Winged C EL34-WC

[passfan]

Has anyone had a problem with these. I'm on my second pair from AES. The first pair had a crackle at higher volume which none of my 6L6 pairs suffered from. AES swapped the pair for new and now these , with less than an hour are rattling at mid volumes. I am running them in a big bottle rocket circuit with 6SL7 preamp tubes and cathode bias so I swapped them over to my express to see what gives and the two tubes are biasing 20 ma's apart. Now I went to the local guitar center and picked up a matched set of Groove tubes EL34-M's and they work fine. I thought winged C's were great tubes , what gives.

[Structo]

I like the Winged C 6L6 tubes but haven't tried the EL34's.

I think it was Tony that was saying it's hard to find a current production EL34 that lasts these days.

I thought over at the Metro forum that they liked the Winged C EL34 in their Marshall clones?

[passfan]

They sound great , but you can hear the element rattling in one of them as plain as day. 20ma's difference in a matched set should not be considered matched, right? Now I've had enough of them and I will look like a foolish dork when I try to send these back to AES. They're going to think somethings wrong with the amps.

[xtian]

Out of curiosity: is your rocket a head or a combo? Do the tubes still rattle if you move the head off the cabinet?

[passfan]

Out of curiosity: is your rocket a head or a combo? Do the tubes still rattle if you move the head off the cabinet?

It is a head and it doesn't matter with the rattle. It does matter with a slight microphonic feedback which I am working on to dampen but when I change out tubes the rattle goes away.

[dynaman]

AES is kinda weird with their tubes. They offer matched pairs, but will charge extra $ if you want them burned in. I think it's ridiculous that I've purchased "matched" pairs, only to have them drift WAY off within a couple of hours.

FWIW, their standard Marshall 50W complete replacement set has been consistent. All JJs.

[passfan]

AES is kinda weird with their tubes. They offer matched pairs, but will charge extra $ if you want them burned in. I think it's ridiculous that I've purchased "matched" pairs, only to have them drift WAY off within a couple of hours.

FWIW, their standard Marshall 50W complete replacement set has been consistent. All JJs.

I've moved these over to my express and have quieted them down some because I can adjust them to keep the current down on the hot one. In the other amp they split what the resistor is giving however they want to split it so one tube winds up overbiased and the other is underbiased. I won't buy any more power tubes from AES. I may just send them back as they sound brittle and trebly anyway.

[crbowman]

I've heard that these can be prone to excessive current draw. Ran a set in my Dynaco ST70 for a year and sure enough, one started blowing fuses. They sounded good though.

[iknowjohnny]

I had 3 sets and all were fine. Those they were in deed all quite far apart. I went to EH tho because the winged C's sounded to skinny while the EH were more balanced with thicker smoother mids. Most tubes seem to drift apart often quite a lot tho. So i put a dual bias circut in my amp and now i can balance them perfectly or unbalance them, whichever sounds best to me. Also put bias points on the chassis (1 ohm method...no voltage to the bias points) so as they drift i can quickly adjust as necassary w/o removing chassis.

[Cliff Schecht]

I've had good luck with Winged C stuff. EL34's and 6L6's both sounded good to me..

[bfrederi]

I have generally had good results with the "Winged C" EL-34's. A few months back I had to send one back to AES as it had debris rattling around in it, they replaced it with no problems.

I actually serviced two Marshall TSL 100's in the last 6 months where the customers purchased JJ EL34's from AES and both had major issues with drifting bias current with the JJ's. I had them return the JJ's and replace with the Winged C's and the amp's were well behaved, no major drift.

BTW both of these amplifiers had the 220K grid stoppers replaced with either 5.6K or 10k resistors before any new EL34's were installed (a known issue with the earlier TSL's I believe)

On all occassions there were no issues in dealing with AES, they made it right.

I guess I would be interested in knowing if anyone else has had this issue with JJEL34's in Marshall TSL/DSL circuits? Or was this just a fluke?

Brad

[dynaman]

I have generally had good results with the "Winged C" EL-34's. A few months back I had to send one back to AES as it had debris rattling around in it, they replaced it with no problems.

I actually serviced two Marshall TSL 100's in the last 6 months where the customers purchased JJ EL34's from AES and both had major issues with drifting bias current with the JJ's. I had them return the JJ's and replace with the Winged C's and the amp's were well behaved, no major drift.

BTW both of these amplifiers had the 220K grid stoppers replaced with either 5.6K or 10k resistors before any new EL34's were installed (a known issue with the earlier TSL's I believe)

On all occassions there were no issues in dealing with AES, they made it right.

I guess I would be interested in knowing if anyone else has had this issue with JJEL34's in Marshall TSL/DSL circuits? Or was this just a fluke?

Brad

Apparently, they have major issues, as Marshall is supplying replacement boards to aftermarket vendors.

http://www.lynx.bc.ca/~jc/TSL122.html

[Structo]

Wow!
That was quite a read about the DSL and TSL amps.

Marshall has really let things slide.

220K grid stoppers?

Faulty PCB's?

[dynaman]

Takes a steel pair to venture into Marshalls new stuff. I just fixed a buddys Vintage Modern and was scared to death of the board stuffed with IC chips. Fortunately the problem was far away from that mess.

[iknowjohnny]

Takes a steel pair to venture into Marshalls new stuff. I just fixed a buddys Vintage Modern and was scared to death of the board stuffed with IC chips. Fortunately the problem was far away from that mess.

geez....where does the vintage in "vintage/modern" come from? The knobs? LOL!