Hey everybody,
I recently bought a Sorado. I haven't been playing it extensively, since the previous owner had it biased for 6550s and replaced them with KT88s at my request, and I haven't had it rebiased yet. All the same, I couldn't resist just a little test drive. Unfortunately, although it sounds reasonably ok, it doesn't sound great. Over all, the amp is quieter than expected--I don't have another similar amp to compare it to, but in my experience even a low-wattage amp can seem deafening cranked at close-quarters. The Sorado isn't whisper-quiet, but it's nowhere near deafening. It seems to break up around 7 on the volume dial (I'm using a passive J-bass) and gets pretty muddy by 10--again, just a bit muddier than it should be. When I play loud notes and let them ring, especially on the E string, I can hear a kind of crackling static along with slight fluctuations in volume. When I wiggle the speaker cable in its jack, occasionally the sound goes dead (I tried this with two different cables)--could the problem lie somewhere in that connection? The previous owner had to replace the output tranformer at one point...maybe that bad connection could be the reason? Could the bias have anything to do with all this? All the tubes are brand new JJs except the 6AN8, which is NOS.
It's going to the tech soon anyway, so hopefully he can help me get to the bottom of this, but I wanted to see if people here had any ideas. Thanks a lot.
