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6L6's versus EL34's The subject of my blog is thermionic valves or vacuum tubes. The British refer to them as valves and the Americans call them tubes. 6L6's and EL34's are the power tubes used in many guitar amplifiers. For reference, Fender amplifiers use/used 6L6's and Marshall amplifiers use/used EL34's I say used as many tube models have been replaced with transistor circuits and (generally) hand wired custom units (with astronomical price tags) are available to those who can afford them. Because of the tube circuitry design, these electron tubes are wired in pairs in a 'push-pull' fashion as the analog sounds they amplify have a sign-wave pattern that modulates in a + and - fashion. The louder the sound, the greater the travel distance from zero, their starting point. A pair of 6L6's produced roughly 40 watts and a pair of EL34's produced roughly 50 watts. Both will produce harmonic overtones and distortion when over-driven. There are other factors that would make a musician (generally a guitarist) choose one over the other... that is where a tonal difference lies. If you look at a signal of a music note played through an amplifier and viewed on an oscilloscope, you will see a perfectly formed sign wave that rises and falls in a smooth sweeping action. As you raise the volume, the sign wave gets larger. To the layman, EL34's have a brighter (crunchy) sound and the additional wattage (when 4 are in the same chassis) is an unbeatable sound when every watt matters. Distortion... since the tubes have a limit to their output, increasing the gain (or the amount of input you put into the tubes) will result in a distorted sign-wave. The tops of the curve will be flattened causing (what we call) a square wave. To the ear, this is a (fuzzy or) saturated sound... Raising the volume also raises the sustain and the amount of harmonics where the natural sound is overshadowed by distortion. This is typical sound of the 'metal' guitarists. Nearly all of them use other enhancements to create their 'signature' screaming guitar sound, but the best of the best rely on 'tube amplification' to carry the load. I grew up on the sound of 6L6's with the Beach Boys and Motown artists who were using Fender equipment. For a number of years, I too used Fender amps. The British Invasion of the 1960's brought to America groups like The Kinks who were using Vox valve amps, fitted with EL34's. Who else used amps with EL34's? The Beatles. The Rolling Stones, Pete Townshend of The Who, Eric Clapton, Brian May of Queen and probably the most famous of all users of EL34's was Jimi Hendrix and a stack of Marshall Amps. With 40+ years of transistor technology, every major manufacturer of guitar amps offer models with transistor circuitry, including some computer modeling and sound shaping, but the vintage and vintage recreations will always have their place on stage and in the studio. It's the sound guitarists prefer. |
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Gray, if you research EL34, you can see 2 makers of these tubes are in Russia. Sovtek and Svetlana. As we all know many Russian scammers come to Chinese FriendFinder so there is plenty of relevance.
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