New Mullard or E34Ls?

[revolver1]

Re- Winged C price increase. Funnily enough I was in a pretty bad place 7 years back and stopped playing alltogether for 3 or 4 years. When the urge got the better of me to pick the guitar up and get back into it just for fun it got to the point I was up for re-valving. Alot of people were recomending the winged C, I'd not really heard of them before. Previous to that everyone was raving about the JJ Tesla's (I was under the impression they were using alot of Mullard's old tooling machienery)? I'd tried a few sets of JJ's and the Harmer version (OK) but then opted for Groove (but only the ones from the JJ factory) as Groove's screening seemed to deliver a more consistent valve. Point is I'm guessing that all the intrest in the Winged C has resulted in a sale's increace that in turn has allowed them to think they can bend us all over and hike up the price.

Johniss, I'm interested in what you had to say about the Marshall 100W Bias circ resistor value chainge. I've observed the 69 esqu circ has a 27k / 47k value and the 68 esqu circ has a 33k / 47k value. I seem to recall reading some where that some guys were opting for a 33k / 56k combination and reported this got them more in range for Biasing. I'm intreagued to try this in my new build. Any opinion's?

Also, recon I might give thease Chinese valves a go. Where are you getting your's from? Any recomendations?

I went to see Motor Head a few years back at the Appollo (one of those band's I thought I should see just to say I had). When I first came to London my brother and I hung out a couple of times through a mutual friend at Werzle's flat listening to them jaming blues in the front room whilst getting rather inebreated (great times for young lad's) Saxon were supporting. Gotta say I prefered the earlier stuff, Wheels of Steele, Ha Ha what a great night of Rock 'n' Roll that was.

[johniss0001]

hey man i have a 70's lemmy stack 4x15 and 4x12 with my old 78 superbass.

I don't really dabble with changing bias resistors too much i just decreased the 47k to a 33k although really i should have gone 39k because at the highest negative setting on my pot i am at 40mV but right now i am happy with the amp so i don't feel the need to change it right now.

I get my valves direct from the source and i love em it does put a diff spin on the marshall sound slightly but i love a big clean and in your face sound they are very smooth valves the el34b although i'd like to try the el34a as it's a smaller bottle. I am hard on amps to be honest so if i get valves to withstand the punishment then i am happy.

Speaking of saxon i know one of their guitarists and he's been sitting in my flat playing my old gibson while i sorted out 1 of his guitars, doug scaratt he's an absolute gentleman and it's a pleasure to meet him heck i gotta play some of his guitars especially his brand new les paul axess! while drinking tea at his how fuckin rock'n'roll lol as he lives in hove about 2 miles from my flat.

He wants some tech tips from me i am trying to get him over to my workshop with his peavey 5150 and get some more out of it and his jvms also.

Are ya based in london? if you get the time come to brighton with your amp and i'll show ya some of my cabs and stuff i am working on I make all my own cabs flight cases etc and they are shit hot!
many appologies for going off topic

[revolver1]

A real deal "murder one". Nice! First off I've gotta get this amp built. Second, I ride a motor cycle so getting the amp to Brighton would be a challenge to say the least. But some times I head down to Brighton for a few beers and If I do I'll be sure to drop you a line. I recon thease chinese valves could be the way to go for me, I like to get a big fat cleanish sound and then drive the ass of the front end and use the guitar to get different tones. I always keep it natural, mostly level you'd never know there was a pedal there. It's been a real pleasure johniss thanks again for all the info.

[johniss0001]

no worries mate haha i wouldn't be surprised if you know me already if you bike to brighton I hang out in the rock pub here in town called the caroline it's where the bikers hang I don't drink but i am all up for meeting up.

I haven't kicked the front end of my amps with pedals i use the raw amp but i may kick it sometime and see what i get.

I even got a red paint chip on the corner like lemmys however my cabs have the grill cloth on em. although the replicas i plan on making are going to have a metal grill and be a bit more aggressive looking. I saw a video on you tube of marshalls reissue and i have to say it sounds shit! nothing like my amp

[revolver1]

I know tone purists will probably hate using pedals, I understand because I spent many years avoiding them myself. I've tried "dimeing it" and many other tequnic's but found alot more useable tones with pedals. I cretainly don't want the pedals to really get away from the amps natural sound but using a quality pedal more for a volume boost rather than drive enables me to get a cleanish tone with no pedals and great rythem tone with the guitar vol around 8 and a boosted, perversed, voodoo solo tone on 10 (it workes wonders with a decent wah). I always try to match the pedals tone controle to the amps original sound and also play with the tone on the guitar for different tones. I also find the volume boost on the front end tends to thicken the sound and tighten the bass. But this may not work with your amps (johniss) with so much voltage on the plates. I've never been able to get convincing Jimmi tones by dimeing a Plexi. I stick with true bypass effects and 50's wiring CTS pot's and paper in oil caps in the gat's. Its all good.

