GearDump

I have tried to avoid buying Tubes at major chain stores simply because I have never had good luck with groove tubes. GC normally only carries Groove Tubes or Mesa in store. Sam Ash has only ever had Groove Tubes as long as I have shopped there as well. The other day I was in Sam Ash and saw that they actually carried tubes from JJ electronics. I have never really used JJ tubes save for in my old Classic 30, and frankly I wasn’t impressed but I figure I would give them a try.

When I purchased my Rivera it came with some joker’s idea of good tone, two horribly mismatched Groove Tubes with the number 5 written on the label. They were so bad that after the amp had been used for a few hours, one would only get mildly hot while the other would blaze.

When I installed the JJ’s I didn’t bother to do a Bias check since I assumed that any tubes would be better. These did the trick marvelously. The fender side of the amp exuded those sweet cleans whilst the British side ranged from JTM-45 snarl to JCM-800 crunch. Ironically I had never enjoyed turning this amp up since on the Brittish side it just seemed to get louder with less saturation. The moment I got the master volume to 8 I realized what I had been missing. This amp can really saturate and sound fantastic. Those Rivera clips on youtube simply don’t do them justice.

I was really impressed that the matching of these tubes was fairly close as well. I’ll update after I do a Bias!

Related posts:

1. Rivera R30