I retubed my amp yesterday. I had been wanting to for awhile, because I've had the amp nearly four months now, and when I bought it, it was the display amp at Guitar Center, so I figured it had already seen a lot of use. I drained the filter caps, removed the chassis, and took it down to Austin Vintage Guitar, and saw the amp tech there, I think his name was Bill Webb. I told him I wanted to swap the tubes, because I felt the treble was falling off, and the tubes were just sounding weak in general. The amp is based off a classic European circuit and has one EL84 tube in the power stage and one 12AX7 in the pre. He recommended the JJ EL84, rating of 4 for my amp to fix the problems. He said normally the power tube was what needed to be fixed the most. We swapped the pre of course while we were at it. Based on my desire for the smooth creamy distortion of the amps design, he put in a Sovtek 12AX7WC. I took my chassis home, reinstalled it in the enclousure and fired it up. I let it warm up for a full few minutes before giving it any signal. The first thing I did was turn the gain up to the middle and the volume up to about 2. I was greeted with a nice loud bell like chime, with good breakup and excellent clarity. The treble is really well defined, and that brings out more headroom, it definitely feels like a louder amp overall. The JJ also gave it an incredibly well defined midrange, and expanded the bottom end greatly. The amp is much more punchy than previously. It is also much more sensitive and responsive. As I mentioned before it has much more headroom now. I got it up much higher before the cleans began to break up. It has a huge sound, incredibly punchy, very blues/rock. And the more you turn up the gain, the exponentially louder it gets, blistering, screaming, but also smooth and creamy, like a Top Hat or other similar boutique amp. The Sovtek WC is a top notch preamp tube. It just sounds amazing, a good use of money.

sometimes: it hurts so bad.
mostly: i'm fine
want: to just be 100% normal again.