opinions on JJ platinum 12AX7s and EL84s

Opinions on these tubes, I'm thinking of ordering a quartet of them for the VC30 and 3 12AX7s

jj 12ax7s are all on the dark side to varying degrees depending on the plate structure and could be perceived as less gainy than some dual triodes.... they are robust, well-made tubes overall. Dunno what make the platinums so platinum....

JJ el84s are literally the best current production 84 overall for sonics and longevity... the TAD EL84STR is pretty cool sounding too in a cleaner, fuller 6V6ish way.... for my buck I prefer the JJ, its voxier in my voxes... JJ also makes a low headroom 84 designed to break up at 20% less wattage for a good 1 or 2dB cut in SPL when overloading your power amp. I ordered some recently but haven't tried them yet. I am excited.

Those low headroom el84s sound cool. Maybe I'll pick up a set of 4. What 12ax7s do you recommend? How are the tung sol gold pins. Not that I see a huge point of putting a tiny gold plating on something, I always think you're adding more resistance by adding a thin layer of gold.

tung sol branded Russian dual triodes are built with large plates in oversized bottles. They may not fit will in every tube socket depending on how the shield mounts on it. They are a tight squeeze in my Matchless and I usually only jam 1 in the critical first stage of the top boost channel in that amp. The 12ax7 has a full, hot sounding rock n roll sound and will give even a hiwatt or BF fender a more compressed clean sound. This can be good or bad. I personally like them in amps I plan to play overdriven. The Tung Sols sound really good when you slam them with a boost and they pass on a wide-bandwidth but nicely compressed signal to the nexy stage. They sound very 'gainy'....

they are built well, but like most Russian tubes other than the ones from St Petersburg (Svetlana, winged C, etc) they are not put on the vacuum machine long enough to get all of the gas out of the bottle on every tube, so they have a shorter-than-vintage lifespan and a high failure rate out of the box. Buy from a company like Tubestore.com and get tested ones and you will be fine. Even tested ones will have half the lifespan of a JJ. I get about a year of hard use from a Tung Sol gold pin. JJs last about 2 under similar conditions and old dual triodes will often run in excess of 5 years even with heavy use before sounding dull.

I particularly like the tung sol 12ax7 in Marshalls as they remind me a lot of the old AMperex Holland 'bugle boy' tubes I used to put in my plexis before they became scarce. They are a little more bassy, but the bright Marshall circuit can handle it.

What is a ballenced triode? just looking at a set of 12ax7s and one of them is a ballanced triode. care to explain this to me as I have never heard of it before, I'm guessing you would put it in V1

I want to get a marshall for that marshall crunch but I also like have a nice vox like clean. I used to like the fender cleans but I have really gone off of that. I think in a few years I will have to buy a jcm800 or a 50w super lead. I think I need to either start or join a band before I start thinking about getting stuff like that though as a loud ass marshall is useless to me at home when all I want to do is crank it.

don't build an amp if I have to answer these questions for you! you will get electrocuted. This is not a kit in the sense you are imagining.

okay, every 12__7 tube is a dual triode right? hat means its two triode tubes in one bottle with shared heaters. There is no rule that says foom the plant those two triodes will be twins, okay? A balanced triode has been tested for matched headroom, transconductance etc and the two triodes are virtually identical to be used in a hifi amp where there is maybe a parallel input driven by a 12ax7 gain stage before it hits the phase inverters of the stereo power amps (though generally you see pentodes in this driver application for tube hifi.... also the matched triodes are ideal as a phase inverter in a non-balancing long-tailed pair arrangement. In a guitar amp it doesn't really matter, the circuit balances itself well enough for our purposes (though a balanced dual triode wil virtually eliminate audible crossover distortion if that's what you want). In any amp with a paraphrase inverter or cathodyne? totally pointless as these arrangements only use one half of the tube and the other half is usually used as a gain stage or cathode follower elsewhere in the circuit.

