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Ok, all you amp detectives, here’s a conundrum I hope someone here can help me with: I recently bought an immaculate, very light home use only VHT Special 6 Ultra head with separate Palmer open-back cab, which has a new (but broken-in) Eminence Reignmaker 12'' speaker, and I’m going crazy trying to get it to sound good. I’ve tried every possible combination of pre-amp valves (even ‘extreme’ ones like a 12DW7), and no matter how I set the very comprehensive EQ, I just can’t dial out the pre-amp ‘fizz’. It’s either a very uninspiring and dull clean or a fuzzy, almost transistor-like distortion – there’s no feeling of the output valve saturating / compressing / screaming for mercy and giving that lovely ‘organic/woody’ touch-sensitive and creamy overdrive that we all love and crave. I’ve tried two brands of 6V6 (stock and Tung-Sol), three brands of EL84 (TAD, JJ and Golden Dragon, and the TADs sound great in my other amps), a NOS 1989 Mesa Engineering branded 6L6 and new Harma EL34, and only the EL84s sound anything approaching acceptable. All the pre-amp valves are good quality; NOS Jan Phillips, JJ and Tung-Sol. All the controls appear to function as they should and there’s no suspicious ‘foreign’ sounds like popping, clicking, etc., or odd smells. The amp sounds NOTHING like any of the clips I've seen, and I have some very good guitars to plug into it, and I'm a decent player. I don't use any effects, so that's one variable / possible problem source out of the way.
As all the output valves I've tried distort in a similar non-musical way, I’m beginning to think that the speaker is at fault – not the speaker per se, but that it’s a very poor match for the amp. I know the stock VHT chromeback in the combo is 75 watts handling, but I’m thinking that ‘6 watts into 75 doesn’t go’...at least not in this instance. (I have a 5 watt Peavey NanoValve with a replacement 20 watt Jensen MOD 8, which sounds great at all levels, but crucially, the amp behaves like I expect a low wattage, Class A amp to; from about 70% volume, it doesn’t get appreciably louder, it just distorts and compresses more in a musical way). The VHT has the same spec but with just 1 watt extra, so I’d reasonably expect the ‘normal’ input (just using one pre-amp valve) to sound very similar to the NanoValve, especially with the EL84 fitted. Well, just a bit ‘bigger’, in fact, due to the variation in speaker size. I have a feeling that the lower rated speaker in the NanoValve makes the power section ‘work harder’, whereas the much higher rated Eminence gives the power section an ‘easy time’, so it’s not saturating properly. (Think how the output section of a cranked AC30 behaves into only 30 watts of power handling Celestion Blues...) I was wondering about trying a lower rated 12” speaker – maybe something like a Jensen P12R (could the Alnico magnet help warm things up?) or a Tayden True Brit, etc., but am very open-minded on this. I REALLY want to love this amp; it ticks so many boxes for me; low wattage, Class A, cathode biased, zero negative feedback, well-featured (interchangeable output valves, effects loop, line out, etc.), hand-wired and built like a tank. It even looks a bit different. I’d be a VERY happy bunny indeed if it ticked the ‘sound’ box to complete the checklist! Thanks in advance for any constructive insights.
As all the output valves I've tried distort in a similar non-musical way, I’m beginning to think that the speaker is at fault – not the speaker per se, but that it’s a very poor match for the amp. I know the stock VHT chromeback in the combo is 75 watts handling, but I’m thinking that ‘6 watts into 75 doesn’t go’...at least not in this instance. (I have a 5 watt Peavey NanoValve with a replacement 20 watt Jensen MOD 8, which sounds great at all levels, but crucially, the amp behaves like I expect a low wattage, Class A amp to; from about 70% volume, it doesn’t get appreciably louder, it just distorts and compresses more in a musical way). The VHT has the same spec but with just 1 watt extra, so I’d reasonably expect the ‘normal’ input (just using one pre-amp valve) to sound very similar to the NanoValve, especially with the EL84 fitted. Well, just a bit ‘bigger’, in fact, due to the variation in speaker size. I have a feeling that the lower rated speaker in the NanoValve makes the power section ‘work harder’, whereas the much higher rated Eminence gives the power section an ‘easy time’, so it’s not saturating properly. (Think how the output section of a cranked AC30 behaves into only 30 watts of power handling Celestion Blues...) I was wondering about trying a lower rated 12” speaker – maybe something like a Jensen P12R (could the Alnico magnet help warm things up?) or a Tayden True Brit, etc., but am very open-minded on this. I REALLY want to love this amp; it ticks so many boxes for me; low wattage, Class A, cathode biased, zero negative feedback, well-featured (interchangeable output valves, effects loop, line out, etc.), hand-wired and built like a tank. It even looks a bit different. I’d be a VERY happy bunny indeed if it ticked the ‘sound’ box to complete the checklist! Thanks in advance for any constructive insights.
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