jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

I was giving 'her' the benefit of the doubt about being a human, but the user picture of a scantily clad teenaged girl does tend to support your bot theory

however this is not the 1st one.... we got hit with a couple bots shilling penis pills on the general forum last year

you know, I set the Victrola in record mode, load up a wax cylinder and point the horn ay my geetawr, then I have at it

in all seriousness though I have been super lazy lately, just using a USB mic or USB DI or sometimes synths that send audio as well as receive MIDI over USB.... its just fast and easy not to dicker around with anything else and if I'm that discontent later I'll redo a part thru the Eureka or something else clever

I actually have a 10 year old Emu Emulator X card which has decent AD/DA conversion, same 192k converters in the big Avid HD from that era (though I enver seem to bother to run in full HD, I just don't care that much), stereo in and out, but no pres... which I felt was a good thing for my little overdub/electronic music machine at first.... then I realized I am too lazy in my old age to putter around with pres, compressors etc and find it way more satisfying to work fast with anything that plugs into a USB slot and then replace it alter if its bothering me

lately when I do a lot of sequenced synths I use an external mixer when I'm working on the sounds (put all the synths into the old girl and then take a stereo feed of the PC and run some monitors off the mix bus), but I don't record through her much and tend to just DI them or whack then into a guitar amp with a USB mic out front one track at a time as I go. The sidecar mixer setup is really just about dialing in the patches to compliment eachother and also rehearse acid tweaking when I'm using the 303s.... it also gives me a good diea of how my hardware sequencers are behaving together against the MIDI clock (often not well, but that's the charm... then I know whether I should be recording as shorter punches to minimize audible clock drift). Its probably a silly way to go about it, but I kidna like this method as its a lot like how they woulda had to have done it in early electronic music and I think it requires more vision than being all modern....

but anyway, I am a nut who doesn't take it all so seriously anymore and my home studio is always a shambles that's more about having fun than professional grade audio.... I used to care when I made my living at my music, now? whatever sounds okay and is the most fun setup for a song idea is the way to go as my time is limited to get things done!

it seems like, now more than ever, anything works if you have a decent song and a good sense of the sonics...

yo, please don't be spamming... if you really want to promote this website's acoustic guitar reviews then at least put it in an appropriate thread

also see if you can try any of these "boutique amps" for you shattering glass not so clean sound:

matches DC30

Dr Z Route 66

Dr Z Z28

bad cat wild cat 40

We supported the Buzzcocks

+9,999 masterclass gigging points

also. get a clone, real tweed is 3k+ in the USA, clones and RIs sound fine

mine's not old, I am mojoing her in thru hard playing

It seems almost silly I know. Like having a muscle car for groceries shopping, or a trophy wife for her cooking.

my hot ass wife could not cook (but goddamn she could fuck)... not a bit! I cooked... and a good thing since I am a trained chef... and my Z3 roadster proved to be totally impractical and I gave it back to the motherinlaw

but amps? aaaaaampsssss

keep the 2203

I am drinking beer, we're cool then!

I love amp talk, Terry. As a tech I loe how the circuit translates in undescribable ways! you feel it and love it, it even shows upon a recording but no one can define it.

MAGIC

1x15 pro, 2x10 super (mmm), 3x10 bandmaster.... the bandmaster is rare and theloudest by a smidge for a couple reasons but with a unique feel when riffing.... you might wanna restrict yerself to the pro and super for loudness reasons

the pro is smoother due to the 15", the super has some midrange cut but its not harsh and the bottom is there too as the 10s couple well

no no, tweed, the reverb amps are black/silver-face and all different, great but different... love the pro reverb, but its not a tweed pro at all, basically a bf bandmaster with reverb in a 2x12.... the super reverb is its own thing entirely, a reverbed tremolux 4x10 combo.... some bassman DNA in the 2ohm output....

