SculptureOfSound
New member
Hi all,
Total tube noob here and just picked up my first tube head off of Reverb, a Framus Dragon. So far nothing but problems and hoping someone can help:
The head came in with a broken power tube - Ruby El34 Bstr.
I don't have any other tube heads so thought I was just out of luck while waiting for the shipping claim to get processed. Then I remembered I have a Carvin TS100 power amp that has EL34s in it. So I pulled those and put them in the Framus but the Framus sounds very very thin and the gain on it sounds more like an unboosted Plexi or something. Nowhere near the gain that a Dragon should have which is more in the Boosted JCM800 area with its crunch channel and a Soldano SLO w/ the lead channel.
The tubes I pulled from the Carvin are Electro Harmonix EL34 03 05. Is it possible that these power tubes could result in such a loss of gain? I thought that most of the gain from a tube amp was derived from the preamp?
With that in mind, I moved around the 12AX7 preamp tubes a few times to different spots to see if it had any impact on the gain, thinking maybe one of the 12AX7 in a gain stage was bad but moving these tubes had no effect.
Lastly, with all this in mind, any idea what I should do with regards to this sale? Right now we're in the process of getting the claim filed with the shipping company but if the power tubes can't make a drastic difference in tone (like reducing gain by 50% or more) then I think something is wrong with the head...
Total tube noob here and just picked up my first tube head off of Reverb, a Framus Dragon. So far nothing but problems and hoping someone can help:
The head came in with a broken power tube - Ruby El34 Bstr.
I don't have any other tube heads so thought I was just out of luck while waiting for the shipping claim to get processed. Then I remembered I have a Carvin TS100 power amp that has EL34s in it. So I pulled those and put them in the Framus but the Framus sounds very very thin and the gain on it sounds more like an unboosted Plexi or something. Nowhere near the gain that a Dragon should have which is more in the Boosted JCM800 area with its crunch channel and a Soldano SLO w/ the lead channel.
The tubes I pulled from the Carvin are Electro Harmonix EL34 03 05. Is it possible that these power tubes could result in such a loss of gain? I thought that most of the gain from a tube amp was derived from the preamp?
With that in mind, I moved around the 12AX7 preamp tubes a few times to different spots to see if it had any impact on the gain, thinking maybe one of the 12AX7 in a gain stage was bad but moving these tubes had no effect.
Lastly, with all this in mind, any idea what I should do with regards to this sale? Right now we're in the process of getting the claim filed with the shipping company but if the power tubes can't make a drastic difference in tone (like reducing gain by 50% or more) then I think something is wrong with the head...
