no distortion tweed deluxe 5e3 build. only clean

Jump over to Strat-Talk and ask a guy named Fezz Parka. He knows about these things.

 

My 5e3 is a clean loud amp at home. It's only when I am cranked playing with a drummer that I run out of clean headroom.

Make sure the treble is cranked as well as the volume.

Cheers

 

can you run in wide open with no grind?

 

Just a possibility here, but do you have the unused channel volume at max or close to it? There's interaction between both channels at all times and having the unused channel's volume way up will clean up and lower the overall volume.

 

When mine start to break up it still very loud!

 

What are your voltages and bias numbers for the power tubes? Ime, that just not the way a 5Y3 should work....unless the biasing is very cool. If the bias is cool, the amp will not sound like a 5E3, ime. I once overhauled one that was a ‘clean machine’ and left it that way for the owner to check out. He liked it that way. I didn’t care for it at all....not only was it clean, but it was no as musical as it should be.

 

That particular pin is difficult for most meters to measure so it's totally normal to get a wacky number there. Measure the voltage on pin 8 and the voltage at the other end of the 1.5k resistor attached to pin 8. If those are in the normal range and 1 or 2 volts different then everything is working fine in that stage. The true voltage on pin 7 is the same as that second measurement, even if your meter can't tell.

 

After switching those preamp tubes to their proper place, did things improve?

You said “late last night,” so you might not have tried to crank it since the swap.

The difference in gain between those two are pretty dramatic. The location they were in might’ve killed the gain. Accidentally swapping them could’ve been the problem.

 

and....are you using a 250ohm bias resistor?

apologies for not replying sooner. I don’t know how I missed your post.

 

There is not much reason for the amp to distort till the output clips.