yellow jackets

[Wayne]

Due to some misfortune on his part, an old friend of mine dropped by today and laid a gift on me. He is suffering from tennis elbow in his fretting arm, caused by his day job. This makes playing very painful for him, so he's taking a couple of months off both from the day job and from playing guitar. He's loaning out all his gear so that it won't be around tempting him to play.

I passed on some of the bigger ticket items (Mesa Boogie Lonestar, a boutique 6V6 amp, couple of highish-end strats), but I did tell him I would safeguard his yellow jackets, along with a couple of pairs of tubes.

The pair that came with his YJ's are 6pi14pi-EBs, and just for good measure he threw in a pair of NOS Telefunken EL84's.

First order of business is to reverse-engineer those YJs - I've always been curious about what's in there. They're not very big - there can only be just so many components in there, and I've got a theory or two about what those components might be. After that, I'm gonna stick 'em in my rig and use them at a few gigs this summer. I've been considering picking up a pair as my situation calls for much less than 100 W, or even 50, so I hope to acheive "tube mojo" at volume levels that won't offend the rest of the band.

My question, I guess, is this - has anyone here used these things, and what did you think? Do they sound OK? Are they more-or-less transparent with regards to the tubes (i. e. is there any point in burning up a set of NOS tubes in them, or do they provide so much negative feedback as to render all EL84s the same?)

Testing using live electrons takes place tomorrow while my wife is working and provided that goes OK, I'm planning on using them at practice tomorrow nite. In the meantime, I'd be most interested in anything you guys have to say about them.

W

[Andy Le Blanc]

the best that I say is that they work...... but its just not the same
theres been many attempts to control volume.... and its all the same result
its never quit the same thing as a nice little amp just on the edge and in the
sweet spot....

[gregarious]

They do work and are interesting to see how they respond in an amp designed for different tubes...

[e-rex]

I tried them in a jcm 800 and at first the novelty was cool...after the honeymoon it seemed to me that they really weren't all that much quieter and I had to dial the bass control to 10 to get any kind of low response from it. Ultimately I sold them for about what I paid for em on fleabay...no regrets