i like tungsols in all positions, but i like the overdrive even more with the old RCA i have in there, much fatter. IMO the JJ's in V3 kill the harmonics and bloom and in V1 it makes the clean channel lifeless.

JJ's are now only used as test tubes by me due to their ruggedness

a power transformer wont change tone unless it changes the voltages. Usually i just go with the cheapest good quality power tranny (weber) and use something like a Heyboer for the output, the output tranny is what will give you the difference in tone

im not sure. but i think an easier way would to just use a stereo out pedal that you have. Or if you dont have one you now have an excuse to get a new pedal

They are swappable on both amps with a rebias. This can be done on most amps provided that the plate voltages are high enough for the EL34's but low enough that the 6L6's wont melt.

you'd probably have to swap thetube rectifier for a SS rectifier on the bassman which will bring the voltages up. Weber and a few other copanies sell plug in replacements

Well i have the KT88's in my other Dumble clone, which is what made me swap to the El34's in my OTS. I wasnt sure if my OTS could handle the 88's stock so i didnt bother.

The 88's are monsters compared to 6L6's way more bass and clean headroom with overall similar tone to the 34's. There are rumors of a KT120 coming out from tung sol in the near future that supposidly can get 160 watts out of a pair. That will be my next tube swap

IMO the 34's did have a slightly different mid range characteristic. I think the biggest difference i notice though is the tighter bass and the highs that sound like the presence knob is turned up alot more

I think they may have been mistaken. The power tubes certainly matter. I think the point the poster was trying to make is that you generally want the power section to stay clean (so your clean channel stays clean) Youre not really going to want to get power tube overdrive with this settup due to the two channel settup, which is probably why they said that. where as on something like an old Plexi you need the power tube overdrive to get that signature sound.
That being said each power tube has different characteristics when their clean too (although the differences between the tubes become more pronounced when you overdrive them. ex. 6L6 Looseness)

Not only is it the sound that changes but tubes can also change the "feel" of the amp. And IMO the "feel" and tone of an amp can sometimes change how the player plays, which will (again) change the tone to some degree since 75% of tone is in the fingers

The first thing i noticed about them is that the low end sounded much tighter. Before the low notes were very mushy. Now instead of a big mushy mess on the low E string i get a nice warm twang.

to me the EL34's can put out a wider frequency range but the frequencies are more balanced giving a nice even tone without harshness but still get a nice bright sparkle on the high end. Where as the 6L6 has a narrower freq range but it has more of the highs and lows it can produce, which is why lots of people find them more sparkly (I find it harsh compared to EL34's) but also the lows are more boomy and muddy.


this weekend i got to crank my amp up with the 34's and it sounded perfect. To me with the 6L6's they sound worse as you turn them up because that loose flabby bas becomes much more pronounced and the sponginess of the 6L6 attack becomes too spongy. The EL34's have a snappier and faster attack especially at low volumes, which is why when you crank them up they sound perfect IMO


Just as a side note the EL34's im using are run of the mill Chinese branded sino/shuguang. biased at about 50ma
The 6L6's i tried were JJ's, A set of mesa 6l6GC's and also tungsol 5881's. IMO the EL34's blew them all away with stock bias (around 37ma)

EL-34's are the way to go IMO

a very expensive (with long waiting list) pedal. Basicly its an analog, solid state dumble preamp, with clean ch, OD ch, and the tone stack switches. DO a google search

thats because both these setting reduce midrange. More mids= fatter tone, less signal loss at the tonestack but you lose the dramatic bass and treble tweeking. Scooping the mids, or using an amp like a blackface fender will give you much more tweekability. it's just the nature of the tone stack.
IN reality you shouldnt need dramatic tonal changes because the original ODS' were designed around the players tone. Meaning the tone stack isnt meant for getting SRV, Hendrix, carlton, and santana tones all by the twist of one or two knobs. The tonestack on dumbles is mainly there to provide fine adjustments like room EQ and sometimes your backup guitar. Theyre made to create the finest tone possible, not emulate everyone elses tone.

If you should need a dramatic change then you should tweek the amp just like Alex D*mble would have

you probably have the PAB on. also the bass control on OTS' isnt that tweekable anyway, the effect is pretty subtle

no idea why he changed it. I always thought the 1M was too high though. I use a 500k with my custom HRM

i use mine with a dyna comp set for a boost(with the sensitivity at 9:00)

for a little more juice i layer on a HAO Rumble Mod which is a d*mble type pedal, huge sounding and very open OD

I almost always leave the MXR dynacomp on though

loop

run the KT-88's they sound beautiful, IMO they are superior to any other audio tube that can be used in these amps