i got my first tube (350L) sunn last week. it must have taken a hit somewhere on it's way across America cause a bolt had sheered off which happen to be grounding a filter cap and i believe the OT. i didn't realize this until i replaced my second screen (47Ω 2W) resistor i found the broken bolt/bad ground. i fixed the ground and got new JJ kt88's and biased it up to 70%. then i made the mistake of checking the bias one last time , and while checking the plate voltage i shorted pin 3 and pin 2 of one of the power tubes to which blew the plate (47Ω 5W) resistor. i replaced all the plate resistors and the 3) 50µF and 1) 1000µF caps. long story short today was my first chance to get to hear it through my 4x12's and when run it clean i am hearing a fair amount of crackle when i dig into the guitar. it's somewhat distorted with the volume at 4-5. i have the treble at 0, the bass maxed, mid at 3, and the mid boost on. i can reduce the crackle by rolling the guitars tone down a bit or picking softer.
i tried it through 3 different cabs and every combo of the 3, and the crackle was always there. now all 3 cabs are old and 2 of them have speakers that either have a hole or 2 punched in them of have had ripped repaired by me. they are all at least 100 watt boxes. i hooked up my main head (a V4) and i can hear a bit of crackle but not nearly as bad as it is with the sunn.
ok so if you're still with me. my question is, is it possible that my cabs just aren't up to the super clean punchyness of the sunn or that i screwed up more than i thought with the bad ground and shorting the pin 3? i know there are a lot of variables so hopefully it's not a stupid question...