New member question on bright tone

[spinalmuppet]

Hi,hope somebody can help me.I recently bought a 2266c secondhand after listening to many soundclips and reading lots of reviews.
I didn't actually play the amp before purchase which is unusual for me but thought I would be pretty safe after the research I had done.
The problem is I cannot get a nice low end out of the amp. I know tone is subjective but I have adjusted the settings to all kinds of combinations including some of the settings published on this forum but everything has too much top end.
I have to have the bass control full up and the treble set at 10 o'clock and have tried using the body/detail mix to fatten things out but as soon as the body gets anywhere near the detail in terms of setting the amp just sounds thin when playing the high strings and just plain farty like a speaker has blown on the bass strings. This is all done with the master set at 12 o'clock.
Anyhow this led me to this forum which is excellent by the way and I decided to check the bias which was 43.2mv on one side and 47.8mv on the other so I made a small adjustment just to bring them a little closer together. I did notice that only the pre amp valve closest to the power valves was glowing bright,the others were barely glowing.
Is this correct and does it signify they need a change and could be causing the amp to sound bright?
If not ,does anybody know what is causing this or know of a set of preamp valves that would give me a les bright/harsh overall sound.
I really want to like this amp so any advice would be much appreciated.

[surfnorthwest]

Welcome to the forum. Get that bright glowing preamp tube out of there and replace it first to see if they might be the issue. A bad preamp tube can create all sorts of issues and no low end is one of them. Since you are not the original owner of this amp it might just be a good idea to retube it anyways. The VM has plenty of bottom end so something is going on with the tubes.

[spinalmuppet]

Thanks for the reply surfnorthwest.Your right I probably should have changed the valves first off but i was told it had been revalved fairly recently. I checked the preamp valve brands today and there a mixture of JJ,EH and GT valves, with the JJ in the V4 position. I swapped this with a GT valve in V1 and already there was a real big improvement but still slightly harsh/toppy. I'm thinking of changing the power valves to Gold Lion and the preamp valves to Harma STR ECC83 to warm the sound slightly and add more bottom end. Do you or anybody else have any opinion on these valves? thanks again.

[SteveD]

Welcome to the forum spinalmuppet.

Bias seems fine. Are you using the Mid Boost?

Let's see what it's like after a revalve and take it from there.

[surfnorthwest]

Thanks for the reply surfnorthwest.Your right I probably should have changed the valves first off but i was told it had been revalved fairly recently. I checked the preamp valve brands today and there a mixture of JJ,EH and GT valves, with the JJ in the V4 position. I swapped this with a GT valve in V1 and already there was a real big improvement but still slightly harsh/toppy. I'm thinking of changing the power valves to Gold Lion and the preamp valves to Harma STR ECC83 to warm the sound slightly and add more bottom end. Do you or anybody else have any opinion on these valves? thanks again.

The Golden lions will be a good choice for a replacement valve as will the Harma preamp tubes. I believe that the Harmas are simply rebadged JJs. I am running a RTF NOS in V1 and the rest are all TungSol in the preamp section.

[spinalmuppet]

Thanks again Surfnorthwest for your advice and thanks also to SteveD for the welcome. I did use the midboost before I swapped the existing valves around and it made the tone more muddy. Since I swapped the existing valves around it smoothed things out a lot and made a big difference.
I think that my Les Pauls might be adding to the problem.I've got a Custom,Classic,Standard and a 59 reissue. The Custom sounds good but the others (Classic with the ceramic pickups and STD and 59 with Burstbuckers) are quite toppy with my other amp too, which is a Cornford but I have been able to EQ that out.
I'll get back to you with my findings after I've relaced all the valves. Fingers crossed!

[Jizzmasterzero]

Another thing to try which may seem little strange but it worked for me.

Try removing the castors on the bottom of the cab.

[SteveD]

Another thing to try which may seem little strange but it worked for me.

Try removing the castors on the bottom of the cab.

He has the combo which doesn't have castors.

[Jizzmasterzero]

Ooops! forget my suggestion. lol

[spinalmuppet]

OK, I said I would give an update when I replaced the valves. Well here goes:- I put 4 Harma ECC 83 STR Cyrogenically treated valves in V1 to V4 and chose each one based on their individual characteristics posted on Watford Valves website. I also swapped out the power valves to Gold Lions from Hotroxuk. I biased the amp with settings of 46.5 and 48mv put it back together and let it warm up again for 10 mins.
F***ing hell, same amp, different planet as far as the tone. I used my LP Classic which is toppy with most amps to check it after the revalve and all the bright/muddy tones have gone and been replaced with clean highs,tight and punchy lows and gorgeous clear harmonics. I love the way it cleans up on the guitar volume and reacts to your string attack. I wasn't trying to get his tone but by accident I got instant Slash Velvet Revolver era.This is after 10 mins of warm up and 30 mins of playing (had to stop then as the walls were shaking and my missus was packing her bags )One thing that did strike me was how acurate you have to be,you cannot get away with sloppy playing with this amp.
To sum up I've had lots of amps and lots of Marshalls including JCM 800's, Marshall 6100 Anniversary and JVM410H. None of those amps kept their tone as well as this does when using your guitar controls, I can't wait to play it more and no doubt it will only get better as the valves bed in.Well done SteveD on a very fine amp with REAL Marshall tone and thanks also to Surfnorthwest for your replies. Great amp,great forum,keep up the good work.