Epiphone Valve Jr Amp Head

[Nitro Express]

One trick I do with the 5150 is I order low bias point 6L6 tubes from the Tube Depot. They break up faster and what's great is the audiofile snobs don't want tubes that distort easy but us crazy guitar player love them. Right now I'm running Electroharmonix power tubes with a low bias point and running it into a THD 16 ohm hotplate and a Marshall cab.

The preamp tubes are Sovtek copies of the old Telefunken tubes.

To be honest, the crunch channel sounds great with the pre and post gain at 7, with the bright switch on. With a Wolfgang it does get that early VH vibe. Now I have the 5150 II which many say is a warmer amp.

As far as a bias control goes, YES! that is what really turns this particular amp from a razor blade tosser to a warm amp. I have no idea why Peavey left it out. They bias the stock 5150 amps cold. Sure any idiot can change their own tubes and the tubes last longer but boy does it cut the warmth out!

[Nitro Express]

There's footage of Eddie playing his solo on he Balance tour. He's playing through a 5150 but it's warm and actually sounds pretty good. He's got his crunch channel dialed in and the amp is biased (which means his were modded with a wide sweep bias pot!)

Now there's footage of Eddie playing live through 5150 amps and it's a buzz machine.

Ed's guitar tech on the last tour said Ed was complaining about the sound of his amp and wanted new tubes put in. He said he had his meter and Ed asked what in the hell he was doing and when told he was rebiasing the amp Ed got mad and told the dude to just crank it. LOL!

Maybe it's Ed why those amps don't have a bias pot. He probably demanded that the amp be engineered that any idiot can just pull and replace the tubes without messing with that bias shit. LOL!

[Nitro Express]

Didn't Groove Tubes sell an adapter you could use to run EL-34's in a 6L6 amp?

I know the mod is easy and only requires that a wire be relocated on the socket points and the amp rebiases.

Some amps even have a switch that does that for you.

[BrownSound1]

Terry Kilgore said that in the old days Ed would slap in any old tube from the drug store and never rebiased. Seems like he's keeping that practice going today.

I think you're right about the GT adapter...seems like I remember seeing those some time ago. I like the THD Yellojacket idea too, cuz sometimes 50 or 100 watts and full tilt is a bit tough on the neighbors. Bust an EL84 in those holes and it isn't quite as bad.

[Nitro Express]

I notice the Peavey 6505+ not only has a bias pot but multimeter probe ports built into the back. People are saying it's a short sweep pot so you still can't bias the amp all the way to the maximum idle voltage.

I called Peavey and got a straight answer. They said they designed the amp to be user friendly so people could change their own tubes themselves because it's hard to find qualified people to rebias anymore and many musicians need to change their own tubes themselves. Peavey is dealing with liability issues. They sure as hell don't want people opening the amp and killing themselves. They got enough complaints about an unadustable fixed bias that they put one in but a conservative one where if you even crank the thing to the max, you still aren't going to cook the tubes.

If you want to keep your warranty and not void it out and warm the amp up. Dime the factory bias pot to the left all the way and put low bias point power tubes in. That really helps. The pot is such a narrow sweep no way in hell are the milivolts even close to overheating the tube plates.

[Nitro Express]

David Lee Roth once said they stopped at Thrifty Drug a lot in the day because Dave liked to check the records out and Eddie would buy tubes there because he blew them all the time because he dimed the shit out of his amps. LOL!

I can remember going to Osco drug as a kid and they had a huge tube diagnostic machine and all sorts of tubes for sale. I remember our television stopped working and my dad pulled the tubes and he's plugging them into this huge, complicated machine. I remember I had an old GE black and white TV in my room as a kid. It would have to warm up and after a while the room filled with that wierd smell. The smell of tubes! I would look in the vent ports and see them glowing in there and I was blown away with how magical it all was.

Somehow, IC circuits and digital technology killed all that magical fun. The warm up time, the smell, the mystery. My three year old looks at the 5881 tubes on my Golden Tube SE-40 amp the same way I did when I was a kid. Out of that whole glowing mess comes sounds and you look real close to see if you can see the electricity. The voltage and heat is scary but intriging. Is it safe? Will it burn the house down? You have to love it!

Man, buying and testing tubes at the drug store. That brought back some cool memories! I won't even go into the facinasion I had with my grandmothers Magnivox stereo/TV console or her Hammond organ. All tube! A zillion of them! I had to move both when she passed away and those were heavy as a truckload of lead!

[Nitro Express]

Originally posted by BrownSound1
Terry Kilgore said that in the old days Ed would slap in any old tube from the drug store and never rebiased. Seems like he's keeping that practice going today.

I think you're right about the GT adapter...seems like I remember seeing those some time ago. I like the THD Yellojacket idea too, cuz sometimes 50 or 100 watts and full tilt is a bit tough on the neighbors. Bust an EL84 in those holes and it isn't quite as bad.

Ed proved you can't kill an old Marshall! LOL! Holy hell, I wonder how many fuses he blew! Ed probably got tired of blowing fuses and put tin foil in there! I remember him saying he blew the whole house in Pasadena because he hooked his Marshall into a light dimmer! LOL!