Reduce Power

[laidbackache]

Hello. New user here. Im mostly new to tube amps. Anyway, I have a Peavey ranger 120 watt 212 combo and was told I could remove 2 tubes to reduce power. Can anyone instruct me on how to do this? It has 4 6L6"s and an impedance selector with 16, 8, and 4 ohms. Do I remove inner or outer 2 tubes and where should the impedance selector position be once removed? Also, It has the original Chinese tubes. Would they be worth replacing with different tubes to benefit the sound. The amp really doesnt have enough distortion for me. I guess any other easy mods or tips If you have any? Thanks in advance JJ

[Richard]

It shouldn't matter which tubes you pull as long as you pull one from each side. you can pull 1 & 4 or 2 & 3. The amp will now want to see a higher impedance so a 4 ohm output will become and 8 ohm output, 8 will become 16, etc.

[laidbackache]

Ok . Thanks! I pulled the inner 2 tubes and its much more tolerable,doesnt blow my head off past 1 now. Im sorry I dont quite understand ohms? Does less ohms mean more power? What Im asking is, The 2 speakers in my combo are both 8 ohms, so with all 4 tubes in, which should it be set at ? 4, 8, or 16 ohms? And with only 2 tubes what do you recomend the ohms at? Thanks

[Richard]

With 4 tubes it should be set at 16 ohms to match your speaker impedance. (2)8 ohm speakers in parallel (the standard configuration) will have 4 ohms impedance, but according to the manual on the Peavey site your load is 16 Ohms.

The impedance of a speaker is the resistance to AC (signal) current flow. In tube amps there shouldn't be any difference in power between the different ohm settings, but your tone may differ slightly. Many tube amps can run into half the rated impedance, an amp that says 8 ohms may drive a 4 ohm cabinet but I've heard Marshalls do not like this. I've heard that It's also safe to double the impedance the amp sees.

If you want to match the impedance to what the manufacturer intended, you could disconnect one speaker and set the impedance to 4 ohms, this may also help to lower your volume. I'm not sure how this affects your bias. I just looked up the manual, it says that the stock impedance is 16 ohms so with both speakers, you should set the switch to 8.

I don't know how well Peaveys take to these things, but some 6V6 tubes can take the voltage of a 6L6 application, they have about 50-60% of the output of 6L6 and tend to brek up nicely IMO. If this works you would probably want to set the impedance at half of what you would with 6L6 in there, with 1 pair you would get around 25 or so watts and set the impedance to 4 ohms with the stock 16 ohm speaker load. There are also adapters to fit el84 tubes in a 6L6 type amp. (4)el84 will probably yield around 30-40 watts, but I hear these don't work too well with certain amps

Peek around the web, a couple of hours browsing a discussion board to find out how your amp will respond to these things, there are many similarities between tube amps but some have some idiosyncracies all their own and couple of hours could save you some trouble and money. I'd hate for someone to blow up an amp because I misinformed them.

[laidbackache]

Thank you very much Richard. You have been very helpful. I did some research and just got more confused. I suppose my amp is wired series, but in the unit itself its parallel. Ok , another question,: I'm running only 2 tubes now and the ohm switch will only work in the 4 ohm and 16 ohm position. No sound in the 8 ohm position. This is only when running 2 tubes. Any idea why? Is there anything I can mess up running the amp in 4 or 16. sounds good in both, just dont wanna mess anything up. What are the benefits to the el84's? Looks like there in the mesa's alot? Cant find any info on the adapters. Thanks again.