1987x OT...Is it really worth changing?

[neikeel]

......and I thought it was just Australians who called everybody Bruce (or do Kiwis do it as well!)

[Brian Wallace]

Bruce-Brian, NZD-USD, it's all good.

[jcs]

As an owner of a 71 Marshall Smallbox 50, i suggest buying a few 12ax7 as mentioned and experiment.

I've heard and played some great sounding 1987x reissues too, but some were modded a bit.

Fwiw, i variac my 71 Smallbox 50 down to 105 (or even a bit lower),it warms up the tone and makes the amp compress and sag just a bit more too .

[aquilarosso]

Bruce-Brian, NZD-USD, it's all good.

[parkhead]

" Many people believe that the Marshall output transformer is a key 'secret ingredient' to the Marshall sound. It may well be, but the transformer in and of itself is not all that special. Side story #2. Over the years, one of my tube 'teachers' has stated he has changed a handful of Marshall output transformers, substituting regular cheap 'no-name' output transformers. He received not a single complaint of 'What did you do to my Marshall? It sounds like shit!' I have done the same 'experiment' (using smaller than what you'd expect transformers) and achieved a similar lack of complaints. In his book 'The Ultimate Tone', Kevin O'Connor is very surprised that the Marshall output transformer is about the same physical size as a Fender Deluxe Reverb output transformer. This is just a simple case of education getting in the way of knowledge. A list of ingredients key to the Marshall output transformer isn't difficult. See ELECTRONIC PARTS for thoughts on this. Marshall has changed their output transformer a few times over the years, and the result is that people are mortgaging their house to buy a 'Plexi-Panel' example of when Marshall just bought a cheap and plentiful light-duty transformer (instead of letting engineers tell them what was 'needed'). "

Shamelessly copied from : http://www.tone-lizard.com/Marshall_Myths.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

well Kevin is wonderful guy and writes a great book... but you guys must not look at lot of Fender deluxe amps
since the OT is about 1/2 the size of a 50 watt Marshall OT and that line stood out in Neon when I first read the book in 1994
Deluxe Reverb OT 1.6 lbs
Marshall 50 5 lbs

sure there a lot of red herrings, snake oil products and myths to wade through to sort ones tone out... but it does not help when engineering types say "it looks the same on a scope"

In that book Kevin advocates using diodes to achieve Marshall distortion arguing that people can't really tell the difference...
but then the SS amp makers have been telling us "its as good as tube" since God invented pocket protectors

p