novosibir wrote:My personal favourite for British sounds is the Tungsram, because no other tube does have this knocky, woody and nonetheless tight tone.
The Mullard's are similar, but I don't like it too much, because they are too fat soundwise IMO and slower in response, compared to the Tungsram's.
Another mullard-ish sounding tube I like sometimes is the Brimar. Again similar to a Mullard, but slender in its overall sound and not as boomy, as the Mullard.
Although, my 2-nd favourite is the orig. Tesla (not JJ!) with the factory code '32' and the gold pins and I like it due to its smooth, silky sound with the nice & mild presence. My favourite in fender-ish amps, but also for British sounds as i.e. tone amp tube, loop recovery stage, aso.
Another one of my 'out of the row' favourite is the Telefunken smooth plate, but never as V1 or as V2! I very much like it as the PI tube, because it makes IME the power stage work more stable than any other tube brand in this spot.
Larry
Just to add to larrys's description and btw Larry you've nailed it as usual, thanks...
I'm sat at home, it's january, gigs have gone baldy, off the drink after christmas and it's pissing down with rain. so i got my whole stash of pre's together and started playing around all day today with different ones in v1.
I'd been using the same 163 mule in v1 for ages and really liked it, did a couple of gigs in nov/dec that were launches of albums i sat on, just local stuff, but you can guess they were full of musos. heaps of guys complimented the tone so was feelin pretty good about the glass i got there. It's a metro superbass. for this experiment, a strat with '11-49's and a cornish ss2 for some boost. In v2 we got a brimar and in v3, a tesla e83cc ( btw larry i checked and i have two with codes '32' and gold pins, one of them was already in the amp which was really cool to find and thanks for the info )
Heres what I found out, i'm no expert on how to describe these things but i think my ears are okay. no doubt some of you guys will tell me you how close i am to getting it right ( ...or wrong, please do! ), but at least i hope it helps somebody out there before they hand over their hard earned. The t'rams are much tighter top and bottom with a lovely top grind, chimey, back to back with various mules, the mules do sound looser, boomy is a great way to describe it. The trams have a great, immediate bark on rythm work and compress beautifully using more drive on lead playing but the faster timing of the trams mean you don't have to work as hard as you would with the mules to retain clarity, the more you push the front end and the dirtier things get. although the trade off being when pushed, the mids seemed sweeter, more tuneful in the 'old faithful' 163.
I've got 5 t'rams all of which seemed pretty consistent, so i decided to keep one along with the 163 i was familiar with to use a reference against the other tubes i got. next was an rca short/grayplate i got from trampy. slightley darker than the tram. not as heavy in the bottom end. a great musical but softer sounding midrange and overall response is lazy like the mule but not just as slow. the top end got softer, less presence, the more i pushed the front of the amp, still a great tone but i think maybe one to stash away for v2 or v3, or another amp perhaps. the telefunken diamond bottom, 17mm gray ladder plate, also from tubetramp, was just too much, this tube just sounded so strong, more gain, abundant wide-ranging honky mids, a howling top end bite and a very tight bottom end, even with a lot of gain in front of it, the wound strings chimed out like the low end of a grand piano, too much for this set-up but man, i can see how guys get into them.
so i stuck in a tesla gold pin '32'( white print ), back in t'ram territory but not as forward, not just as 'rich', a bit on the bright side. the tube i put in was nos so i tried the one i've had in v3 for nearly two years. what a difference, these tubes sound so much better burned in, fuller all round, a bigger sound, rich and even across all frequencies, like larry says a sweet presence, super fast attack, i could almost hear the notes
before i picked 'em, makes me wish i had a telecaster. the trams have the maybe a tad more detail but it's the darker more authorative low end and their addictive 'bark' that gets them my vote over the teslas.
after a whole day messing around with these, and having great fun doing it, i'm gonna stick with a tungsram, i'm going to buy a few more if i can find them. the mules come a close second and luckily i have a good stash of those. i guess it depends what you want out of your gear. i'm on the hunt for some bugles only cos i hear so many great things about them but have yet to try them. hope this helps somebody ( and that i'm not too far off the mark )
