Watford Valves scale to Guitar Amplifier Blueprinting scale

[myles_rose]

Watford Valves scale to Guitar Amplifier Blueprinting scale

 

A few folks have asked me to post the scale I use for my clients preamp tubes so they may order replacements or gain changes from Watford Valves, as they are one of the only tube vendors that offer graded preamp tubes currently. (As a side note, there may be a USA vendor close to doing this also, and I will post that if it comes to pass)

 

WV GAB (Guitar Amplifier Blueprinting)

150 50

163 58

176 67

189 75

202 83

215 92

228 100

241 108

254 116

267 125

280 133

293 142

306 150

 

What this means, if you have one of my "92" tubes in your amp, and you want a replacement from Watford Valves, just tell them you want one of their "215" tubes.

 

If you want a bit more gain, just go to a higher number in either case. For less preamp distortion, more headroom, and a larger percentage of your overall distortion character coming from the power amp section, just go to a lower number.

 

Watford Valves overall gain groups are broken down as follows:

 

Low

150-200

 

Med

200-250

 

High

250-300

 

When converting my scale to Watfords scale, delete my suffix of S, M, F. This has to do with the rise time of the tube, and it is not something Watford uses in their system. This is more of something I used when blueprinting a particular amp to a particular players style, taste, etc. It is different for a blues player, rhythm player, jazz player, speed metal player, and it also depends on things like pick versus fingers, and with a pick, it may depend on heavy or thin picks etc.

 

For those of you that do business with Eurotubes, you can drop me a post in the "feel free to ask myles" post over a www.musicplayer.com and I can help you work with Bob Pletka over there and give you some different information that he will be able to work with.

 

I hope this helps those that have asked.

 

Regards,