Grateful Dead Music Forum

I was just wondering if there is a goto pre tube that sounds most 87 Jerry? Does anyone know what He was using?

Popular theory (or perhaps just my own) is that there were never any major changes in the type of tubes used- from the late 60's on they had huge stocks of military grade, mostly Sylvania tubes (possibly RCA too?), from which Healy and whoever else hand-picked the best-performing ones. I'd be most interested to know if that ever varied, like the times when he switched to Mesa or GT amps. I've been using the same RCA 7025's in my DSR preamp for about 6-7 years now, which were already about 30 years old when I popped them in, and I feel like my rig sounds better than it ever has.

Thanks I have had some luck with vintage tung sol but still not quite there.

I don't think it's as much of the tubes as it is the rest of the mods and upgrades.

Jerry was always swappin out pickups. I wonder if he did that with tubes as well. They do change tone abit.

deadagainband76 wrote:Jerry was always swappin out pickups. I wonder if he did that with tubes as well. They do change tone abit.

He probably thought they were sounding "dull" so had fresh ones put in from time to time. I don't know. Just a guess.