Speaker upgrade for Hot Rod Deluxe

[kipper]

Some interesting suggestions here y'all.

Even with the Z Air Brake attenuator (which I think is very good btw), this amp is a volume beast! I am, overall, generally happy with the sound I can get at bedroom practise levels with this amp (I do live in a detached house!), my ME-50 (I run the amp completely clean on the clean channel and use the Boss to get OD and distortion), a GE-7 EQ pedal and the Z Air Brake.

But alas...I am a born tinkerer

I had considered swapping the tubes as it happened...a very popular choice seems to be a change in the power amp section with the THD Yellow Jackets (to replace the stock 6L6 Groove Tubes).

These have got some rave reviews from people who have installed them in HRDx amps over on HC, although with this particular mod the amp seems to then become some sort of Fender/Vox AC15 type hybrid in character and gone is the big full "Fender clean" sound which attracted me to the amp in the first place. IMHO a good clean sound can have anything added to it and sound good and IMHO this amp - for the money - gets you closer to that Fender clean tone to build on more so than any other amp (unless you spend twice the money).

Although the plus side with the THD Yellow Jackets is (supposedly) the power is greatly reduced and the amp is more like a 15-watter with those tubes installed. Not sure I believe the "Class A" marketing hype though!

Certainly some of the comments and suggestions here are providing me with more food for thought...

[tunghaichuan***]

Although the plus side with the THD Yellow Jackets is (supposedly) the power is greatly reduced and the amp is more like a 15-watter with those tubes installed. Not sure I believe the "Class A" marketing hype though!

What some amp manufacturers mean when they say "Cass A" is "15-18 watt, Class AB, push-pull, cathode-bias, EL84 amp" which technically isn't correct

If the amp is putting out 15 watts with Yellow Jackets, then it probably isn't Class A. An EL84 amp running in true class A probably wouldn't put out more than 10watts maximum given that an EL84 is a 12w maximum dissipation tube in class A. Class A is only 40% efficient, so for two you're looking at 9.6w. Also, the anode voltage would have to be 300v or less. Someday I'll have to get some Yellow Jackets and measure some of the voltages to see what they are actually doing in the circuit.

tung