Happy New Year to ya! Glad that you are still using your Solarus,and achieving those classic sounds.I'm assuming your amp is loaded with EL34's.Some of them were loaded with 6550's.If you are going to replace your tubes,I would recommend the Svetlana EL34's.They are very smooth,reliable,and affordable.If you are going the 6550 route,then I would recommend the Mesa Boogie 6550...Very smooth,and breaks up a little quicker than most other 6550's I've used.With an EL34,you're looking at about 40 watts in a duet..with 6550's about 60 watts in a duet..and of course,there is a difference in tone,but for blues..the EL34 would be probably better suited.You'll still need to have a tech bias up the amp when changing power tubes..very important.Now..in the preamp section.You have a 12AX7A,and a 12AU7A.You might want to change these over to an ECC83 for the 12AX7A,and an ECC82 for the 12AU7A.The 12AU7A is used mostly for the reverb,while the 12AX7A is your drive section.The ECC83 crunches a little more..believe you'll like this.Now...another really cool mod is to change the volume pot which is a 500K pot over to a 1 meg pot.This will give you more gain,and more tonality.I've done this in my Sceptre with terrific results.On the pot you'll find a 470pf disc cap across the first two taps..the third goes to ground.There's a blue wire that goes to the tube,and a red one.Make sure you don't accidentally switch these around on the taps on the pot.If you don't like the mod,you can always go back to the 500k original.The 6AN8 tube is the phase inverter for the output tubes.Since you're changing tubes all around,you might as well change this one to.Let me know how all this works out for you,but definitely have your local tech make sure when switching power tubes that it is indeed biased up correctly.For 6550's..bias current should be about 54ma..for the EL34..about 36ma.You and your amp will be much happier for it.
Dave
