6505+ clean

[Classic310]

Is there any mod for making the 6505 cleanner. Is bias adjustment a step in this direction, if so what are the correct bias settings for this amp.

Thanks

[Steve Conner]

Yes, sell it and buy a Fender Twin ;) The 5150/6505 was designed to be a screaming saturated ball of dirt from one end to the other. I believe they are biased very cold as stock, but biasing it hotter may not help much, since everything else in the amp is so focused on dirt.

[Enzo]

I agree, pretty much the only way you can go with bias is hotter, and that won't clean it up. The amp was never designed to be clean. ONly thing clean in it is the power amp. You could get a clean sounding preamp and plug it into the effects return I suppose.

[7 DYing Trees]

Yes, sell it and buy a Fender Twin ;) The 5150/6505 was designed to be a screaming saturated ball of dirt from one end to the other. I believe they are biased very cold as stock, but biasing it hotter may not help much, since everything else in the amp is so focused on dirt.
Sums it up in one :D Just dirt, and that's the awesome thing about it! Who needs cleans?

[imaradiostar]

I would think that the power transformer should have the power for one more 12ax7- why not build a single channel of a blackface preamp and sum it with a 220k resistor at the power amp? You could hide the knobs in the back or even build it in a project box attached somewhere else in the chassis.

You could also try the same circuit with jfet's- see runoffgroove.com for the "fetzer valve." You'd be surprised how tubey it can sound! Doesn't the 5150 have some solid state portions? It should be easy to use them to power a small jfet preamp.

jamie

[Enzo]

No, ther is no solid state in the signal path. You could build a preamp channel and run it in the effects return or something, but the original post was about cleaning up the amp, and you really can't.