Hi guys. Coming in very late on this thread but thought it was the most relevant one to me (thanks a lot for all the helpful advice and remarks) as I am about to change the tube on my HT-5RH. I bought this amp a few months ago as it was highly recommended and I was looking for a cheap TUBE amp to get me going on my second attempt at learning guitar (first one was over 20 years ago... still a bit young for midlife crisis but might be getting there )shimmilou wrote:In the HT-5, the guitar signal goes through the preamp tube for both channels, so a preamp tube change will affect both channels.
I must say I like the amp and its capabilities for the price but I do have a major issue with the way distortion kicks in almost immediately on the OD channel whilst the clean channel cannot be pushed to break-up (and in any case I need to keep things quiet at home) which has gone so far as to discourage me from practicing as much as I should have. I want to play stuff from bluesy to hard rock and this just isn't helpful (yes, I will be using pedals as well - got TC Spark on order and trying to choose).
Anyhow after poring over tons of posts on the topic, I began to understand (I think) that indeed the HT5 only has one preamp tube (Sovtek 12AX7) and the distortion is purely electronic (based on their HT pedal it seems). As a result in order to get a little more usable gain/volume knobs (and get back to practicing), I am about to switch the 12AX7 for a 5751 which has 30% less gain. This will likely reduce the overall volume of the amp (not an issue for me as stated earlier - might even get an attenuator at some point)
It would be great to hear from you guys what you think about the mod, the likely impact on tone and usability (should I have gone for lower gain than 5751?) but most importantly what your experience and workarounds have been so far with the HT5.
Cheers!