I was starting to get a little frustrated with the Manley Snappers. They were not as quiet as I remembered, sounded thin and edgy, even some weird noises sticking up from background. New speakers in the house revealed a less than beautiful tone.
Then a tube blew. I was relieved when it went a day after a friend flew in from Boston to audition Feastrex before placing his order. I thought it was just bad luck, tubes blow, no biggie. I ordered another from Manley. Onsies are not cheap.
I had tried a couple other brands EL34 type, but none were even close to the Groove Tubes E34Ls slightly modified copy of the original GE version. GT bought the machines and materials to copy it and they are made by JJ now. GT screens tubes to Manley's spec and paint fancy logo on the tubes. Wipee. I tried JJ's own KT77, lush loose and very colored, Asylum guys raved about it, but it was WAY too rosy. Typical JJ noises and crooked glass was not inspiring either. Then I tried cryoed SED EL34 (St Petersberg Svetlana). Those were cleaner sounding than JJ, but still significant distortion and coloring. I was surprised. EL34s are made primarily for rock guitar amps, where maximum distortion is desired. Manley's screening process picks the lowest distortion tubes of the lot.
Then another tube blew on me, it arced by chance right when I was looking at it! I replaced that one too, but finally conceded that I needed a new rack of power tubes. The sound degraded and two blown in a month were undeniable. It has only been 1 year since I bought the amps new, factory sealed, but I do tend to play them long hours. I figured they probably do 2000+ hours a year, maybe more. Manley said that was about normal life. They give a big discount if I buy 8, that was nice to find out.
The Quads really pissed them off with 79dB sensitivity and reactive load, bringing them all the way to clipping at moderate volumes.
So the new set arrived, installed biased, sounds good. Wait for break in. On the 3rd day, one of the new tubes runs away and blows a 4A fuse. I wasn't next to it to see what happened, I just noticed silence, replaced fuse and restarted whereupon the fuse blew again, but this time I saw the resistor give a puff so I knew which tube was running away. Manley says this GT batch has not been perfect. They send me a replacement and another for free just in case, along with a couple free fuses.
I like Manley.
Now with all the crap in the past, the 8 tubes are broken in, the amps sound AWESOME!! (again) and I have my calendar marked for Feb 09 to replace the tubes preemptively.
I still sometimes skip playing music at night or in the day when I know I will only listen for a few minutes because I know it takes time for the amps to come to temp, and cycling temp reduces tube life, blablabla. I would love a SS amp that sounded like these without the BS. But until I find it, these are great.
Thanks for reading my little tube story.
haha
Rich
