The amp has those external bias points. All I need is my multi-meter and have a decent bias probe already anyway, so that wouldn't provide any additional help for my situation. It seems one of more tubes in that other 6L6GC quad I tried the other week likely was bad and these devices won't really provide info toward that
Mine stock was 6CA7+KT88, tried EL34’s and many others now. Mine was great the way it was too, but even greater for me now. May as well take advantage of how easy it is to try different powertubes in it and see which you like most. I wouldn’t say it’s a huge game changer, but odds are if you explore it that you’ll also find something you like even more. So many possible combinations. The type of grind I enjoyed in your clip has been brought out even better with these KT66’s
The bias points won't tell you the plate voltage. I understand you can bias without, but atleast you know first hand what the plate voltage actually is vs. internet and guessing. Having said that, you don't know if the plate voltage did any harm to the Tungsol, (which is rated 450V), or if the tube was bad. Wouldn't you prefer to know? JJ's are only rated 450 as well, I believe.
Well for plate voltage the maker himself Daniel said it’s 520 and just went with that as well as biasing tubes around that number from his equation he gave. Of course it’s good info to have
I think mine came with redbase EL34 and JJ KT88. The settings are in the video with a Maxon OD808 in front. That’s all it was. I’ve since tweaked the gain, treble, and presence a tiny bit but not much. It sounds really good around noonish on the controls and they have good sweeps to change the tone so I didn’t need to do a lot of tweaking besides the cut knob.
Agreed, but I find the powertubes allow you to tweak the tone in a different type of way than what its knobs do. More about things like texture/smoothness/grind, compression/openness, headroom, things like that that you won’t get just by tweaking the amp’s knobs. Just worth exploring imo is all I’m saying
I sold it 2 months ago now, but still thought it was a good amp, especially for something recent made. A few other amps sent it packing though. It sounded very big, thick and punchy with a really good growl (almost recto-ish) and grind (kinda Engl-ish but better). It did lots of things well, had a lot of versatility and awesome features, but I only keep amps that I feel are 10/10 unrivaled in at least one department no matter how specific. I don’t keep amps that tick lots of boxes 8-9/10 well. Also as long as I didn’t raise the cut knob the tone wasn’t too filtered. Still not the most organic sounding amp, but much better than most recent amps there at least