I was in the Marshall factory prob 10yrs back getting a blowen tranny sorted and there on the floor of the reception is this beat up amp... Marshall logo replaced with the imortal "Murder one". Sure enough It was the Killmisters beast in for a service pre tour. Having heard it live I gotta say its Evil on its own but with the whole group Motor Head were the most balls to the wall (let alone 3 peice) wall of sound I've ever had the previlage of re activating my tinitus to.

And Re the Mar RI's
Sadly gotta agree, although I know there trying, alot more than ever before to live up to a past they created them selves. All I can say is money isn't everything, What about the long lost pride in building the best of the best. And no offence to any one but all I can say is god bless America 'cos Mar... cant do it anymore... Sorry rant over.

[johniss0001]

to be honest i don't have any problems with pedals it's just that a lot of pedals sound like crap through the front end of a marshall if i want an amp for pedals i use my sound citys that's just my preference although my wem copicat works fine with my marshall where as my alesis midiverb doesn't go figure it's gotta be the right recipe for marshalls range masters, fuzzfaces wahs, i don't find distortion pedals work well like tech 21 double drives or boss hm2s they go a bit muddy when cranked but have to find the sweet spots.

I feel with my old gibsons (sg p90s, and les paul clone built by a mate with custom humbuckers) I did the humbuckers myself on my les paul with sozo vintage mustards and 50's wiring and on the neck pickups on both guitars i get a nice hendrix clean it's very similar to peter green and this is what i look for in amps to me this is why the russians and the jjs pissed me off cause those sounds weren't there but with the chinese it's there first time everytime!

Every marshall that has come into my shop i put those valves in I have achieved similar tones across the board be it my 69 superlead, my 70 super pa, my 78 superbass modded to 70 spec on the pcb, an 86 2203 that came in for repair and a 78 2204 that also came in for a repair and tuning. These valves sound huge crank up the jcm800 and the 50 watter those fuckers will melt your face on the bright channel think loud Rock out with your cock out! lizzy, ac/dc tones and cock rock tones fan bloody tastic after hearing these in that jcm800 and jmp i want to make 1 of each! Now with the non master vol circuits the super pa nails koss and is an aggressive mofo, the 69 superlead same but more in your face with a smooth drive, the superbass well it's smooth all the way up with lots of headroom.

I dread to see what murder one looks like inside but i know stage freight doesn't exist any more as it was too far gone apparantly. We did a series of events in brighton a huge battle of the bands at the king and queen with my murder one stack and at vol 3 it was filling out the whole venue and that's a fair size of pub!

[revolver1]

I've got to agree with the pedals thing. I think any thing digital sounds cr#p through a Plexi and I think it's because the non MVol power stage is ramped up so much that all the detail is realy noticable, you can hear all the hidious, scratchy digital distortion and it sounds cheap. Anologue is the only way to go with thease beasts, The pedals have gotta be vintage spec just like the amp. With Jimmi some times its hard to tell where the amp leaves off and the Fuzz begins especially with good use of the Guitar Volume knob.

I'm interested in what you said about the SoZo vintage mustards in your guitar. I'd never thourght of using something like that. Pete Green's sound certainly isn't a bad tone to chase, I know it's the obvious track but 'Oh Well' has always floated my boat ever since I first heard it as a kid. Man wish I wrote that one...

Met Mick Fleetwood (breifly) once. I was passed out back stage on a garden path at a small festival in Devon (too young, too much red wine). Man that guy's tall especially if your looking up from the ground. So I did the honarable thing, got up apologised for blocking his path, shook his hand and went back to sleep for a few hrs till I sober'd up. I'm sure he's seen it all befour...

[johniss0001]

can i correct ya here revolover i don't have any plexis all my amps are metal panel i refer to them as super amps as that's what they are cause you can get plexi super pas, jtm45s, 100s, super bass and of course superlead. My metal panels are similar construction to the "plexis" sorry it's a big beef of mine.

Digital pedals depending on what you have and a lot of it is to do with the valves and components especially transformers. My alesis midiverb 4 rocks with my jtm45 reissue i'm modding with kt66 and i have an ibanez ue 300 effects unit i occasionally run through that and the tones rock the socks and i even set up the alesis to emulate my wem copicat and if i remember right lizzy used wem copicats. My amps have no effects loops so all my reverb etc is run in front end although i may try a simple reverb in and out like what old sound citys had sometime if using a valve spring reverb i don't see it mattering too much or ad an eq in that way to heat things up.

