Replacing preamp valves

[marcoo]

Hi all,

I've been reading about people hoping to replace the preamp valves to influence the level at which the amp starts to distort. Ie replacing the ECC83/12AX7's by ECC82/12AU7's would reduce gain. This is said to give more clean headroom.

I'm looking for ways to reduce the output volume of my amp (not that I've bought a valve amp yet BTW, but I've tried some and know they're really loud), without sacrificing the sound. So, one trick I've heard of is to make the preamp valves less powerful, so the volume stage would have to do more work and start to distort sooner. And that's exactly the type of distortion I'm looking for (seasoned with a bit of gain).

Would this work? Has anyone tried yet? Should I bother? Thanks in advance for helping me out!

Looking for an amp...

[bclaire]

While I know that variations of this work, I'd post the same question on the amps forum over at Ted Weber's boards:

http://www.webervst.com/vstbbs/bbs.html

There are people there who talk about this stuff all of the time and they really know their stuff. Not that we don't, but I think you'll get better responses over there.

Billy

[marcoo]

Thanks for the reply, I will try there.

And of course it's nice to see that at least I didn't get it <i>completely</i> wrong! <img src=icon_smile.gif border=0 align=middle>

Looking for an amp...