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How to Change Guitar Tube Amps

Posted on July 16th, 2009 by monsterguide
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A big thing with many guitar players in modern times is the use of “tube amps” which are guitar amps that run their sound solely off of vacuum tubes. There are a few important guidelines needed when you’re going to change these tubes.

What You’ll Need:

  • Guitar amp
  • Cloth
  • New tubes

Procedure:

  1. First open the back panel of your guitar amp and be sure to turn off the amp and unplug it so that power will not surge through. Some guitar amps push enough wattage to kill a person.
  2. Get a cloth to keep your oils from getting on the tubes and ruining them. Even used tubes can live after being taken out. Take out all the tubes, starting with the preamp (smaller tubes) by wiggling them out of their sockets and placing them in a box or on a table. Proceed to your power tubes(bigger tubes) and repeat this step.
  3. Install the new tubes. If you are using the same type of power tubes, you will not need to re-bias your amplifier. If you are using a different kind you will have to learn to bias in another instructional guide. Place the tubes (assuming everything is biased) into the power amp slots and make sure they are in snugly so they are not wiggling. Repeat this, but do it with the pre-amp tubes. You can replace a pre-amp tube with any type you would like without having to adjust the amp at all.
  4. Reattach the power to the amplifier and start it up. Let it run for a few minutes and see if all the power tubes light up, if so they are working. Now turn the amp off of standby mode and see if the pre-amp tubes are lighting. If so, they should be functioning correctly.
  5. Plug in your guitar to tell if they are truly working and test both your clean and distorted channels. If sound is faint or crackly, you may need to take out certain tubes and re-insert them to see if it fixes the problem.
  6. Re-attach the backplate of the amp. After doing this, you should have a fully functional tube amp that will work 100%. If not you may either be using blown tubes or have a circuit problem with the amplifier which will require professional attention.

As long as they’re properly installed, your guitar tube amps will always be useful. Follow these tips so your guitar will work great.

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