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I have never spent much time messing with tubes... although I recently picked up a cheap Silvertone 1471, which is a single-ended 1x8 combo with a tone control.
After having it a few months, I only recently took the time to swap out the preamp tube. There's a 12ax7 in there already, so what I tried today was a 12au7 and a 12ay7. Well it didn't take long... the 12ax7 is back in there to stay.
What a drop off in gain and seemingly, volume. One was anemic and I started getting an awful hum/squeal that was definitely related to the particular tube. The other wasn't as bad, but again, a serious loss of gain. I think with my tele (I was using the LP only) the loss of gain would be more of an issue to me as the tele's got lower output pups compared to the LP.
Now I'm not a distortion freak, but the 12ax7 gives me all the gain I can handle, and I like it. I can dime it with the tele and get great crunch. The LP is a bit too much with the amp dimed, but I back the amp volume off a bit, and it's fantastic.
I never expected to hear such a huge difference. Figured it would require a more trained ear, but not so. The differences were dramatic. I'm guessing a single-ended amp like the 1471 demonstrates those differences a lot considering the simplicity of the circuit.
I'm certainly not into heavy distortion. For a long time I lived off clean headroom in my Pro Reverb. Only recently have I started digging the tweed-ish tone more.
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