Last Blogger

It’s been a while since I’ve tinkered with anything so I thought I’d give a new tube for my guitar amp a thought. A year and a half ago I wrote a review on the Vox VR30 I had bought and at the time, the sound sounded decent to me. Well as time wore on, the background hum started getting annoying since I’m only playing at home where I’m keeping the volume at a reasonable level. So I figured I try a new tube in the pre-amp (the power stage is solid state). After a bit of research I found that tubes are like guitars and amps, there’s one for each style and preference. I made a few calls and it turns out that MusicStop fails again… Buckleys pulled through for me though, having a whole bucket of 12ax7 tubes in stock. I stopped there on my way home from work and picked up a JJ/Tesla 12ax7 which, from what I read, seemed to be a decent middle of the road tube.

I have to say the change was tremendous. As it turns out there was just one of those cheap Chinese tubes in there and apparently was the source of 98% of the hum. The leftover hum feels like perfectly sensible background noise when using tubes. While I’m hugely impressed by the improvement that arose from this simple change, I’m not quite finished yet. According to this review of a bunch of tubes, I could actually do a lot better than the JJ. With each tube having its own character, I’ll probably have to try at least one or two more to see which one seems to fit my personal preferences.

The next step is a new speaker which I’ve been investigating for a bit. I’m still tapping a few source for information so I won’t know which I’m getting for a while still. I’ll be sure to post once I have more details on that adventure

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