Guitar Gear Forum

Love the blue channel and spend most of my time there and don’t won’t to change anything with that one.
Was thinking I try a 5751 in one of the later (V4?) preamp tube positions to tame the red channel gain a bit so I can actually use it.

Has anyone tried this or solved this another way?
If so does it affect the blue channel?
Yes I can run it with the gain very low however it’s still noisy as hell and thought maybe this would help.

I tried it and it didn't work. It reduces the gain on red, but it also thins the tone out.

The best thing I found for the red channel is the Sovtek SLP long plate 12AX7 in V2. It doesn't reduce the gain but it smoothens out the tone and reduces the noise a bit. Then set the gain at around 2 or 3. That works quite well.

But at the end of the day, being very high gain is sort of the point of that channel. When you try to reduce the gain, the tone goes away with it. The SLP takes a bit of the abrasiveness off of it, without changing the gain structure.

It's a noisy channel but I used the red channel for solos only so noise wasn't a concern since I'd switch out of it right after the solo.
Guys that use it for metal usually gate it so that also solves the problem. Just the nature of the beast, I guess...

I also tried one at some point and was not a fan of the results, though some people were.

I would suggest you embrace the over the top-ness that is the red channel lol.

When I had the regular 6L6 50 and the EL34 50 I did some preamp tube changes to tame the red channel a bit. I didn't like the 5751 tubes I tried though. I don't remember exactly where the went, but it was just for the red channel. I do know I used one 12AT7 and a couple of JJ ECC83MG "mid gain" tubes. I also had a Sovtek LPS in the PI slot.

I agree. I tried a JanGE 5751 in a the Stealth and EL34 50W's. At first I thought it was an improvement on the red channel, but soon after swapped the original tube back in.

NinjaRaf wrote:I also tried one at some point and was not a fan of the results, though some people were.

I would suggest you embrace the over the top-ness that is the red channel lol.

Yeah I agree. Just look at it as a "nuclear option" for when you just want to murder people with gain lol

While I did not have the stealth version, I had the 6l6 50-watt version and fought the same fight. I tried the 5751, 12at7, and 12au7 in hopes of taming the gain and noise down in channel 3. I tried them in every possible position. Much like Bill, I found that it thinned out the tone of the channel and made it much more "honky" in the mids.

My curiosity and the incessant need to void warranties got the best of me. I ended up modding the circuit in two places. The two mods were V3a and V3b plate resistors went from 220k to 100k(standard marshall value). This dropped the gain by 4db at each of those stages and reduced the high gain hiss by 10-15%. It did not however change the core tone of the channel. You may want to do those mods one at a time as the V3a plate resistor drop may be enough without needing the V3b change. Mileage and needs vary.

If I were doing this mod again, I would have put a second 220k resistor in parallel with each of those resistors on a mini toggle switch to drop them from the circuit so I could switch the mod on and off. It would have achieved a similar drop in gain by making the resistance 110k on the plate resistors.

The 14 year old in me must be alive and well because I have no desire to decrease the gain on my regular 6l6 50 watt

The Stealth has an immense amount more gain than the regular 6l6.

spawnofthesith wrote:The 14 year old in me must be alive and well because I have no desire to decrease the gain on my regular 6l6 50 watt

That mod decreased it slightly but made it more controllable. Post mod the gain on 5 was like the gain was on 2 prior, and gain on 8 was like gain on 5-6. Not sure I ever needed more than that. It was still a ton of gain. It was just easier to dial in the sweet spot for me which was between 1.9 and 2.

NinjaRaf wrote:The Stealth has an immense amount more gain than the regular 6l6.

That is terrifying to think of. 5-6 on the original was over the top for me with medium output pickups.

NinjaRaf wrote:The Stealth has an immense amount more gain than the regular 6l6.

That is wild, and challenging for me to wrap my head around

Yeah the Stealth makes the original sound like a vintage amp in comparison lol

I dont find ANy tube besides JJ’s to sound good in These amps. Usually I’d be perfectly fine saying “find whatver you like “, but these amps do not sound right to me unless it’s a JJ. It’s kinda strange but the 5153 red channel doesn’t want to be tamed. The blue is a tamed red. Live in the blue if that’s what you like. And as far as noise it’ll always be “noisy” but it’s not like one hears this noise while playing and in a band situation. So it’s pretty much a non issue

NinjaRaf wrote:The Stealth has an immense amount more gain than the regular 6l6.

IME it’s more the blue that upped the gain a bunch. The red on the original isn’t too far off. They really couldn’t squeeze much more gain from that channel. Maybe the more upper mid cut/focus adds the aggression of more gain but it wasn’t crazy last time I had em both side to side

This sounds an awful lot like going for surgery to get an inch taken off

EndTime wrote:IME it’s more the blue that upped the gain a bunch. The red on the original isn’t too far off. They really couldn’t squeeze much more gain from that channel. Maybe the more upper mid cut/focus adds the aggression of more gain but it wasn’t crazy last time I had em both side to side

Ok. That actually sounds like something I would be down for. I used to hit the blue channel with a BB preamp to get heavy and had channel 3 set up solely for leads.

Zozobra wrote:This sounds an awful lot like going for surgery to get an inch taken off

In this case, what is one inch amongst so many?

Depends which inch it is.