PSA: Butt ugly 6V6 RCA Blackplates (attention SCX2(D) owners!)

[JGale]

http://www.audiotubes.com/butt.htm

Scroll down the page a bit.

New Old Stock White Box. One of our most popular bargain priced NOS tubes! Made by RCA but these tubes are just plain BUTT UGLY! Some have various brands like Admiral, Bogen, Emerson, Ford,Philco, Sylvania, Delco, Marconi, and Magnavox, just to name a few of the many labels. EXACTLY the same as those labelled RCA, with the RCA factory "stop-sign" logo! Save now while you still can! MATCHED PAIRS JUST $50.00 PER PAIR! Construction varied slightly depending on production year, some are rare RCA blackglass types. As mentioned, the brands on the labels vary, and your pair will likely be two different labels and construction types. No picking of brands or construction type at this price! Guaranteed to be RCA "stop sign" logo on the glass tubes, Guaranteed BUTT UGLY, and guaranteed matched on our Tektronix 576 curve tracer. 

If you can swing it, they have a Buttugly RCA Backplate 12AX7 for $60 and Greyplate for $45.

New Old Stock? Almost New Old Stock? in whiteboxes. Save BIG on these genuine RCA BLACKPLATE tubes that are, well....BUTT UGLY! Most are missing labels, some are labelled with oddball brands or mixed construction/types, some have crooked glass or tilted insides, some may be RCA made industrial tubes without labels. This is an accumulation of less-than-pretty RCA tubes that I did not know what to do with. Some were pulls from surplus equipment and test like NOS. A rare chance to try a real RCA black plate at an unheard of low price, we keep selling out of these! All are RCA made, and will sound the same as the pretty RCA tubes, and they are half the price. Don't sit on your butt, get some ugly tubes before they are gone!!Matched pairs just $110.00!

 

[0054]

I have bought some really  good butt ugly tubes and some pricey GE 7189A tubes too. Solid place

[tomteriffic]

Pretty old school way to do cybercommerce these days, but what the hell, it's kind of refreshing.

 

[tbonesullivan]

2 hours ago, tomteriffic said:

Pretty old school way to do cybercommerce these days, but what the hell, it's kind of refreshing.

 

This is one of my favorite places to get ANOS and NOS glass, if you like traveling back in time.
But he's got good tubes.

http://www.thetubeshop.com/

Now part of me is thinking "wow those would go great in my Rivera Stage IV"

[hamerhead]

James - as an owner and an I-swear-these-are-the-best-amps-ever nutjob, do these tubes make a meaningful difference? I've swapped the tubes and re-biased it already (and it made a huge difference), but is this particular upgrade worth the expense?

[LucSulla]

I bought a pair.  I think. I sent someone money; I'll go that far.

[tomteriffic]

2 hours ago, hamerhead said:

James - as an owner and an I-swear-these-are-the-best-amps-ever nutjob, do these tubes make a meaningful difference? I've swapped the tubes and re-biased it already (and it made a huge difference), but is this particular upgrade worth the expense?

I can't answer that directly, but I had a pair of blackplates in a blackface Princeton Reverb for decades until they let their smoke out and went home to Jeebus Crispy.  They took a couple of resistors with them but no other damage.  That amp never sounded that good again, no mater what other kind of glass I put in it.

[JGale]

12 hours ago, hamerhead said:

James - as an owner and an I-swear-these-are-the-best-amps-ever nutjob, do these tubes make a meaningful difference? I've swapped the tubes and re-biased it already (and it made a huge difference), but is this particular upgrade worth the expense?

Weeeeeel... It depends. It's highly subjective. What tubes are in there. What style of music are you enjoying? I hear a difference that supports my desires. I feel a difference even on the other side of a DSP. I don't use a lot of gain, so my subjective is good, clean, Rich and Roundfull. Blackplates are good for that. However, I also want glass!

I've also been tube swapping for years. Ruined a perfectly good Fuchs Traynor because I thought I had better ears than Andy. It's fun and eddukational.

I don't currently have a black glass GT. Mine are clear glass. Probably later date group than these. Black glass was a wartime thing and part of a design for ruggedness and quiet. These contribute to its reputation for sounding good to guitarists.

I ordered a pair of clear glass GTAs and a Sylvania 7025 from this guy last night. Grayplate GTAs are "glass-ier" than black plate GTs. Sylvania are "gain-ier" than the RCA equivalent. All of which purports to, firstly, do not harm, and, secondistly release the kraken in the Glass Warehouse.

if you buy them and don't like them, I'll take them off your hands.

 

[tbonesullivan]

13 hours ago, hamerhead said:

James - as an owner and an I-swear-these-are-the-best-amps-ever nutjob, do these tubes make a meaningful difference? I've swapped the tubes and re-biased it already (and it made a huge difference), but is this particular upgrade worth the expense?

I purchased a bunch of ANOS Old production preamp tubes, and it really is a subtle difference, and also depends a lot on the amplifier you are using them.  If you are throwing them into something like a Diezel Herbert or a Mesa Boogie Mark V, you may not notice much of any difference.

If you put them in simpler circuits, you give the individual triodes much more room to shine with preamp tubes.

With power tubes, it's an overall feel thing for most, unless you are going to REALLY push the tubes.