TWEED NO REVERB, must be TWEED covering, distinct circuits in tweed, Jim Marhsall and Ken Bran's inspiration

the pro, super and bandmaster are 99% the same circuit, different transformers and speakers, all very similar and gloriously gooey even clean

go shopping! I wish I could invite you over to try MY stuff as its a wide range of sounds and feel

there's a response factor of a cathode follower preamp you are omitting, its feel, the deluxe is not just dialed down (though the gain is mighty low by modern standards even to drive 22 watts), due to internally higher impedances it has a different feel

anyway

I gotta tell you I see you really enjoying my tweed pro... if you were local I'd invite you over today to bring you guitar and pedal board and try my whole stable

all 4 voxes, the matchless, the selmer, the traynor and the lovely pro in all its molten tweedy splendor

the differences aren't fully audible, they are a feel thing that effect your playing! I have 4 ac30s because each different era has a different response to my playing and I do different stuff through each one... the 70s one has punch, kicks like a mule, while the modern one gains up early but compresses late compared to the all but the 62, has extr features and is a good inbetween.... the 90s RI has the clean of cleans and the 1962 is so spongey, its so compressed and almost dirty even fuly clean, it sounds hot and on fire all the time and you play different stuff through them all

the deluxe reverb is one of my favorite amps, however it has little in common with a marshall or a tweed, its voiced different and the topology is way different

its great at doing its thing though if you like that... best pedal amp EVER

you seem unclear on what you want though, a new low volume tone or an amp that will give you a semblance of what you have at a lower level

there's different fenders.... marshalls are based on big tweeds, specifically the bassman, the 800s are a tweaked bassman with cascaded gain stages, but for lower volume work the pro, super and bandmaster are sweeter to me... think "Who's Next" tones

they are essentially a bassman preamp with a different phase inverter and a slightly weaker implementation of the power tubes for about 30 watts... much different than blonde or blackface amps... in fact far removed as only a Princeton in blonde and black uses the same phase inverter scheme (that encourages edge of breakup grit) as the mid sized tweeds and they don't have the cathode follower preamp scheme

maybe you should just get something else though, other things do that kinda sound, you are not using the 800 in a uniquely 800 way actually

you sem to be in a tweed fender realm.... maybe a super, pro or bandmaster? I love my pro

its funny, the 800 is known for gain up past 5, master at above 5 hard rock, but having owned a 2204 for ages I agree with you, it can do so much more, especially when you get some speaker dirt going

I used to enjoy mine with a strat neck pickup with the master almost wide open, low gain settings (3ish) and the bass and mids cranked, no treble low presence.... glassy and dirty but clean when backed off.... the 800 is just one of the all time great amps, but so loud! I could shatter windows with my strat setup and mine was a 50

so you use the amp fairly clean, hi gain input with the gain dialed back?

she is designed to be loud, its a stadium amp, man

I've owned many Marshalls, superleads, 800s, 900s, they are loud, its what they do stock. even the Studio15 and the 18 and 20 watters are loud amps in their range. God I think I've owned 20 marshlls or very similar ampslike laneys, top hat emplaxadors, THDs etc

you can't enjoy them at home stock, eventhe 50 waters.... in order to use my Selmer and Traynor at home I have to clear it with my neighbors (and I am running em thru a low efficiency 2x12 to goose down the level at the speakers). I tend to play my reissue AC30 because its tolerable in 1/2 power mode.

with your taste for the 800 I recommend an 80s Marshall Studio 15, but they are thin on the ground and getting pricey.... I sold mine for a cool grand before shipping. There are a lot of boutiques you would like but again we are talking high prices even used.

