previous: Patrick "I was curious to see how good the ... -- 7/7/2000 4:42 PM

Re: Mesa "special requirement" power tubes - long

7/9/2000 5:53 PM

andyfuchs

Re: Mesa "special requirement" power tubes - long This whole thread reminds me of a bizzarre experience I had while I was managing a service shop that was "Mesa Authorized". A customer brought me a MK-1 for a retube (I asked him when was the last time he brought eggs to a diner and asked him to cook them, but he missed the joke), and he brought in a full set of Mesa "selected" replacement tubes (cause Mesa says there's nothing better for their amps). Well besides the original preamp tubes were Sylvanias and sounded decent, and the replacments (Chinese) sounded like microphonic-dirt, the story got interesting around the power tubes. The original Sylvania 6l6's were still pretty strong and were running at about 50 ma each. The new Chinese tubes ran at 25 ma each. I tossed in a trimpot, a couple of 1 ohm 2-watt cathode resistors and set the bias. I wrote this on his service ticket, and totalled the bill. When he picked up his amp, he got all twisted and told me "I brought you Mesa selected tubes, that doen't need to be biased, and besides theres no bias pot in this amp, Mesa said so". After much argument, we called Mesa, and Randall (who, at the time, still would talk to you on the phone), insisted that I refund the customer's money, and "not charge him for modifications his amp didn't need". He continued to insist that "something was wrong" and "are you sure you know what your doing.." and such. Thanks to Mesa hype, the concept of Biasing is no longer valid. I soon got disgusted with the whole repair business and took ten years off.

 

Replies:

Cole Mesa's been doing that for years si... -- 7/9/2000 7:00 PM Paul C I was an authorized shop and got sc... -- 7/11/2000 3:16 AM