Sovtek Guitar Tubes

If you told me I'd be messing around with guitar tubes, or any tubes for that matter, I'd of told you you were crazy. Unfortunately I'm old enough to have owned televisions, and radios with vacuum tubes. Vacuum tubes for the most part, suck, compared to there solid state counterparts. However, for some reason, vacuum tubes in guitar amplifiers make for a better amp. I didn't believe this at first but having owned both solid state and tube amps there is quite a difference. Albeit a hard to describe difference, terms like warmer, brighter, gutsier, all come to mind, but I've yet to find a good reason why.

I guess I'll just have to live with the unknown, like space aliens. At any rate I bought a matched pair of Sovtek 5881WXT tubes, these tubes are the roosky version of the famous GE6L6 power tubes. I guess the Russians used these for military purposes, and now for guitar amps. Who said nothing good came out of the cold war. I swapped these into my more cherished by the day Fender Blues deluxe, to see if there's any difference. Mind you there is nothing wrong with the groove tubes that come standard in the deluxe.

The summary you ask, well here we go again with the vague descriptions. The Sovtek tubes are different, the amp sounds a little less bright, yet more clear. The groove tubes were a little muddier, but are warmer than the Sovteks. Understand, the degree of difference I'm talking about is minuscule, yet still there. I'm going to keep these in for awhile and see how they play out. If you're in the market for tubes, the Sovtek 5881WXT's, at $27.00 for the pair, are a pretty good buy. Thank god I don't have to beat my amp like I used to beat the tube television.

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