is deserving of that amp!

Am I right in my assumption that that you know where to get the very "Holy Grail" amp building components that you and a few score of others on this planet desire and know about to derive awesome tones for a given circuit?  That knowledge HAD to come from EXTENSIVE research and practice, that is after all, the real guts of science even if derived from not perfectly executed scientific protocol, right?

Well, how about the idea that the vintage old stock (NOT brand spanking new!) tubes chosen for certain spots within those exquisite circuits are helping to build that special wedding cake?  And that there are general tendencies for those tubes to behave within certain circuit environments just like those chosen components tend to do as well?

They can be found, easily.  But it also takes time, some money, and personal experiences to build up the synergy between well chosen tobes, well chosen parts, lead dress and circuit measurements, to help build that cake of tone.

They are affordable, period.    But getting to that affordable place takes lots of experiences and research, and yes spending money for better and worse, another inexact science fo sho.

Yep, the worm can has been spilled, for intention of good.  mcinku, i welcome PM or public discourse.  You are a hero for all here, also to me IMHO.

Peace.

Recently took delivery of a Marsh fsx-50 Overlord, an OTS built with Ceriatone boards in the US with Mercury and Heyboer iron.    I tried a pair of Sylvania 6bg6ga tubes with adapters in it.  They are not coming out!  That tube type is a secret weapon.  Before sticking those in I tried a pair of JAN Philips 7581a's, the Syl 6bg6ga's have the same guts in them, and are found at a fraction of the price of vintage 6l6gc's...you may need to buy a few in order to get a closely matched pair, but they are worth the effort to get, they are wonderful sounding. 

FWIW...

I have never heard one of these speakers.  D-style amps, particularly when used with a C-lator or similar tube fx buffer don't have to be turned up all that loud to give up the sweet goods.  I have a Weber MASS attenuator, and find it completely unecessary with my 50w HRM...the only reason I'd use that MASS with that amp is for the tone stack equipped line out feature, so I don't ever have to mic that amp.  I do like that speaker concept though.

@soundperf...

I'd be willing to bet that lots of the youtube "OTS family" of amp clips are coming from amps that use new production tubes...    Those tones are what prompted me to get my HRM 50!  If it works, is reliable, and you as well as others like the tones, well WTF is wrong with that???  Nothing!  

For my amp I selected each tube specifically for each position, each had to compete against many other choices, each won their little individual "tone contests" for a given position, and none of them are immune to being kicked out of their special spot if I roll something else for that particular position and I end up liking my personal tones better as a result. When the basic tones slightly changed after new amp burn in, I started rolling and swapping out.  The only tube left from the original tube mix a few months ago is the tube in the c=lator.  But that's what happens when you have slowly built up a hoard of more than a hundred vintage tubes to play with...

The only tones I ever chase are the ones I wish for myself about. And that often changes when I play in a mix with other instruments playing out, it's the mix tones which have the highest priority for me.

To each his own, and I've yet to discover a greater possibility of more varieties in tone palettes than within the OTS family of amps, hats off to the big guy and those online amp building fanatics, their "mad scientist" projects, the sharing of info and results, and the equally fanatical commercial amp builders who took things from his wonderful foundations of amp designs and made things better for so many guitarists, rich and not so rich, but all picky about what they want.

Now to really open up the worm can it would be fun to hear why certain tubes were chosen for each position from those posting here.  I'm gonna wait until this thread gets bigger before I toss in my one penny's worth of reasons for my selections.

Peace.

In my 50w HRM with LNFB switch, a pretty esoteric mixture:  (I'm a tube collector)

V1 Adzam 12ax7s,
V2 Blackburn Microtech e813cc,
PI Philips MIniwatt shortplate,
power tubes RFT el34's,

C-lator Telefunken ribbed plate ecc83.

Pickmaster, you are one sick, sick, dude!   Kudos!

That is one sick diagonal double mic'ed cab!

+1

Does she have a name yet?

@PVB and Kevster,

That model of JBL 15 inch speaker was designed for both bass and lead guitar use.  It was especially designed to do a beautiful clean tone and a smooth dirty tone, it does both very well.  The cab is a semi closed back wired in series for 16 ohms with a full width open slot about 4 inches wide centered over the speaker magnets.  I widened the slot bit by bit to tune excess bass out of the 14 inch deep cab for guitar.  The bottom is big but not overly so, the mids are huge, the top end has enough detail.    I typically run my unmodded HRM with VOS pre's and el34's with the bass knob less than 9:00.  With modern production tubes,, particulrly Svetty el34's  that bass knob setting would be a bit higher.  I prefer to use speakers, tubes, and amp designs that produce a lot of low end, when I turn the bass knob down the harmonics open up nicely.  In all my amp experiences, high bass tone knob settings are a harmonic killer.   The bad thing is that these speakers have a magnet assembly that weighs on the order of 12 pounds, but that is less than an EV 12L or 15L by a few pounds.   Nice to have a furniture dolly around...

I like mcinku's setup idea of two separate cabs very much, detail and versatility can be had, and when those two cabs are separated by a few feet one can get a very fat tone that way.  Much coolness there!

Ummm, I've run my 50W HRM through my semi closed back 2/15 filled with JBL g135's.   

Yep, there's only a slight amount of clean boost coming from that pedal, though.