I am so close to pulling the trigger on a '68 traynor PA head that appears to be knocked off a Hiwatt C504 AKA Sound City L50. I dunno what I'll do with all that power at home, but I love Live at Leeds and looking at both the Traynor and Hiwatt schematics the only differences are a few component values and a presence control on the traynor that only later Hiwatt circuits had (though the presence circuit was there on pete's, just fixed). I know I shouldn't buy this, but........

a superlead, hiwatt, sunn, ampeg V series, orange OR series, fender twin or showman? They are ridiculous loud amps. Even for a band a superlead peels the paint off most walls. I cannot stress how LOUD my superleads were at less that 1 on the volume dial. A 50 watt JCM800 2204, while having all the power of the 50 watt non-master amps, is designed for some of tis gain to be pre-master volume preamp gain and its very manageable. It may not sound its best at neighbor friendly volumes, but it doesn't sound bad. Gigging in small "pubs" the 800 is a better call. It sounds VERY good and while its tone is not divorced from volume level you can still generate copious amounts of OD without setting plexi to stun.

I know that they are dual triodes I just didn't know that they could be balanced. Something I never heard of any where before. I ordered a set of JJ 12ax7s for the laney and ones a balanced triode so I was just abit confused. I also ordered a set of JJ EL84s too. Been playing the VC30 as it just got here today. I think its too loud for my fiancee, it can do quiet but who buys a 30 watt amp like this to play quiet? I did crank it earlier to the edge of break up and sounded so fucking amazing. The dirty channel isn't like very high gain but it gets a lot heavier the louder you play. once you get to about 4 on the drive volume it really starts to come alive and thicken up. All in all I'm extremely happy with it. I'm going to swap the seventy 80 for a green back though I think as I think it would really improve the sound, not to say the seventy 80 is a bad speaker just a greenback would suit it better. The Tubes are abit naff and do need replacing, they are still the original tubes and the one I got is a few years old.

My Epiphone sounds a ton better through the Laney than the line 6, actually my playing in general does, how I went this long without a decent tube amp I don't know. My only gripe is that the clean volume pot is a bit scratchy but it is a few years old and I got it pretty damn cheap

yeah, well, amps are meant to be turned up until they sound thick. If a drive channel sounds thin it means you don't play loud enough OR you are secretly looking to join cradle of filth.... If you cannot often get the drive channel up loud enough for it to sound right then you need a smaller amp. 30 watts is LOUD, right? Now you get it. There's only a few dB difference between a 30 watter and 50 watter thru similarly efficient speaker cabs. 5 to 7 watts is effectively half as loud as 30 to 40 and 12 to 15 watts is half od 50 to 60. And the difference between 50 and 100 is negligible. Its more a feel-it sort of volume jump. A dimer 50 watt lead versus a dimes 100 watt superlead becomes a question of punchiness as the loudness is pretty similar.

did you spray the scratchy pot with some cleaner and give it a good 500 turns? If not I suggest assigning your 2 year old to turning, they are good for this sort of work.

I really wanted a 15-20 watt amp but I like all the features of the vc30 and I was having a hard time find second hand 15-20 watt amp in my price range that I liked. So £200 and odd later and I have the VC30 I got a grate deal on it. the guy actually sold it really cheap due to a slight hum on the drive channel when the amp is turned up which is just normal and the handle being on its way out. I'm very happy with it, it sounds great and plays great. took me literally 10 seconds to get the sound I want out of it and have played all day. 30 watts is loud but its a good kind of loud and I just love cranking it when I can get away with it, I shouldn't in a flat but I can't help myself. I love it, now just to start a band I think is the next step for me. I tried the high output and didn't like it, I just use the low output. I need to buy the foot switch, I admit its not got the amount of gain of a metal amp but for me the gain at 10 is spot on as I just play punk and alt rock. the amp does do quiet bedroom friendly volumes but I have it around 4 most of the time. It pisses my fiancee off when its that loud but meh.

I'll spray the pots later, anything you recomend or just use a normal lubricant/degreaser like dw40?

no no no degreaser or oil! get contact cleaner for home stereos. Its special for audio pots! anything else will destroy your pot!!!!

good kind of loud? of course it is! I didn't know there was a bad kind of loud?

for all I say against extreme volume its mostly because the world is always trying to turn your tube amps down, given my druthers I would play through like 4 amps all turned way up, set to KILL... its just that I don't make a lot of friends playing at 60 to 200 watts anymore.

PS: you are a gainiac, but I expect you'll outgrow it.