have you tried a 2x12 or 1x12 with 100 watts handling, pulling 2 tubes (outer or inner pair) and reducing impedance by 1/2 to account for internal impedance changes? a 1x12 with a lower efficiency speaker but high handling will cut volume even before you pull 2 tubes and reduce impedance to go to 50 watts

also, an ac30 with blues will be negligibly quieter than what you have run clean.... efficient speakers with extra perceived loudness due to the cutting midrange... all my voxes peel the paint off the walls, they don't liquefy kittens like a cranked marshall, but in practice at home the volume difference is little and both a 30 watt vox and 100 watt marshall in the zone will summon the authorities

an ac15 is still pretty loud but is getting within the realms of neighbor tolerance if you don't gun her to overload the poweramp

you can also try installing THD yellowjackets effectively cathode baising the amp with EL84s, same wattage cirve here as with 6V6, different sound.... imagine it being Voxed up a smidge

reread my post, I added to it

you could get a 2x12 with some EV12Ls or something like them and then take the amp to tech and have him mod it for a bias switch to run JJ 6V6es (which tolerate EL34 plate voltages but output half the wattage or less in a pair but youwill have to run at 1/2 impedance because of some electrical stuff with 6V6es I won't bother to explain)....

this way you get the low watt version and loud version in one box and assuming you are using matched, fresh tubes from a consistent supplier that tests them and grades them precisely (tubestore etc) you can get versy similar specs from set to set and use the switch to go between types like on a mesa Nomad.... you wil of course devalue a somewhat valuable amp, but it will make it useable, particularly if you pull 2 6V6es in 6V6 use and halve the impedance again (if possible) to get 1/4 of the EL34 wattage which will be a little better than half operating pwoer through similarly efficient speakers

is it a 2203? 100 watts?

depends on the amp circuit... a vox is very speaker sensitive and the THE VOX SOUND is about alnico speakers to me, with ceramics it can be marshally or tweed fender (though a mix is great).... voxes with all alnico setups tend to be less pedal friendly through the top boost channel (which most people use)

but fenders are fenders thru anything

but on the pedal tip it has more to do with the preamp topology.... the blackface fender topology is a gain stage with volume and tone controls and then another gain stage whacked right into the phase inverter while big tweed, voxes and marshall are a gainstage followed by a volume, then a mixer stage for the dual channels (not in a vox, just an extra stage ina top boost with a dropping resistor to get some hwadroom), a cathode follower to buffer the tone controls, the tone stack, then the phase inverter... a vintage orange is 2 gains tages, tone stack, phase inverter driver stage and then the concertina inverter that's only 1 triode versus the modern standard of the long tailed pair with 2 self balancing triodes in parallel and some of its own gain.... a hiwatt is odder still going with 2 stages, tone stack, then a cathode follower buffer or voltage reference triode (depending on year) into the PI....

and between every stage the designer places coupling caps that control bass response by their size, maybe some bright caps on a volume control shunting away bass at lower volumes AND possibly RC networks that shape the entire sound between gain stages... there's a lot to this, Terry

then there's the pedals themselves, what impedance are they sending the amp's nominal 1meg load? and is the rest of the amp voiced in a way to tolerate a high fixed source impedance while maintaining performance? does it sound stiff with an ultra low impedance from 80s or later designs? Every component interaction effects the interaction between guitar and amp and therefore effects interactions between pedals and the amp

trying to boil it all down is nigh impossible as there are hundreds of components in some amps all lending to the sound and response

I use my ears first and worry about the numbers later.

I've done my devil's advocate bit so I'm pretty well done... I'm not a fan of NAFTA of the global economy, but globalism is a reality in the age of high speed transport and the internet and there's no turning back the clock. Isolationism is over and in that light a statement like "get rid of the UN, it doesn't work" seems a bit silly and even solipsistic. Anyway, cheers to your political discussion. I am going back to talking about guitars and synthesizers where thigns are black and white in tech terms and completely grey in artistic ones, a discussion that's much more to my liking and more interesting than the political debate in which I have pinions but am rarely sure of them. Politics is like navigating ina fog.

I wasn't trying to school ya, just saying, the parts are still manufactured for the most part and there will be sonically identical equivalents for those that don't.... we're talking about the same basic parts as a minimoog model D with additional patch points and a spring reverb... and they are the same components as the Odyssey too, just an extra oscillator's worth, the aforementioned reverb, the patch bay....

Moog will make you a model D as will studio electronics, therefore even without consulting a schematic I can promise you the parts are available for a 2600... so Dear Korg, please make us a 2600

and also....

GAH!

nah, as an amature engineer I can tell you that parts are available, at least ones equivalent enough... hell, the Odyssey is very much a stripped down 2600 and the Korg is spot the fuck on (I have one), I will say no more

wait, yes I will

but the reasons Roland gives for circuit modelling is crap... I own a Bassbot and x0xb0x both of which get right in there with a 303 using currently available parts so why did Roland make the modelling TB-03? though I want a an 03 for comparison purposes....

then look at the studio electronics SE1 that does a moog model D with MIDI using current parts and gets damned close or near perfect?

its economics, but see, I would pay a huge sum to Korg for a 2600 as long as it was less than vintage prices (and you offered a kidney). That leaves them a huge profit margin. KORG LISTEN TO ME! You finally reissued a proper ac15 and ac30 this year, all handwired, why not a 2600 too? They should look at synths thru the vintage reissue and boutique guitar amp market...

this election had a really serious voter turnout, so it wasn't so different from your country

don't let it.... I don't even fit in with the left in my country

just playing devil's advocate here, but by your logic if your bass stops working you would smash it rather than repair it.... or hey, here's a better one, the roads in philly are littered with potholes, but rather than patch them every summer lets rip them up and have dirt roads! Asphalt's not working, lets go back to what we had before paved roads because that was fine. And you know what? What's good for Philly is good for America so lets rip your roads up in Texas too. Get rid of all those expensive and irritating interstates while we're at it. They cause traffic, cause it! they're not working, fuck it, lets get rid of them. We'll replace them with something terrific! I don't know what that will be, but it'll be great and it won't cost you anything... I swear.

okay, I'm out now

http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/25260-namm-17---vox-ac15hw60-mv50-series-demos

they even have the smooth black covering like my old JMI... I think I want that 15 for the collection.

I gotta tell ya, you may wanna up your game a smidge and look at something like the Line6 M9 or a used TC rack unit like a G Major.... even the lowly G sharp which trades for peanuts is a killer unit though limited in how many effects you can stack... prices aren't bad for the older TC stuff and the effects are spectacular in their idiom. Of course you will need a MIDI controller to change patches which may be over budget... I have also seen people use the floor varieties of the PODs for effects only with pretty good results, especially the POD HD series. Again, its now older tech so the prices are low in the used market having been superceded by Helix...

my experiences with the Vox digital effect have been underwhelming, though the standalone delay, the time machine I think? its okay, as are the similar delays in the stomplab

I have never been too impressed with Digitech and I am thrilled they revived the old DOD brand.

so amongst your 2 initial options? go zoom, they've gotten a lot better the last 15 20 years.... though I still say look at some discontinued TC units or maybe an M9 or used floor Pod....

the one shaped like an LP is a Guild Aristocrat... very similar in design to an early Gretsch Duo Jet or Kay Thin Twin... more hollow than the Jet, less hollow than the Twin.... has the great sounding Guild P90 copies... wonderful guitars. Getting hard to find though.

huzzah to being happy with a 1st purchase, HUZZAH

not at this particular moment but I will make one in the next week with appropriate impedance values noted and some explanations of why it matters.... maybe I will do a 'wrong way' diagram with impedance info and what you can expect to resulst sonically for creative missuse of gear! sometimes degradation is a sound, right Nick?

thanks for saying "not a schematic" in there more or less, because I assume everyone can read and sonically interpret a schematic because I am a world class loon... I think a I ran a dude off with my schematical musings in an amp thread just yesterday and I was just trying to be informative. We are just not all engineers as well as musicians, and that's okay... but listening to the engineers can only be to your benefit as long as you don't forget the golden tulle, if it sounds good? it is GOOD

I know most of you just wanna make music and not think too hard and that's a laudable goal! and the golden rule I stated is great if you know what to do and have the tools to correct things if it just sounds blah the easy way! can't hurt to know why things sound a certain way either, can it?

please reissue the ARP 2600! Yu did a great job on my Odyssey, but it barely scratches my 2600 itch!

Love,

a 2600 fan who can't afford an old one

I got another one! I don't exactly remember it because it was back when I still drank heavily and indulged in drugs, but I know it happened and people I know still talk about it. Philly, Pontiac Grill (before it turned back to JC Dobb's), 1st show of this instrumental/experimental proto punk meets dance music band I was reluctantly in with my best friend, Dog and Pony.... very well attended. We decided to forge a rep as the loudest band in Philly, so I used 3x 100 watt half stacks (superleads and a dual showman), the other guitarist had my AC30B and his modded silverface twin (and maybe my 50 watt 800 combo as well, not sure now), the bassist had an SVT rig and an Acoustic folded horn rig (like John Paul Jones used to play)... the drums got the whole PA but we also put kick snare and toms thru an old tube PA head, effects and some guitar 4x10s using contact mics :-) I think I also used a Roland Chorus Echo with all the different functions controlled with momentary switches so I could just punch it up for shits and giggles, the regen was cranked into full chaos on the echo and the verb was set to pyscho dwell. I think that ahd its own amp with no dry signal too, either one of the superlads or maybe a 4th amp. Cannot remember. This guy Greg said we 'rocked harder than Manowar atop a pile of flaming skulls' and a friend of mine commented that it was so loud something broke in her ear.... hahaha

it was a real party atmosphere and most of the audience came back to my place afterwards and proceeded to party into the next day. I remember the party better than the show itself as I was pretty fucked up at the show trying to overcome a case of the jitters as this band had barely played together before my friend booked us a gig... I just remember being high and drunk and having a blast. So that's a best show.... and something I would never do as an adult. Not the psycho volume, not the drugs, not even the bourbon...

and when I say loud I mean loud, everything was turned up at least to 7.... my favorite plexi was full up, all knobs but presence.... I remember sliding them all up right before we were going to start and thinking "this one goes to 11!" I thought the building was going to collapse. It was a sound you felt more than heard.... you couldn't escape it. Those were the days before noise ordinances on south street!

wild and free like Can or Neu, against my better musical judgement and fueled by alcohol, cocaine and Xanax, truly a show to try to remember though its hazy... later shows were also insane like the Philly rollerderby fundraiser at the triton... my worst band hands down, but the most fun

I would bet you threw that TS5 out and just forgot.... the shitty tac switches on them always went bad and were impossible to replace! I've owned a few TS5s. They were my 1st OD pedal and I really liked them versus nicer tubescreamers, still do, but they always break. Even when I got a TS9 I usually had a TS5 around because they're different. Eventually I got into the SD1 though and now I'm a huge fan of the MXR badass OD which is like the best sounding SD1 ever. But man, TS5s, always breaking but sorta nothing quite like one. Not really a poor man's TS9, just another flavor.

hmmmm

1st off define great fender clean? big tweed? little blackface? big blackface? maybe a silverface? some of the sf oddballs sound quite good at clean you know! the bandmaster reverb springs to mind

are the cleans harshly bright with no effects in line?? when you're getting harsh drive is it from your pedals or the amp's built in gain (it has a gain channel right? I am pretty sure these amps have a gain channel, but its not well designed and you will never get a good sound from it). it might have a permanently installed bright cap on the input or somewhere in the drive section (maybe on the master or gain knob) that you could clip out, though it will make it duller at low volume settings and all around bassier... it may also be biased too hot or too cold, you would probably want to go to your local tech for a power tube swap and rebias (if its a 6L6 amp which I think it is, try the Groovetubes 6L6GE, the only tube GT actually MAKES in old GE plant here in the USA), I am not sure if the amp should be breaking up on the clean channel at 3, its not uncommon to encounter this in old fenders that have drifted a little, but generally they're clean up to 5 or higher so you might not be biased properly or you might just have dead power tubes, either way a trip to the tech will diagnose that and it couldn't hurt the amp to be serviced ... hey, do the power tubes look like a matched set? if they are the same brand do they look like they are worn the same or is one looking more faded and burnt than the other?

