The Power Tube Test
Anyway, both of us have used tube amps for a long time and have changed tubes many many times in all of our mesa amps. A lot of times we talked about how much the preamp tubes change the tone and amount of gain, but I had a little surprise for him today. After playing for about an hour, I took out the new JJ power tubes in put in my Sovtek 6L6 blue tube which were almost new, they had been used for 3 weeks when I did the Easyriders tour. Anyway, I think he was in shock when he heard the overall difference from just changing the power tubes. What happened to the tone? lol. Not only does the power tubes change the "feel" of the amp, but you can exerience a drastic tone change. My amp went from being soulfull with a ton of tone with the JJ's to "flat and sterile" with the Sovtek's. We even exerienced a drastic difference in the entire gain once the amp was turned up a little.
So, in Conclusion: With tube amps it is a total combination of preamp tubes and power tubes that will create the overall tone and feel for you amp. NOTE: If I would have put the Sovtek power tubes in before I played with different preamp tube slots, I might have thought all my preamp tubes were sucking lol. All in all, I do like Sovtek and I have had some great sets of their power tubes, but this particular set I have and tried for this experiment seem like a set that would be good for Drop D Disturbed type music. The tightness was good, but the overall tone was NOTHING and totally flat.