Sozo's in guitars i never thought about it either until john at sozo said "hey man try them" So I did and I love them along with the pafs i did they are very smooth caps not sure as smooth as the oil bumblebess but thing is it wouldn't be a fair test to compare them to that as it's a 50 year old cap vs a new cap and a lot of the recordings were done while these things were realitively new.

hahahaha yeah he is a big guy

[revolver1]

Yeah sorry, I guess I think of anything pre 800 as having the old tone's. I'll refer to your amps (too many to list) as Metal Pannels in future.

I'd been using Luxe caps as I thought they were as close as I could get to a replica bumble/Tiger/black beautie sound. Although I realise they're not exactly the same. I got your message so I'll probably get in touch to try out a few SoZo's in the future.
I prefer the idea of using good replica components or NOS as I agree with what you said about the equipment being new when all those (now old) songs were recorded back in the day. That's how I want my tone, fresh not 30yrs+ worn out and fatigued.
I think it would wreak havok with my head to play a realy old original all the time. Because at some point somethings gonna blow and It's never gonna be the same again... Or at least mentally I'd always be thinking the grass was greener.

[johniss0001]

no worries mate also I should tell you lets take this scenario mullards are the best valve for 60's/early 70's valve amps well yeah cause they were all done around the mullard spec modern amps tend to sound slightly better with modern valves as again designed for those characteristics. My old marshalls the 100 watters if we call them super amps as that's what they were be it plexi or metal panel no offence meant there it's a beef of mine just like "greenbacks" i have 15" greenbacks, I have G12M and G12H greenbacks/ blackbacks it referrs to teh magnet cover colour sorry it's little things like that.

With regards to guitar caps I have never really put a lot of thought into it if it sounds good it is good I can't afford those bumblebee caps. Nos can be good but with regards to resistors erm no i wouldn't touch em would you put nos rubber seals on your bike?

Also things would never sound like they did years ago unless you recorded everything the exact way microphones, reel to reel etc are all different and inconsistent.

sorry for goin off on a tangent.

also I have an 86jcm800 and 78 2204 in and that nails early tones quite well so that isn't necesseraly true.

[AustinTx]

.02 cents more to the mix...

A Very Very generalized obsevation of output tubes:

NOS or Used Vintage=Best
Built way way tougher and will last for years. Most will sound better than
new production..even with much of their life used up.

Chinese tubes= Bright, Cheap, Not Durable at all
In low gain situations they can sound great..a little bit of Fender Tone
In high gain situations grab some earplugs ...that sparkle on the top end just became lethal

Most of the Russian Bunch= Who knows if they are durable..it is different every year, Tone Varies

Svetlana and and all things Winged sound like they have mosquitoes in the bottles..must be where they got the wings.
Some guys swear by the wings, but they give me a headache at loud volumes.

JJs sound narrow and dull.

Mullard...?? I tried them twice and both times they fried same day.

Tung-Sol el34b seem to be a good middle of the road Russian tube, thickish, not overly bright, durability
might be ok..I used one quad for recording sessions with 510v at about 80% at idle. Used for a month that
way and they did not fry, then gave then to a friend who is still using them at sane voltages.

The Russian tubes vary so much in tone and quality you never know what you getting.

Used Vintage Tubes may be in the price range if you do some searching.
Amp Repair Techs may also be a source to get used tubes that still work well,
some amps come into the shops for new tubes when the installed tubes
are still good. Might get some real good tubes for low dollar that way.

Good luck navigation all the Tube BS...

[johniss0001]

good comments there.

I haven't found any reliability issues so far with my chinese and i have had them for 2+ years in my old super bass granted i ain't gigging much right now but so far so good at max bias they are quite bright and bold sounding valves it's a thing i like because i play a dark sounding guitar and my cabs are fairly dark. I did an A/B with the chinese el34b and mullard el34 and to behonest there was very little in it tone wise.

Used stock even in uk is quite expensive now for matched quads it's getting out of hand and most techs don't want to give out used tubes infact many keep them for themselves if you are not careful.

[revolver1]

I guess the greatest thing about music is that sometimes every thing I thourght I knew can be wrong... If it work's it work's, if it dont then chainge it.

Just out of intrest does any one know of a good scource of Mullard NOS out put valves and or Telefunken pre's? Drop me a message If you don't want to tell the world.

And beware I've certainly lost a set of NOS Mullard pre's to a tech that I'm sure there was nothing wrong with. I didnt want to offend him by asking for them back. (young and nieve I guess, but a lesson learned).

[Coot Boy]

I didnt want to offend him by asking for them back..

[revolver1]

Yeah that was a propper Homer moment. I trusted the guy and for the most part he was very good but on ocassion when he was a bit hard up, I think he invented stuff that 'really needed to be looked at'. He was certainly better than some of the monkey's (working out of reputable guitar shop's) that thourght they knew better than Marshall and decided to replace compenents... This is certainly one of the reasons I'm keen to build my own amp and get to grips with how it all works. Even simple tasks like re-biasing would save time and money that could be better spent trying out different valves.