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Vintage threads from the first ten years

Re: GOTCHA! Sorry...

:

6/24/2000 7:14 PM

Re: GOTCHA! Sorry...

Rick:

:"What the heck were you doing at Torres' shop?

"

I wanted to see what type of saw blade works best for chopping up a vintage 5A1 Champ to make one of those cooling looking mini-stacks... He said it was proprietary information and that I would have to buy his book to learn which blades work the best. He did say that the real trick was to put two layers of masking tape over the tweed so that the blade doesn't tear the fabric so much...

Seriously, I was running out of 418P caps and had to refill my parts bins. Plus I bought up the last 8 EI 12AX7's for sale in this country, I believe... (Correct me if I am wrong on that!)

Steve Ahola

6/24/2000 11:44 PM

quote:
"Plus I bought up the last 8 EI 12AX7's for sale in this country, I believe... (Correct me if I am wrong on that!)"

I don't know, but if I had any I would gladly sell them to you.

This is another one of those things I don't get. I have not had any positive experiences with EI tubes. I do miss the Ruby Silver Plate 12AX7C and Sovtec 5AR4's though.

RE

6/25/2000 6:07 AM

RE:

I like the sweet bluesy sound I get from the EI's when used for the initial preamp tube in practically all of my amps. Before I found out about the EI's I was using the Sovtek 12AX7WXT+'s which seem to have a little bit more gain and a grittier character. For higher gain rock sounds I think I prefer the Sovteks, but for lower gain blues stuff I like the EI's which are supposed to sound a bit like the famed Mullards. (FWIW the Sovtek WXT+'s are supposed to sound like Telefunkens and I A/B'd them once and thought that they sounded very similar.)

I had always thought that running two EI's in a preamp was a recipe for disaster but Gil Ayan fine-tuned his D'Clones to work with EI's for both preamp tubes and I have to agree with him that they sound great in those circuits.

Steve Ahola

P.S. Are the Ruby Tubes that you mentioned the ones that were originally labelled as 7025STR's? I thought that they were almost as good as NOS/JAN GE 12AX7WA's for the PI (or reverb recovery tube in a BF/SF Fender).

6/22/2000 1:28 PM

quote:
"over at Dan Torres's shop in for repairs and someone had drilled a hole in the left side of the cabinet to add a 6" midrange driver... The grille over the added speaker looked like something from the 60's so this was obviously a "vintage hack""

Why do I have a suspicion that this was all done AT Dan Torres' shop

OK, it was ignorant, but I'm surprised no one else said this sooner

6/19/2000 6:32 AM
Peter S	Rob, I prefer the 5F1 with the 5y3 most of the time, but when I want the amp to stay cleaner,louder for recording sometimes I'll use a 5v4. Peter S

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