DRRI sounded a bit "choked" last night - bad preamp tube?

allthumbs56 said:

I replaced a couple preamp tubes last week (as well as new 6V6's) in my DRRI. It behaved flawlessly at a Canada Day gig - and never went past 3.5 on the volume knob filling the entire room. Took her to practice last night and she just didn't seem to have any balls at all. Quiet - no noise, just sounded like she was weak and for the first time I had her at 5.5 just to keep up with the drummer.

Can that be a bad preamp tube taking gain out of the chain? A bad poweramp tube? Something else?

Any and all insights are welcome.

Click to expand...

Do you have the same issue on both channels?

pur the old tubes back in and see if the problem goes away.
If yes...its just a matter of figuring out which new tube is bad.
G.

cboutilier said:

Do you have the same issue on both channels?

Click to expand...

I believe so. Normally I use the "Normal" channel but did try the 2nd channel briefly and it seemed to be suffering the same symptoms.

allthumbs56 said:

I believe so. Normally I use the "Normal" channel but did try the 2nd channel briefly and it seemed to be suffering the same symptoms.

Click to expand...

Likely the phase inverter tube or a power tube

Thanks for the suggestions. I've got spare everything so I'll try a bit of fiddling tonight. I will mention that the DRRI crapped out first the week before when we played outside at Niagara Falls and got caught in some nasty rain. We had a covering over us but the wind whipped the rain across all my gear and I had some trouble with my pedal board as well. Let everything sit two nights and fired it all up with no problems but replaced the 6v6's and two mildly microphone 12ax7's as well as wiped down the pedalboard. Everything functioned great at my next gig. The problem surfaced last night at practice. I don't know if it's related or one of the new tubes has failed but I guess there's only one way to find out.

I have a wedding to play this coming Saturday so hopefully I'll find something. My backup is my 79' Princeton and a mic.

Well, took the back off and the tube shields plugged her in and warmed her up. She played awesome for over an hour. The only thing I saw that I was a little unsure of was how bright the rectifier tube was compared to the rest. But ....................... nothing. Dang.

Run through the entire pedalboard tomorrow looking for any issues. I'm certainly anxious about ti all though. I'll have the Prinny for backup.