More to the point here, though, is the fact that the gain of the first preamp tube-often referred to as a "gain stage"-very directly impacts the tone that you achieve from the amp as a whole. It's a relatively inexpensive means of doing some tube-tasting of a different sort.ġ2Ax7 tubes from Tung-Sol and JJ Electronic That being said, if you want to buy three or four 12AX7s by different makers and experiment with the ways in which each induces a slightly different frequency response, go for it. This means that we might discuss a specific tube here as "a good way of adding warmth to your amp," only for that advice to have been made irrelevant by the time you read this and purchase that specific tube to try it out… and discover that they're not makin' 'em like they used to.
You can also achieve slight alterations in frequency response by changing from one make of tube to another-to make a dark amp a little brighter or a bright amp a little darker, for example-but many new-make preamp tubes have been afloat on the market for quite some time, and along with that their manufacturing formulae might change at a moment's notice. In this article, we're mostly going to focus on altering your amp's sonic performance by substituting different tube types to induce different gain levels early in the preamp stage. So consult the correct documents to ensure you're locating the right tube in the first place, then have at it. If you have a two-channel amp, for example, and want to alter the characteristics of the second channel, the preamp tube you need to change might actually be the second in line (generally referred to as "V2"), even though it's the first tube in that channel.Īlso be aware that in many amp designs, each of two channels uses half of the same preamp tube, since the most common preamp tube types, called "dual triodes," essentially contain two individual gain stages within the same bottle. The following discussion of preamp tube swaps, therefore, will focus on the effect of changing out the tube in that position, but be aware that you will want to refer to your amp manufacturer's user's manual, schematic, or other technical information for the amp in question to ensure you are correctly locating the first preamp tube in the channel to which you want to apply these tone tweaks. In some cases it can be pretty easy to change up an amp's fundamental characteristics, too, just by changing tubes in some crucial positions-and the tube that affects the biggest sonic change in most amps is the one we call "V1" (for "valve number one"), the first preamp tube that your guitar's signal hits after entering the amp's input. Guitarists who habitually use tube amps tend to be aware that the tubes themselves play a significant part in shaping the sonic personalities of those amps.
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