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Yo, sorry to thread jack, but can a Sentura I take kt88s?

12XU2A3X3 wrote:Yo, sorry to thread jack, but can a Sentura I take kt88s?

If the I has EL34's than you'll need some modifications before accepting KT88's. I think it's the II that has 6550's, but if yours also has 6550's than it should be able to take KT88's. I can never remember all their models.

I'm waiting on a speaker cabinet to go with my recently acquired completely vintage speced 1000s with a tube rectifier, which has a very similar spec to this amp, so I am anxious to report my own investigations into pedal interactions. I played it some with some underpowered cabs but not much because I was a afraid of the destruction (especially with pedals).

UPDATE: turns out my bias adjustment pot was set to its coldest possible setting (-77v). I ended up replacing the 6550's with KT88's, and the tube rectifier with a solid state rectifier, and noticed the cold bias setting when I was going to re-adjust the bias. I now have it set much warmer and it's a night and day difference. I get full volume across the board, pedals sound great, and the solid state rectifier makes all the notes very crisp and defined. I'm actually considering the tube rectifier now that I believe the bias was the main reason of my original issue. And now that I have a DMM, I can easily adjust the bias between swapping rectifiers. Amp sounds fucking excellent though. It was pretty much un-usable with how the bias was set before and now it rules with all of my cabs and all my pedals. Figured I'd post in case anyone else has a similar issue, given people always fuck around with pots and settings they shouldn't fuck with.

I had a chat with a local amp tech/tube junky /electronics geek. His take on tube rectified is that there is no reason to go that way. Basically the tube in the rectifier circiut is acting as a diode. they used tubes for this back in the day as the diode had not yet been created. He actually opened up a solid state tube replacement to show me and there were 2 diodes inside. thats it. 2 tiny little diodes that would never wear out or go bad.

chillerthanmost wrote:UPDATE: turns out my bias adjustment pot was set to its coldest possible setting (-77v). I ended up replacing the 6550's with KT88's, and the tube rectifier with a solid state rectifier, and noticed the cold bias setting when I was going to re-adjust the bias. I now have it set much warmer and it's a night and day difference. I get full volume across the board, pedals sound great, and the solid state rectifier makes all the notes very crisp and defined. I'm actually considering the tube rectifier now that I believe the bias was the main reason of my original issue. And now that I have a DMM, I can easily adjust the bias between swapping rectifiers. Amp sounds fucking excellent though. It was pretty much un-usable with how the bias was set before and now it rules with all of my cabs and all my pedals. Figured I'd post in case anyone else has a similar issue, given people always fuck around with pots and settings they shouldn't fuck with.

Good to hear!
The awesome thing about those amps is that once you learn how to bias them, you can try a bunch of different
tubes and go back and forth as you like without paying a tech.

They should make all amps that way.

Man, now that makes me wish I didn't sell my Sceptre

Yeah dude, totally stoked on this amp again. And yes, biasing as easy as these would be so convinient for all other amps.