Aren't you just fascinated by the tale of my tube amp? Well on the off chance you are...I was excited to get it home and clean it up and fire it up and see what it could do. The clean channel sounded really nice. I'm not sure I would say it sounded as good as my Music Man, which is a Leo Fender creation, the Godfather of clean electric guitar tones, but it's nice. The distorted channel, however, clearly needed a new preamp tube or something (which was not mentioned in the E-Bay ad...hmm...) It sounded like I was playing through a bass amp with a fuzz pedal: no top or kick to it.

I looked up amp techs on the Internet and came across this guy. He got good reviews on TheGearPage.net and his page about "blackfacing" Fender amplifiers was impressive. So yesterday I took it to him. He said the installation of a new preamp tube would be $80, which included a $50 hour labor charge. He's also going to check the noise on the lower input jack, which sounded to me like a gentle ocean wave. That might also be a preamp tube issue, I'm guessing. He said he would also bias the preamp tubes.

At home I started reading about tube biasing, and there seems to be some disagreement on the necessity of biasing preamp tubes, with the majority saying you don't need to and can just pop them in, but the more technically-inclined saying its best for optimum performance (there is unison agreement that power amp tubes need to be biased). I hope I didn't just agree to pay someone $80 to essentially screw in a light bulb. On the other hand this guy's page makes it obvious he really knows his stuff, and he seemed really nice and tidy, not the kind of burnout half-asser you typically meet in the music world, so either way I think it will be good to have a knowledgeable person look this 26-year-old antique over.

It was also kind of cool that even 20 feet away, when I was sitting it on the counter with its back facing him, he said, "That looks like a Carvin!" Man, this guy can recognize his tube amps! Some other hippie-looking guy that was there picking up an amp took a look at it and said, "Sweet!" I felt proud. They also knew of this producer guy I bought it from.

So in two weeks, hopefully less, this thing will be refreshed and I can really start enjoying it. Then I'll start searching for a second one. Gotta have backup.