Anyone have a 5150iii LBX i Blue/Red channel? The hiss and hum is crazy.. anyway to tame it?

[giogolf]

Hey TDPRI'ers,

For ****s, I picked up the 15w EVH 5150iii LBX i, the one with the Blue (crunch)/ Red (burn) channel. I got it for nothing, so I said what the heck, lets try it.. Its a metal amp, I dont play metal, but maybe it will sound kinda cool.

Before I let this thing go, do any of you know how to make this amp quieter? On the Blue channel, with the gain on 1 (7oclock) and the Volume at 2 ( 8 oclock) the amp still hisses like crazy.. I know I know, they are high gain amps and are noisy.. But this is ridiculous, if you played live you would literally need a kill switch on the amps volume to stop the hiss when not playing.

Besides a noise gate ( I dont want to use one) is there something that can be done to tame the noise? I am only willing to fiddle with it, because it actually sounds really good for 70s rock and SRV type blues with my Tele and Strat. It also produces nice on the edge of breakup cleans.

Ive heard that I can swap the 12ax7 with 5751 to get the gain from 100 to 70.. But will 30% really cut the hiss noticeably? Is there some resistor or simple mod that can be done to cancel out or tame the gain when not in use?

This is the tube layout:

http://www.fmicassets.com.s3.amazonaws.com/sites/evhgear.com/support/schematics/EVH_5150_III_15W_Head_Tube_Functions.pdf

Thanks

 

[11 Gauge]

I've had that exact lunchbox head for awhile now, and I got it used, and mine doesn't have the amount of hiss that yours does, or I just don't notice it. I tend to just live on the blue channel with the gain as high as ~1:30 or so, but I also have the MV up around 11:00.

...It's possibly either that you've got the MV so low, or it's just the gains of your preamp tubes, that make the hiss seem to be so loud, would be my guess.