ecl86 & ez80 - suitable for guitar amp?

[greenstax]

Hi,

I'm thinking of buying a cheap old valve amp (combo) I've found in a shop with the idea of using it as a practice amp for guitar. It looks like some sort of old extension speaker for something or other (radio?) and contains 2 x ecl86 and 1 x ez80 valves. I've seen on the net that these are power amp valves and a rectifier valve respectively.

Would this work? would I need some sort of pre-amp stage?

Does anyone know what these valves would sound like, used for guitar? The combo has a small speaker with it which I know will affect the sound but I've no idea what the overall sound will be like. .... I can't seem to find any guitar amps on the net that use them (which suggests to me that there's a good reason for this!)

Also - from what I can gather, 2 x ecl86's would produce a max output of about 6W.... if I overdrive the amp, would this result in some nice sounds or something ghastly.

I don't know much about valves / amps / electrickery sorry, but any advice / info would be greatly appreciated

thanks

[Jim McShane]

EZ80 = American 6V4 - you can also sub an EZ81/6CA4 in there.

ECL86 = American 6GW8. Nice tube, but scarce and getting more so all the time. It's a triode and a pentode in the same bottle.

I think it's almost impossible to tell you what kind of tone you'll have from the little we know about the amp, but the tubes in it are certainly capable of excellent performance. The EZ80/6V4 is fairly common, and if they dry up the EZ81/6CA4 will drop in. But the ECL86/6GW8 is going to prove difficult to source over the longer haul.

[Tubes4e4]

Hi greenstax,

the ECL86 compound valve contains a small signal triode which is identical to 1/2 of ECC83, and a small power pentode which for practical purposes could be viewed as a power derated EL84/6BQ5 (9 Watt of max. anode dissipation vs. 12 Watt).

Knowing this, you can chose from the plethora of guitar circuits using ECC83 and EL84, only very slight & simple bias adjustment (cathode resistor value) needed for the ECL86 pentode section.

In short, everything that works using ECC83 and EL84 (in pentode mode, screen voltage not above 250V) should be very easily transferable to ECL86, too

Regards,

Tom

[gingertube]

Greenstax,
There was one very early Marshall model which used ECL86 - a bit of a websearch may be in order.
I've only used them for HiFi - they sound stunning for that.
Cheers,
Ian

[planet10]

Originally posted by Jim McShane
ECL86 = American 6GW8. Nice tube, but scarce and getting more so all the time.

If they are getting scarce i'll have to horde mine a bit more carefully...

dave

[Geek]

Originally posted by planet10


If they are getting scarce i'll have to horde mine a bit more carefully...

dave

Geek can keep them safe for you

[planet10]

Originally posted by Geek



Geek can keep them safe for you

You already have some of them -- and cryoed to boot

dave

[soundbrigade]

If you're looking for simple guitar amps, there are some collectively constructed things like AX84, Ampli G5, and one more but I cannot find my papers .... Octal Fatness!!!
The use tubes like EL84, 6V6, 6L6 and EL84 The G5 can be run on almost any tube with small alterations.

[Geek]

...EL84....

How boring

...Octal Fatness!!!....6V6, 6L6

Getting better, but still as common as beach sand.

Got a design on the bench now using an ECL86 to drive the IST iron to a pair of 6B4G's. It sounds great so far!

Be a heretic and don't follow the crowd, you'll be rewarded

You already have some of them -- and cryoed to boot

My dad has the headphone amp with the cryoed tubes. I think I'm in for a fight when I need it back

[planet10]

Originally posted by Geek
Got a design on the bench now using an ECL86 to drive the IST iron to a pair of 6B4G's. It sounds great so far!

What is IST iron... i have a chassis with PS & sockets that is looking for something like this...

dave