Time for a retube?

[Dr. Jimmy]

I was using my Classic 50 (which I bought new back in '93) at a gig this past weekend and noticed that by the third set my tone was a little more dead than it was at the beginning of the night. Of course this could be attributed to ear fatigue, strings going dead or maybe it's time to retube it (I can't remember the last time I changed them, I went through a spell of about 7-8 years where I didn't even use the amp!).

It is a great sounding amp, I run it on the clean channel and use a DLS to get a great Marshall-esque tone out of it, I can switch back and forth between clean and dirt and it sounds great. A while back I replaced the speakers with some old Vintage 30's I had kicking about.....

Any other thoughts as to why over the course of the evening this would occur?

 

[Dr. Jimmy]

Anyone???

 

[guitarman_nebr]

i think you are on the right track with ear fatigue. it happens to me every gig (35 years worth).

a retube never hurts. usually if tubes are bad, they will show it with popping, ringing, and fading in and out. these are general rules of thumb and not absolute.

i have found that lowering stage volume a bit and keeping all players away from volume knobs, i get a consistant tone from my amps all gig long.

that is my $.02

 

[Baxtercat]

Me too Doc.
Every night [30 some years] the amps or speakers 'seem' to peter out.
It's the band, drummer, singer, etc. getting louder.

[gtrman: Nebraska? I played probably every joint along I-80 decades ago. Very fun state, esp. in summers.]

 

[guitarman_nebr]

Baxtercat, ah yes......the 70's and 80's road gigs. good times.

yes, i am in Nebraska. probably played the same gigs!!

 

[EastCoastRocker]

>I have found that lowering stage volume a bit and keeping all players away from volume knobs, i get a consistant tone from my amps all gig long.

Amen !
Love rolling tubes though.

 

[strumminsix]

Probably a combination:

If you restring every show they will dull-out after a few hours

If you are rocking your ears will become slightly desensitized after a few hours.

If the amp is just cooking without good air flow or old tubes the sound will soften slightly and become slightly more bland after a few hours


My band usually does about 3 1-hour sets and I just don't touch anything after mid-way through set 1 since I know we've checked, I sounded good, the amp is warm, the feed to the PA is solid and tweaking is catalyst for all to tweak and we are good.

 

[teleman1]

Dr Jimmy,

It would probably like to see new power tubes. But just for kicks, put a new 12ax7 in the v1 slot. If you get a noticeable improvement, that might give you the total gumption to go for the rest.

 

[strumminsix]

One more - when was the last time you had it serviced? I recently acquired a F-R Concert and was totally unimpressed. $75 later and a trip to the tech's and now very happy with it.

 

[NortheastHick]

Old preamp tubes usually get noisy and microphonic when old, old power tubes are usually a more gradual process which results in a duller tone with less highend. Classic 50 uses el84's which just don't last as long as the big bottles, so my bet would be on the power tubes getting old.