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It isn't just reverb tanks and it isn't just Fender tube electronics
where nos tubes can make a difference. I used to have a Fender DR RI
that had all the classic symptoms of the RI's in terms of harshness,
tightness, and so on. Put nos tubes in it, had it rebiased and it
came much, much closer to sounding like an original. Recently
acquired a Carr Rambler, which uses a different preamp layout, but I
swapped out the 12ax7, with a '62 JAN CBS tube, the 12at7 with a
Mullard 4024 and the reverb recovery 12ax7 with a GE 5751 and those 3
simple little changes just made everything way more musical and
pleasing to the ear. I would not have thought it so, but, there it
is. I've often wondered why the old stock is so much more musical
sounding--and why Sovtek and some of the other Euro fabricators
cannot recreate that musicality. Groove tubes is now making 6l6's
with original GE materials and equipment--maybe they will move on to
make other new vintage tubes, and maybe some preamp tubes. I always
thought progress meant you get better as time goes by. But they never
got better than the early 60's, with tubes, amps, and guitars, it
would seem. What the #$%^&*#???????? Why could't they see it--and why
did they go wrong?
--- In SurfGuitar101@y..., "Brian Neal" <bneal@z...> wrote:
> > From: Fred Pleasant [mailto:fredpleasant@y...]
> > Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2002 5:45 PM
> > To: SurfGuitar101@y...
> > Subject: RE: [SurfGuitar101] Reverb Tank Sound
> >
> > That's another question I have. When people talk
> > about the NOS driving less hard does that mean it has
> > less reverb and less drippy splashiness?
> >
>
> No. In my experience, I could not turn up the controls to get that
big wet
> splashy sound without venturing into harshness territory. After
switching to
> NOS tubes (and again, I think the swapping of the 6V6 with a 6K6 is
the big
> impacter here) I had more range of useful reverb. I had to turn the
controls
> up more to get the same reverb as before, but the harshness was now
gone.