by all means start with preamp tubes, maybe there's some fucked up shit in the front end... and maybe a speaker (the Cannabis Rex comes to mind for your application, but if you also want power tube drive at lower volume levels the Weber DT series of speakers is a great option, smooth and inefficient with a nice growl), but while you are waiting for your tubes like try to ascertain whether the amp is operating normally... I mean, you will wanna replace the tubes and probably the speaker regardless... speaking of the stock speaker, is it a ceramic Jensen? does it say anything on it? are you sure its original to the amp (has a fender logo on it)? maybe take a picture for me so we can decide whether it might be the culrprit or at least wether its part of the problem

do you have a schematic for the amp I can look at? if you post a clear schematic I'll tell you all about your amp and give you some ideas on potential 1 part mods to mellow her out... usually you can do a lot by cutting out a bright cap (the classic deluxe reverb mod) or replacing one here and there between stages to change the general response.... the size of the coupling caps is a close second to any RC networks in shaping an amp's frequency response, its probably beyond what you want to do to mess with any RC filtering they threw in (and given the era there is likely a lot, designers were really going apeshit back then), but you might be able to feed those sections are more robust signal by screwing with the simpler tone shaping sections, particularly those surrounding V1... have you loked at the guts? I assume she's a PCB design? is the board cramped, is it double sided? do the traces look robust enough to be soldering on? plus I wanna know if its a tweed or blackface topology... if its blackface style with the tonestack early and no cathode follower it should really sound great with a bridge pickup at like 5 and 5 and 5 at any volume and be clean to about 5, but if tis tweed/marshally then depending on the caps and stuff it might be behaving normally and you will wanna do the preamp tubes and then we'll see if there's some caps to snip or swap

so anyway, please read my tube recommendations and get me a schematic and we'll go from there. If you aren't in a position to get a better amp and you don't HATE this one you may want to dicker a little more.... its not like you're modding a vintage gem here and we're not talking about getting very intrusive

I realized after talking tubes that I am not super familiar with the super pro, but rereading your OP it sounds like it could need some basic maintenance (the amp is getting old and god knows how the previous owner treated it)... without looking at the schematic I can't be sure what its supposed to be doing though... but I just started typing whatever was running through my head here based on decades of tube amp experience, thinkin' out loud or in print or whatever

umm, how did you wind up with this amp? didn't you play through it before you bought it?

EDIT:

here we go, I found what we need!

http://ampwares.com/amplifiers/fender-super-pro-tube/

I should REALLY be working right now, but this is more fun. Holy shit this amp has too much circuitry... its a blurry schematic, we'll want a better one, but it appears to have a bright cap, its a little confusing because of the push pull on the clean volume and the poor resolution of this PDF... as you can see the 2 channels split early, right from C2 following a shared 1st gain stage, the gain channel has a whole 12ax7 upping the voltage, whereas the clean channel gets the other stage from V1 and there's also some resistors that are dropping the gain of that stage a bit to keep it clean.... then it hits the tonestack.... tis weird, usually in a blackface the tonestck would be sandwiched between the 2 gain stages with the volume pot, hmmm.... if you look at the gain channel its a lot like a blackface channel but because there's the shared V1A stage preceeding it, it behaves like a Mesa Mark1, which is just an extra triode out front of a blackface (more or less).... I guess the way they did the separate toenstacks on the channel they couldn't share V1A if they made the clean channel blackface style, too bad, because this topology is goofy for a clean channel.... okay, so they meet at the switch before C15 which couples the active channel to a 12at7 stage which buffers the FX loop, the enxt stage is recovery, basically like a reverb circuit... the jacks don't appear to be switching jacks so that buffer is always in your signal path, meh.... I cant tell what the FX send mix knob is doing, maybe it takes it out but it doesn't look like it, the recovery stage is always in for sure, but that's a lot like a BF with reverb, it effects the sound a little, makes it mushier but a little hotter and more harmonic... so then it ahs the classic long tailed pair phase inverter feeding the power section, just the standard BF 12AT7 type found on everything bigger than the Princeton.... and I kidna ignored the extra gain circuitry, tis got a buncha opamps in it, but I saw that coming, thatw as the era of the 900, ugh! if you stay off the gain channel they are not in circuit and from what I can tell depending on how you use the gain channel they will be outta circuit, they kidna slapped a boost or basic distortion in there, I can't read it well though.... in low gain mode though it appears to switch the solid state components out and w/o that stuff the thing is a 100% old school tube preamp, but the design is a little odd because of the way the switching is implemented... from what ic an see the gain channel makes sense assuming that the extra IC and RC circuitry down the bottom left isn't being used... we might wanna get a better schematic and compare the low gain circuitry to a mesa mark1 and see how it deviates as the mark1 is a really classic sound to be shooting for in a fendery amp