6V6 tubes sound good but are much lower output than 6L6GC tubes, so you can get to that saturated sound with less of a chance of blowing up your house.

I have two Rivera Amps that take 6V6 tubes, a Pubster 25 and a Stage IV, and the IV has a GREAT clean channel, which would allow me to really push the power tubes and bring out that saturated sound. The Pubster 25 doesn't really have a "clean" channel, so I wouldn't be able to get nearly as much saturation in the power section without having preamp overdrive.

[Dutchman]

This Guy's been around for a long time, I've bought and sold tubes w him. Never an issue.

[Greg G]

I've been squirreling away 6V6's and vintage preamp tubes for a while.  Years ago I just wanted some tubes for the Champ and next thing I know I have a shoe box of them.  Saving these for a rainy day.

 

[JGale]

Rereading the ad it looks like he has a mix of black and clear glass. Either or. They both good.

[Dutchman]

2 hours ago, Greg G said:

I've been squirreling away 6V6's and vintage preamp tubes for a while.  Years ago I just wanted some tubes for the Champ and next thing I know I have a shoe box of them.  Saving these for a rainy day.

 

There musta been a mother load of those discovered! I stocked up too!!!

[LucSulla]

18 hours ago, Greg G said:

I've been squirreling away 6V6's and vintage preamp tubes for a while.  Years ago I just wanted some tubes for the Champ and next thing I know I have a shoe box of them.  Saving these for a rainy day.

 

Any advice on biasing a 6v6?

[django49]

7 minutes ago, LucSulla said:

Any advice on biasing a 6v6?

Send it to a public school. 🙄

[Dutchman]

1 hour ago, LucSulla said:

Any advice on biasing a 6v6?

What kind of circuit?

[LucSulla]

1 minute ago, Dutchman said:

What kind of circuit?

I'm not entirely sure.  It's a Splawn Super Sport, but I'm not sure if it is Class A or Class A/B.

[Dutchman]

1 hour ago, LucSulla said:

22 minutes ago, LucSulla said:

I'm not entirely sure.  It's a Splawn Super Sport, but I'm not sure if it is Class A or Class A/B.

 

Class A single tube no bias needed, AB 2 output tubes,  self bias matched tubes usually does it or change bias resistor to adjust. Adjustable bias has a pot in the bias circuit that is used. It's a little more complex than that but that's a quick simple version!

[JGale]

2 hours ago, LucSulla said:

I'm not entirely sure.  It's a Splawn Super Sport, but I'm not sure if it is Class A or Class A/B.

This guy appears to have info. I'm just starting to read thru this. If the amp is 22W on 2x6V6 is fixed bias. Hope it's adjustable, else you can control it somewhat by the tubes you use, if the tube company uses that labeling.

https://splawnfans.proboards.com/thread/7786/amp-biasing-tutorial.

I can't find any info on the super sport and biasing except for some chat on "be sure to match your tube ratings😁". No chassis photos either.

The procedure, if adjustable, is straightforward, IF YOU HAVE DONE IT BEFORE. Thusly and Firstly I think it's Amp Tech time.

 

[Dutchman]

Fixed Bias is matched ma at 330-350 volts or so for a 6v6. I find myself referring to this chart when I doing a set up.

https://www.tedweber.com/bias-tables/

[LucSulla]

Thanks, guys.  

[crunchee]

This topic is giving me flashbacks, to back about 25 years ago, when I had craploads of Fender BF Champs, Vibrochamps, and Bassman heads, all of which could be had for about $300-$350 each (they're all long gone now), and was picking up NOS single 6V6 and 5Y3 rectifier tubes for cheap (not cheap anymore, or available as much as they were, either ) from Angela Instruments and Antique Radio Supply.  I used to read the Gerald Weber (of Kendrick amps, not Ted Weber the speaker guy) books, and trying to get as much info from those, and IIRC he mentioned that getting 22 watts out of a pair of 6V6 tubes (like in a Deluxe Reverb) was running the power tubes harder than the RCA manuals recommended (it's done everyday by hundreds of guitarists, I know; but like the old saying goes, just because you can do something doesn't necessarily mean that you should), while in a Tweed Deluxe they were only getting about 16 watts...of course, the Tweed Deluxe was also a cathode bias amp, so there was that factor, too.  Those two amps also sound completely different from each other.  Reading that made me steer away from the 'Tim Taylor/Home Improvement/More Power!' ethic when it came to socking it to the power tubes, and nowadays my amps are either lower-power cathode-biased circuits (like the old Marshall/Watkins 16-18-watt circuit), or single-ended Class A amps.  As I'm a strictly at-home player nowadays, that's really all I need.

Even though I don't have those BF Fender amps anymore, I did have the presence of mind of 'harvesting' the old (and possibly original) 12AX7/7025 pre-amp tubes out of them, and replacing them with new (at that time) Chinese tubes, before selling the amps.  Nobody really seemed to care much back then what kind of pre-amp glass was in amps.  They're mostly RCAs, with a couple of diamond-bottom Telefunkens mixed in.  I haven't had one fail on me yet.

[LucSulla]

Hey hey, it seems that I did, in fact, buy some tubes!

[RobB]

Interesting. I’ve run 6v6’s in 22w amps (Valvetech, Splawn) for years. Neither amp ever broke a sweat.