New Rocker 30 goofball questions

[elvisdog]

Picked up the Rocker 30 for a good price off Craigslist, a couple of questions: does anybody know whether the treble knob is "small" or "medium?" $8 shipping on a $5 part so I want to guess right. Also, how much of a PITA is it to switch tubes? Any trick to it? Ordered a new set before I looked at the back of the amp, and it looks like a job for Superman.

Cool amp. Maybe a one-trick pony (the clean channel is pretty lifeless, part of why I wanted to do a tube switch) but it's a very good trick. Loud enough for anything I play, and nicely compact, though heavy.

[Jondog]

Congrats! The gain and volume knobs are medium size and the eq knobs are small. The Natural channel (notice it doesn't say clean channel like other Orange amps) actually has lots of life to it if you crank it up. It’ll push the poweramp into breakup, and the only way to get pre-amp distortion is by using a pedal. Its not really a clean channel in the traditional sense, just a single gain stage with no tone stack.

[elvisdog]

yeah, I'm reserving judgment on the natural channel till I get new tubes in this thing. From all appearances it's been rode hard & put up wet so I would be surprised if the glass that was in there didn't need replacing. whatever's in there now, the dirt channel is killing it.

[Les Paul Lover]

I find the natural channel really sweet with some reverb too.

I quite like it, but then, I'm not after fender cleans - it has strict limitations for sure.

[elvisdog]

retubed with JJs all around, 6CA7s in the power dept., Natural channel sounds perfectly good and usable. As I suspected, the tubes were pretty shot -- original Orange EL34s with the bases & guide pins rotted off & stuck in the sockets. Sounds a little stiffer all around with the new glass but I'll explore around & see later on. Seriously cool amp so far. Sounds good by itself, also with a ppc112 extension cab, looks kind of sharp as a mini-stack.