Korg Forums

[musikmachine]

[Ruso]

within the tube theres those metalic parts, they can be as short as half of the actual tube to as tall as they can fit...

short:


tall:


I've messed with several different kinds and I settled with those two... the tall ones are a lot more smooth sounding and a lot more organic while short ones are more rough and distorted...

I used the shorter one on the esx cause the machine doesn't have as much overdriving and distorting capabilities on its own because of the lack of the drive button....

[musikmachine]

[Ruso]

get the ones in the bottom picture... trust me they kick major arse. You'll be amazed by the quality of you can get them from eurotubes.com ECC803 S Gold Pin - 12AX7

[11hz]

ruso, have you tried the 803s regular pin? and is there a noticable difference between the regular and the gold pin?

[digitalv]

someone mentioned in this thread about maybe having to tune the tubes, how hard is this? I just ordered meself a set of new uns
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Sleeping is giving up no matter what the time is

[reddone]

tuning is kinda personal preference . I mentioned b4 that i tuned my tubes , but it isnt neccesry . basically its very easy but u need to listen carefully at whats happening as u tune as its kinda about finding the "sweetspot" .

What i mean is that as u press a key over n over u should be listening to hear when the tubes soundd at their best . Incremental turning of both plastic screws behind the tubes will let u do this .

but as i said , u mite not need to or even think that its important ... but , i would advise testing different settings while pressing keys so get a sound that suits u better .

its up to yourself really .

[Ruso]

honestly gold and not gold shouldn't make a noticible difference.... (although gold looks cooler ).... there are two kinds of tuning, one is simple and is done by ear by turning the knobs next to the tubes with a screw driver(carefully)....

theres a more complicated way which is the way it should be done but only service centers can do this because it requires a special smart media card.

now one thing I noticed is when you swap tubes the left and right channels become different levels.... unless you get lucky. I called a local service center which told me that you do not need to tune preamp tubes(to which I said bullshit when I read the service manual and it has a whole section on this).... he said I can bring it in but it will cost me like 50 bucks per half an hour to which I also said bullshit and decided to deal with it by panning a lil

works just fine now.

[reddone]

yeah the leveling problem is kinda there for me to , but it's pretty minute really .. and i had the same problem straight outta the box on day 1 with standard ax7's !!

i just cant understand korg giving us the tubes they did tho , they mustve known what great a sound the mx produces .. but then to give it sub-standard tubes ??

Anyway ppl , there is nothing to fear and very little risk to take so , find tubes to suit and part with that cash cos the price of the mx feels ALOT more justified when u hear it correctly output

[musikmachine]

I had this levelling problem as well.The right channel was much quieter than the left..At first i thought i'd done something to the mx during the installation but i swapped the tubed and it's fine now *phew*
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Soundz musik

[reddone]

been reading what u said ruso bout different sizes in plates in relation to sounds , and am thinking that somehow shorter plates may offer more compression by being shorter .

basically , im thinkin the less room the freqs/sounds are able to travel around the cathode naturally there'd be more of a compression effect .

i havnt bought other tubes to use when needed cos i never feel the need , but im curious again as to what other types of tubes do to the mx.

what u think on the compression thing ?
It seems as tho that it'd work that way ...

[Ruso]

I don't know, I don't think the tubes actually compress the sound I think a simmilar effect is acheved through natural overdriving of all sounds.... think about it all a compressor does is make the loud sounds beyond a certain threshold louder which is essentially an overdrive(compression with no threshold)....

shorter ones don't seem to add more compression but then again I try to turn the tuning knobs all the way down for least ammount of fx. I hate any form of distortion in music so even tho I like to overdrive I like warm nondistorted overdrive.

[reddone]

I too am not the greatest fan of distorting my sounds TOO much , but to be fair i dont find that the GT's distort very much , more like a qaulity "fizzle" at its most driven . and the warmth is really nice too .

The thing is when reading the info b4 buying the tubes it read " high gain pre-amp with midrange clarity and superb warm bass with higher comression " . I coupled that with looking at some tunes in an editor and found alot less problems with spiking of waves , so i thought somehow things are being compressed. the ax7's are taller but sound poor , so alot must simply be down to the design i reckon .

Doesnt really matter tho as i'll be getting a set of new tubes for different tones anyway .

[musikmachine]

[xmit]

I've just ordered a pair of JJ(Tesla) ECC803-S from a company called Hot Rox UK...they didnt have the gold-pin variety however, but hopefully they'll pimp my MX sufficiently....