Originally Posted by Simon Barden
Will do once the glue has fully dried, and before I install the new strings.
Will do once the glue has fully dried, and before I install the new strings.
I really don't like no-name Chinese valves. I've never heard a good one yet. Several of them I've had you could hear them physically rattle. The one that came in a Fender Champ 600 was probably the worst as you could hear it over the amp! At least ones with a known brand name on them will have been properly quality checked and be of a higher quality to start with.
One of these days I'm going to have to invest in a good valve testing rig, and learn how to sort through all the good ones from the bad ones, I'm going to be ordering a set of three new 12AX7 valves from Evatco soon, the ones in my Marshall are just to keep it useable till the new ones arrive in the post, I was thinking of ordering either a set of three Sovtek 12AX7 LPS valves, or a set of Electro Harmonix 12AX7EH valves, or maybe some JJs, I want to get ones that are high gain but low-microphonic and low noise, so maybe ones with small anodes might be good since they tend to be low-microphonic, might even end up ordering three Sovtek 12AX7WA valves.
Orange do the cheapest and most versatile valve tester that I know of, but it's still expensive and worthwhile only if you do a lot of amp servicing. Don't know what the valve supply situation is like in Australia, but there area a couple of UK suppliers (probably more but these are the biggest outlets) that pre-test the valves and match them up, often into low, medium and high gain sets. It's often variations on the standard valves that end up having the lowest microphonics or highest gain. A valve spec for a 12AX7 valve means it should have a maximum gain of 100, but often ends up less. And even the same manufacturer's valves will have a variation in actual gain. Here's a site I just found that does a good comparison of the different available types of 12AX7s. https://www.amplifiedparts.com/tech-...ent-made-tubes
Worth noting how many of the different brand's offerings are all the same Chinese-made valve, with the same electrical and sound characteristics. So you may as well find the cheapest brand you can find if you decide to try one of those valves.
Last edited by Simon Barden; 05-02-2017 at 11:20 PM.
Cheers for the website link, I downloaded a copy of the pdf of the comparison table, I've decided that I'm going to see if I can order three of those 12AX7/B759 - Genalex Gold Lion, Gold Pin valves, I know that they are a bit expensive but so is my Marshall amp, and I reckon it deserves some decent preamp valves to get it to sound it's best, so I'm prepared to spend the money.
I tried creating an account with that website (amplifiedparts.com) but it won't let me log in even if I use the exact username and password I chose when I created the account, so, I'm going to try ordering the new preamp valves from Evatco since I was able to successfully create an account with them, the new preamp valves will end up costing me about $160.00 all up but I'm not really too worried about that at all.
Last edited by DrNomis_44; 06-02-2017 at 09:31 AM.
Update:
So, I've just re-strung my Gibson USA Les Paul Studio guitar up with my usual Elixir 46-10 gauge strings, and it looks like I've got the nut height, and consequently the 1st-fret action, well and truly nailed, fretting strings just behind the first fret feels good, I don't seem to be getting any fret-buzzing at all on the first fret either, all I need to do is get the 12th-fret action correct and then I'll be happy with it, oh yeah, I just did a quick play through my Marshall amp's clean, overdrive, and boosted-overdrive channels and the guitar is sounding pretty nice and lively so far too.
I've got the action at the 12th fret on my LP Studio set as per Gibson factory specs (5/64 for the low E-string and 3/64 for the high E-string), the guitar seems to be playing well and I've got the string intonation for each string adjusted as close to spot-on as I can get it (the A-string was a bit finicky to adjust but I got there in the end)so the guitar is playing as well as it can, I think it's ready for taking to uni next week, in that case, I'm calling it "job finished".
Update:
I found that the Brass nut I installed on my LP Studio seemed to be causing the strings to bind in the string slots, so I re-shaped the back of the nut after lightly tapping it free from the PVA glue (very glad I used the PVA glue rather than 2-part epoxy), anyway, after re-shaping the back of the Brass nut to hopefully reduce the string-binding, I glued the nut back into place and re-strung the guitar, it didn't seem to make much difference, so I'm going to try replacing the Brass nut with a Bone one that I've ordered from Stewmac, unfortunately they are out of stock but Stewmac will send it to me once they have some in stock, I've actually ordered two of them and the string-spacing is standard Gibson spec which is a bit wider than the string spacing on the Brass nut.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote