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I am looking to replace my crate v50's tubes in the future, not sure how soon though. I was wondering what brands to look for and what brands to stay away from, as well as what your favorite power tube and preamp tube combinations are.

I like Electro-Harmonix gold valves. They're really nice. I've found that JJ's sound rather dark, Sovteks a little sterile. Doctor Valve do some nice ones and they have a really big product range too.

I just did as much research as possible and testing until I settles on Ehx's and they made the Peavey Windsor I had at the time sound good and that took some doing!

I haven't replaced tubes in my guitar amps yet. But in my Ampeg SVT 2 Pro bass head, I think I have Tung Sol 6550's for my power tubes. And it has 8 preamp tubes, yes 8. The tech that fixed my amp up for me when I got it, recommended that in the first two positions I use Tung Sol 12ax7's as those two positions will be used the most, and to get the gritty gain that I wanted out of my amp. And the other 6 are JJ's. Sounds great to me. The only other time I've replaced a tube was in my old Peavey Triple XXX 112, one of the EHX 12ax7 tubes that came in it was microphonic, and I bought a JJ to put in there, seemed fine to me, but since I didn't replace all the tubes it didn't make any real difference in tone.

I recently put all JJ tubes in my Bassman head, I didnt notice things to be a darker or brghter than the 36 year old Fender tubes but then again I didn't turn it on for two weeks and I also replaced the filter caps so who knows. I'm happy with the sound and breakup of the JJs though. I get a bit more clean headroom out of them too I've noticed

Haze wrote:I recently put all JJ tubes in my Bassman head, I didnt notice things to be a darker or brghter than the 36 year old Fender tubes but then again I didn't turn it on for two weeks and I also replaced the filter caps so who knows. I'm happy with the sound and breakup of the JJs though. I get a bit more clean headroom out of them too I've noticed

JJs are nice valves, my friend has them in his Marshall but I didn't find them sparkly enough for me. It's all subjective anyway.

mrperson wrote:It's all subjective anyway.

most shops that know dick about valves should let you test them out in your amp. i'd like to try some different 12ax7, au7, etc but all of the shops around here glare if you were to even bring your own amp in

I had a JJ 6v6 die in my fender champ clone in about two months, and I didn't even turn it louder than 70%. It looked like vacuum breakage problem, the silver thing went white.

Haze wrote:

mrperson wrote:It's all subjective anyway.

most shops that know dick about valves should let you test them out in your amp. i'd like to try some different 12ax7, au7, etc but all of the shops around here glare if you were to even bring your own amp in

I don't believe my amp is self biasing, so I don't know if I could do that

Berto wrote:

Haze wrote:

mrperson wrote:It's all subjective anyway.

most shops that know dick about valves should let you test them out in your amp. i'd like to try some different 12ax7, au7, etc but all of the shops around here glare if you were to even bring your own amp in

I don't believe my amp is self biasing, so I don't know if I could do that

Well you only have to bias power valves, so you can experiment with pre-amp valves.

In the 6l6 catagory I like sovtek 5881 for a lil grit
JJ makes great el34s , all models
JJ 12ax7s are fantastic
ei 12ax7s are just as impressive

mrperson wrote:

Haze wrote:I recently put all JJ tubes in my Bassman head, I didnt notice things to be a darker or brghter than the 36 year old Fender tubes but then again I didn't turn it on for two weeks and I also replaced the filter caps so who knows. I'm happy with the sound and breakup of the JJs though. I get a bit more clean headroom out of them too I've noticed

JJs are nice valves, my friend has them in his Marshall but I didn't find them sparkly enough for me. It's all subjective anyway.

I agree,,,thats where the ei12ax7s shine....I have found the electroharmonix 12ax7s suprise me as well.

Berto wrote:

Haze wrote:

mrperson wrote:It's all subjective anyway.

most shops that know dick about valves should let you test them out in your amp. i'd like to try some different 12ax7, au7, etc but all of the shops around here glare if you were to even bring your own amp in

I don't believe my amp is self biasing, so I don't know if I could do that

Preamp tubes (e.g. 12AX7, 12AT7, 12AU7) can be swapped to your hearts content without biasing.

In my Orange Rocker 30 I have JJ EL34's and Tung Sol 12AX7's and in my Carlsbro 50 Top I have JJ E34L's and ECC83S's and I think they all sound great however I haven't experimented with anything else.

I have some JJ 6V6S in my silvertone/danelectro that I love. they sound a lot brighter than the silvertone 6V6 that were in there before.