custom 50 advice

[gush]

I bought a custom 50 head a while back. I seem to take a long time to get an amp 100% dialed in so I was just rolling with it.

I liked the amp when I first got it while I had it at home but the first time I gigged with it it seemed a little weak. I just thought I needed more time with it.

I think I may have a main tube issue but I'm curious what others think.

Last night I started out with CE24 5708s and it seemed ok but as the night went on I kept getting muddy and I kept having to tweak EQ. By the end of the night my highs were set at 3:00 with mids and lows set at 2:00-3:00. My gain was set at 12:00 but I lowered that by the end of the show.

I played a 1994 5150 head for years but was ready for something different and I liked the youtube vids that I watched so I bought one.

I have a feeling I need power tubes as the amp was used so hard to say what condition tubes are in.

Anybody have any thoughts on this? Thanks in advance.

 

[AP515]

Could be. I recently lost a tube in the SE version of that amp. The clean channel started sounding like the dirty channel. Then I started getting the popping and spitting that signaled the end of a tube. I have ordered a matched pair of power tubes but while they are coming, I swapped out the preamp tubes to check and all of them are good. So for mine it's the power tubes. Usually it's a power tube.

 

[László]

You could try a new set of known good tubes in it and see what that does.

 

[gush]

Not sure what I was thinking when describing amp settings. What I meant to say was mids and lows were set between 8:00-9:00 to kill muddy tone. So that should paint an ugly picture on my stage sound.