there's a lot to break or go off spec just in the pre, changing the sound from stock... and there's also a lot of room for user error getting sound as it does A LOT.... the circuitry shouldn't be eating your tone on the clean channel at least, though its not an ideal clean setup, its not sure if its blackface or tweed, kinda between them... it'll never sound like a blackface.... the FX loop is all tube but not a very good design in my opinion, but no 80s and 90s production amps have good loops... I am having trouble reading the component values to see if there's room to mod assuming the amp is operating on spec....

hrmmm

the amp would certainly sound better if the clean channel went straight to V1B with another stage after it (or better still if it had a big fat pentode front end and no additional gain like a Dr Z amp or or or, nevermind), skipping the shared stage and the volume control for clean could be moved to where the tonestack is.... you could lose any dropping circuitry and count on the tonestack losses to between stages to keep things clean using all the gain from V1B for blackface cleans.... but if you do that you lose the push pull pot for the volume as that switch needs to be where it is to work right, argh... I don't know that the amp will ever get the exact sound you want, but it may produce good sounds of its own if you embrace it for what it is and what it does... I certainly think the cleans have low headroom by design though.... what does the 'cut' do when you pull the clean volume? cut the gain?

Dr Jim is on the case man!

EDIT:

I just realized the channels are out of phase in this design, only active components (tubes and semiconductors) invert phase, so clean has 2 stages followed by 2 buffer stages while gain has the shared stage and 2 more stages into the same buffer.... why on earth did they do that? If you use this in a 2 amp configuration and switch channels on this amp one sound will be out of phase with your other amp no matter what you do making 1 channel useless in a bi-amp scenario.... out of phase channels piss me off, man! god, I woulda done this differently... early channel switching mesas have this design flaw too though, but I think they sorted it out by the mark IV. Its not a big deal except when you're mixing amps though.... it would drive me nuts, I like my channels in phase in any multichannel amp, switching or not. I swear I can fucking hear it anyway.

mesa doesn't make tubes, they just test and rebrand whatever they get cheapest and upcharge you... if you want tested, rebranded tubes go with groovetubes but I recommend just buying from a tube dealer like tubestore or tube depot.... try the New Sensor made Tung Sol 12ax7 reissue, its unharsh and has nice distortion and compression, tends to overload early and nicely in most amps, lots of bass and treble, but good treble... JJ 12ax7s tend to be on the dark side and sound 'cleaner', they make a lot of varieties but they are all a good choice to tame a bright amp and the higher internal headroom tends to tame some harsh.

You can go further down the rabbit hole if you want, but maybe start with a handful of Tung Sols and a handful of JJs and experiment with different positions in the preamp

the 12at7 tubes are probably the phase inverter and the reverb, it might have a tube chart that could tell you.... you can use whatever in the verb driver/recovery circuit but you shouldn't swap from an AT7, it'll work, but not ideally, anyway the tube in there is fine I'm sure as its only really being used in the reverb signal (some will make bones about reverb drivers, but hey, you have bigger problems right now).... but in the PI a 2ax7 will up gain and change the frequency response a little, but not in a predictable way. Try it.... no one makes a good sounding current production AT7, I would look at NOS from a tube dealer, all the old ones make a good phase inverter