You (insert names of those I argued with here for years) were right. I'm sorry...

[Jonathan]

Tube amps do make a difference.

Give me your addresses and I'll send flowers and chocolate to go along with my sincere apology.

Love,
Jonathan aka "Tubecrusher"

[soundguy]

An apology ain't gonna cut it. I want WHORES. And a sammich.

[LIVE FO RETSINIM]

for brutal deathmetal???? I am still not convinced.

[PnDsCm]

It only matters if you like tone over buzz.

[MOT]

You need not apologize to most,the tube amps they spoke of are full of fail..

Not all tubes are created equal:chainsaw:

[PnDsCm]

What did you get anyway Jonathan?

[Jonathan]

Dang, I need to come here more.

Chris, I got a Peavey 6505+
After asking around, it turns out it seems to be the staple head for lots of touring 'death metal' bands. MOT's right, Marshals and other tube amps seem to be just too muddy for precision/fast death metal playing. This one sings. I can actually hear notes and the distortion sounds real... not fuzzy or digitalized...

[PnDsCm]

Good work Jonathan! The 5150 is a pretty awesome amp and the only thing I've played for the last 6 years. A great metal amp and you can dial them in for straight up rock as well. Plenty of tube tone and some crazy punch if you want it.

I just bought a 5150 combo as well which is the 60 watt version of the head. Slightly different sounding, but I still love it.

One thing you might look into is the adjustable bias mod which takes about 10 minutes (if you're handy with a soldering iron) and if you try a couple of different sets of power tubes and try them at varying bias levels you can really change around the way the amp focuses.

Eurotubes down in Portland sells JJs that are specifically matched for the 5150/6505 too if you ever get down that road. Clay and I worked on J. Adrian's head a few years ago and with a new set of high-gain JJs and some bias tweaking that thing was pretty crushing afterwards.

Check out the selection they have just for that amp:

https://ssl.eurotubes.com/cart/index.ph ... gory_id=40

Have fun with that thing. It's a real life changer getting out of the solid state "racket"

[shannon]

Tubes are definately great, but for someone like me that needs a variety of tones, a single amp doesn't cut it. I just upgraded recently to the Fractal Audio Axe-FX Ultra processor & 2 Atomic Reactor full-range cabinets. I'm in tone heaven. Yes, it's failrly expensive, but the tones, effects & routing capabilities are absolutely peerless & have turn even the most avid tube snob in an axe-fx user.