I see, I'll buy some when I get paid next week. Don't know why I asked that, I should know really having done electronics and mechanics LOL. I really should read up on everything I have learned over the years. I spent like 3 years doing electronics and 2 years vehicle mechanics. I also have all these qualifications in physics and chemistry. Wouldn't think it half the time though how I can be on here. I think I just see amps as this alien technology as I've never worked on one or taken one apart apart from my line 6 out of bordem

nah, an amplifier of any kind is just a big applied physics project

They don't seem to scary when I look at diagrams, schematics and pictures of handwired amps. They seem very straight forward to me really when I look at them in detail. Don't mean they are easy to build though.

I can't find anywhere to get the EL844 by JJ, I was wanting to get some for the laney but settled for JJ EL84s. I don't really want to get them shipped from the US as they are delicate. Also I know 12ax7s have the most gain out of the 12_7 tubes but which company makes the most gainy 12ax7?k

I had written this whole big response to you trying to explain a lot of things, but I realized it was too long and rambling and therefore failed to explain anything or even express my informed opinions... and the key point in the beginning was one I made last time you asked about preamp tubes. so I just deleted it.

JJ 12ax7 types seem to be the "least gainy" 12ax7es in current production while the "most gainy" I have tried are the Chinese shuguangs and new sensor's tung sol branded 12ax7s. Okay? I think the Tung Sols sound quite good in most amps, especially vox and Marshall circuits.

Have fun with your tonequest.

I have changed all the tubes today. Sounds awesome but just used the effects loop and it worked no problem. stopped using the loop and now unless the dirt channel is on 10 and gain at 10 theres no sound which has baffled me. Reckon that the effects loop bypass isn't working now? I'm not sure what the problem is, dirty contacts? it was pretty hard to remove the leads from the jacks. Should I take it apart and have a look or just contact the local guitar store and see if they know?

Ignore this, I just noticed my daughter had turned the eq to zero, thats why there weren't no sound. I feel like a twat for not think to look at my eq dispite knowing that she was turning knobs since I last played.

Feuckin kids and amps. My son can now reach the knobs on a head seated on a 2x12. Madness! I had this great setting on my hc30 with the channels bridged and he jacked it up yesterday.

It sucks right? Least I could remember my settings. I don't k ow why I never actually looked at the EQ. How stupid of me, I thought I killed it somehow but alwell it lives on. Sounds alot nicer with the new tubes. The volume kept dropping yesterday before I changed them and getting a slight crackle. New tubes and the amp does do that any more and sounds a ton better! The tubes also glow a lot brighter than the old ones.

Kids and musical equipment eh? Once I left Hailie alone in the living room with a banana and came back to see my guitar covered in banana where she tried hitting the strings with a guitar pick and banana -.-

yeah, laney's EQ section has been based on the tweed fender/marshall arrangement since the 60s, but its a little different, I remember on my GH50L if you dropped the gain to zero it would produce a warm clean sound even though a Marshall 800 (on which its based) goes completely silent with gain at zero... but the Laney would go down to a whisper even with the gain at 10 if you turned all 3 EQ knobs to zero, whereas the marshall passed sound with all 3 bands zeroed as long s it had a notch or two of gain. They are 99% the same circuit, a gained up bassman with el34s, but a few components causes these different behaviors at extreme knob settings.... the marshall behaves a lot like a plexi or bassman with an extra gains tage and a master volume (which is what it is), but the 80s and 90s laneys are a little different, probably because Laney's 100 watt "supergroup" head of the 60s was a bit different even though clearly copied from the plexi... I actually really like the old 60s Laney heads because they are 100 watt plexis with better transformers than Drake. Laney used the same badass Partridge transformers as Hiwatt did, whereas Marshall dropped their awesome Radiospares transformers of the JTM45 era in favor of inferior Drake iron because RS didn't make a 100 watter and they were doing dual output transformers on the earliest superleads. EXPENSIVE

TMI? its funny, none of you English guys know about amps, and I always figured every Englishman was an expert on vox, marshall, hiwatt, laney and orange circuits and history.....

Hey, we are just English kids, the older guys that work at the guitar store where I live know a hell pf a lot. But I think most English guys are like plug it in and play it, sounds good? Who cares. I like learning about the history of amps and all that. I just enjoy learning. I want to pick up one of those 5 watt mooer heads that are like £200 they seem fun, twp knobs and two switches. I want to see if they are as good as they claim plus I want to set the volume and gain to max on one. I want to get a few amps of different voicing's and power