Post by headshrinker (Marc) on Feb 7, 2018 14:56:41 GMT -7
So a few months back I was placing an order for some stuff from Antique Electronics and decided to get a couple of JJ 6CA7 output tubes while I was at it. They’re the output tubes that were in those 70s U.S. Marshalls before they switched to EL 34s here like they always were overseas. I have heard that 6CA7s are the ones that Eddie Van Halen used in his Marshalls. Constructionwise the new JJ 6CA7 is made different than the originals, can’t tell you how, but they sound similar.
I put them in my Therapy and loved what I got. The 6CA7 is kind of like the offspring of a 6L6 and an EL 34. You get the tight low end of a 6L6, with more mids and less scoop than a 6L6, and smoother highs, maybe a little less, than a 6L6. The Therapy sounded great clean (for me clean means a little bit of hair) and wonderful when overdriven with the volume on the guitar turned up. I played the amp like that for around 6 months. Thought I had found what I was going to leave in there, then…
I was cleaning out a box with a bunch of odds and ends in it to free up floor space in my basement and when I got to the bottom of it, low and behold, there was a pair of Russian made reissue Mullard EL34s. So of course I stopped doing meaningful work and put them in the Therapy to see what they sounded like. I was blown away. They sounded amazing. Pushed the amp more to the British side, less low end than the 6L6 and 6CA7. More like what I got when I had 6V6s in it, but with that British twist. More mids than any of the other tubes I tried, with that upper mid kerang that EL 34s have, and a real nice top end that wasn’t harsh. I liked it so much that I emptied a quarter of a van full of equipment to remove one of the amps I had packed for a gig that night to put the Therapy and its cab back in its place, and then reloaded the rest. Played it with the Z-Plus in a dual amp always on configuration that night and the combo sounded wonderful.
For the record, the speaker I used for all of this was a Cannabis Rex in a pine closed back 112 cab. The settings for the Therapy were, Master 11:30, Bass 9:00, Mids, Treble, Volume, 1:30.
If you haven’t tried other power lubes in your Therapy, you owe it to yourself to give it a whirl if you can. I haven’t tube rolled preamp tubes in the Therapy because I am one of those guys who believes that if you like the way your amp sounds, don’t mess with the preamp tubes unless you have to. They have way more tone shaping ability than power tubes and changing them can quickly turn a good sounding amp into a not so good one. Having now had 6L6s, 6V6s, 6CA7s & EL 34s in the Therapy, I won’t say one tube is better than the other for everyone, we all want to hear different things. Let’s go with different enough that it makes the amp more versatile, allowing it to morph into the sounds of other amps better. As I have said, the Therapy may be the big brother, or is it sister, to the Swiss army knife Maz 18.
I put them in my Therapy and loved what I got. The 6CA7 is kind of like the offspring of a 6L6 and an EL 34. You get the tight low end of a 6L6, with more mids and less scoop than a 6L6, and smoother highs, maybe a little less, than a 6L6. The Therapy sounded great clean (for me clean means a little bit of hair) and wonderful when overdriven with the volume on the guitar turned up. I played the amp like that for around 6 months. Thought I had found what I was going to leave in there, then…
I was cleaning out a box with a bunch of odds and ends in it to free up floor space in my basement and when I got to the bottom of it, low and behold, there was a pair of Russian made reissue Mullard EL34s. So of course I stopped doing meaningful work and put them in the Therapy to see what they sounded like. I was blown away. They sounded amazing. Pushed the amp more to the British side, less low end than the 6L6 and 6CA7. More like what I got when I had 6V6s in it, but with that British twist. More mids than any of the other tubes I tried, with that upper mid kerang that EL 34s have, and a real nice top end that wasn’t harsh. I liked it so much that I emptied a quarter of a van full of equipment to remove one of the amps I had packed for a gig that night to put the Therapy and its cab back in its place, and then reloaded the rest. Played it with the Z-Plus in a dual amp always on configuration that night and the combo sounded wonderful.
For the record, the speaker I used for all of this was a Cannabis Rex in a pine closed back 112 cab. The settings for the Therapy were, Master 11:30, Bass 9:00, Mids, Treble, Volume, 1:30.
If you haven’t tried other power lubes in your Therapy, you owe it to yourself to give it a whirl if you can. I haven’t tube rolled preamp tubes in the Therapy because I am one of those guys who believes that if you like the way your amp sounds, don’t mess with the preamp tubes unless you have to. They have way more tone shaping ability than power tubes and changing them can quickly turn a good sounding amp into a not so good one. Having now had 6L6s, 6V6s, 6CA7s & EL 34s in the Therapy, I won’t say one tube is better than the other for everyone, we all want to hear different things. Let’s go with different enough that it makes the amp more versatile, allowing it to morph into the sounds of other amps better. As I have said, the Therapy may be the big brother, or is it sister, to the Swiss army knife Maz 18.