It's always something...
We need to know a few things first.
I don't see what cathode biasing does to guarantee you can switch those tubes. In many circuits 6L6's and 6V6's use the same or close value of cathode resistor but that's not the important part. We need to know the plate voltage on those tubes!
Most 6L6 amps run plate voltages on these tubes of 450 volts DC or more. This is much higher than the maximum spec for 6V6's. You can push this voltage rating somewhat (Leo Fender did with the Deluxe Reverb) but it could easily be asking too much. If this is the case, 6V6's will likely die early. You do pick up a little margin with cathode biasing in that the tube actually sees a bit less than the supplied plate voltage because the biasing method lifts the cathode up from ground by the amount of the bias voltage but not likely enough to make things safely work.
As for the impedance thing, again if we know nothing about your specific amp then we can only make a wild ass guess! 6L6's are most often designed in with a 6600 ohm plate load. The output transformer steps this down in a FIXED ratio to the 4,8 or whatever speaker taps.
Doing what you describe with higher value speaker loads will get stepped up back through the transformer to a load of over 13k ohms. This is much higher than 6V6's like to see, who usually run from 6k to 8k and would be perfectly happy with the speaker loads being run the same as a 6L6.
We need to know more about your amp. You're talking about the number of pistons and horsepower but telling us nothing about the compression ratio!
What kind of amp? Or at least, what is the plate voltage?
If you're not comfortable safely measuring the plate voltage, please get someone knowledgeable to do it for you. We'd like you alive to continue this thread!
Maybe you can and maybe you can't!Imported_goods said:
We need to know a few things first.I don't see what cathode biasing does to guarantee you can switch those tubes. In many circuits 6L6's and 6V6's use the same or close value of cathode resistor but that's not the important part. We need to know the plate voltage on those tubes!
Most 6L6 amps run plate voltages on these tubes of 450 volts DC or more. This is much higher than the maximum spec for 6V6's. You can push this voltage rating somewhat (Leo Fender did with the Deluxe Reverb) but it could easily be asking too much. If this is the case, 6V6's will likely die early. You do pick up a little margin with cathode biasing in that the tube actually sees a bit less than the supplied plate voltage because the biasing method lifts the cathode up from ground by the amount of the bias voltage but not likely enough to make things safely work.
As for the impedance thing, again if we know nothing about your specific amp then we can only make a wild ass guess! 6L6's are most often designed in with a 6600 ohm plate load. The output transformer steps this down in a FIXED ratio to the 4,8 or whatever speaker taps.
Doing what you describe with higher value speaker loads will get stepped up back through the transformer to a load of over 13k ohms. This is much higher than 6V6's like to see, who usually run from 6k to 8k and would be perfectly happy with the speaker loads being run the same as a 6L6.
We need to know more about your amp. You're talking about the number of pistons and horsepower but telling us nothing about the compression ratio!
What kind of amp? Or at least, what is the plate voltage?
If you're not comfortable safely measuring the plate voltage, please get someone knowledgeable to do it for you. We'd like you alive to continue this thread!
