The Steel Guitar Forum

A friend brought over a Sunn amp. I think its called the Concert 1000 or Colusium 1000 or something like that. Its 400 watts and it looks like it takes 6 of the 6550 power tubes and only has one little preamp tube. Can you still get 6550s or do they make a replacement tube. It's missing two.

Thanks, Dave

Hi Dave -
Try Musician's Friend (www.musiciansfriend.com) - they seem to have the best prices on what has come to be a fairly expensive commodity - power vacuum tubes. There are several manufacturers of 6550's - generally they run about $85 to $100 a pair and unless you replace all 6 tubes (using matched pairs of tubes) you will probably need to adjust the bias. You might want to get the amp checked out by a tech anyway before dropping a bundle on power tubes - filter capacitors tend to poop out on tube circuits that haven't been powered on for several years and if the output transformer is hosed the total refurbishing cost might get a bit steep.

Anyway good luck - I'm still partial to tube amps myself, even for steel!

David

I recently placed an order with thetubestore.com and my order arrived in just a couple of days. The new Electro Harmonix 12AX7's are GREAT in my Mesa Maverick. The link will take you directly to the 6550 listings.

www.tubesandmore.com/

http://users.erols.com/bluestat/

http://store.yahoo.com/triodeel/index.html

http://www.newsensor.com/

Have a look at these if they work.

Bob

A 6550 is equivalent to a KT-88 or KT-90. THis is a great, great tube for a steel amp. powerful, clean, and with a great low end.

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www.tyacktunes.com

Can the 6550 be used in place of a 6L6 in a Twin Reverb without any rewiring or mods? Dave

No. Although you can mod a twin to use a pair of 6550s instead of 4 6L6 tubes which will give a fatter, cleaner sound (albeit with less power), acording to previous posts in this forum.

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www.tyacktunes.com

FWI the 6550 is the tube in the Ampeg v4 bass amp which I imagine might be a pretty cool steel amp (but HEAVY).

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www.tyacktunes.com

Dan, have you tried the KT-66 power tubes in a Twin Reverb before? Dan Torres says I will get more headroom and more tone than the 6L6, but they are twice as much $ as the 6L6. DZ

Thanks everyone for the links and info. I got bit by the tube bug. I spent some time with the amp. Its called the 1000s. It has tremelo and reverb but I couldn't get the reverb working. It works with 4 6550 tubes and has 2 empty sockets(?) I found 3 pre amp tubes. It has 2 bright inputs, 2 normal inputs, volume, treble , bass, contour, depth and rate(tremelo), reverb, and a midrange boosts switch.http://www.sunnamplifiers.com/catalogs/1968/1000s.jpg pretty cool. Sounded good with the Tele. I'd like to get the reverb working and plug in the Sho-Bud.

DZ<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Dave Zirbel on 05 July 2001 at 11:21 PM.]</p></FONT>