Sound differences of preamp tubes in a Carvin Vintage 16 guitar amplifier in V1 position. A comparison of 11 preamp tubes 12AX7 / ECC83.

The Carvin Vintage 16 was chosen because it has a simple design with one double triode preamp with a gain (called "Soak") in between, a baxandall type 3 band eq, a double triode for the spring reverb, a phase inverter, and two EL84s.

All items are normalised; the headroom of each tube is expressed in negative values of dB with reference to the highest amplifying tube in the sample, being in fact a solid state replacement for ECC83 tubes, a Jet City "Red".

In order to be able to change tubes easily I took the amp out of its combo box and fed the speaker to a Celestion Vintage 30 built into a Brunetti Singleman (the speaker would have sounded unrealistically in the original Carvin combo with the amp removed!).



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