57 tweed twin

[Seegs]

hey guys just picked up a 57 tweed twin clone.. it uses a 5ar4 instead of the dual recitfires. was wondering if there is anything i need to know about these amps. and or things i could look to upgrade. i'm not 100% of what the internals are yet or really what the OT or PT are. it was built by a local builder and sounds great. lots and lots of clean headroom. I am asking because i am not familiar with the tweed twin and i am sure you guys know a lot more about it then me. and the internet search button hasn't really shown me much on issues or things to do to these amps beside remove on rec.

any help would be cool. i would like to see if there is anything i can do to maybe improve the tone right now. But i do like it the way it sits

[tubeswell]

There were few tweed twins from around that time,

5C8 (1 x 5U4G, 2 x 5881)
5D8 (2 x 5Y3GT, 2 x 6L6G)
5E8A (2 x 5U4G, 2 x 6L6G)
5F8 (1 x 83, 4 x 5881)
5F8A (1 x GZ34, 4 x 5881)

I've seen a 57 tweed twin RI that is like the 5E8A, but not one with a single GZ34 (unless the prior owner just unplugged both 5U4Gs and plugged in 1 x GZ34?)

[kingplank]

I built one and its the worst Fender IMO
Very low clean headroom, poor distorted sound, poor tone control
Much better after I got rid of the farty bass, but there are better Fenders.
Not that much work to convert to 59 Bassman.
Now dismantled into something else.
Jeff Beck uses 2 of these on stage, but they are highly modified

[Seegs]

here is the add with a good amout of pics and info on the amp

http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/msg/3693163128.html

i have heard the opposite that these are almost identical to the BF fender in sound. and often or sometimes better. and i would agree with that this amp does have some nice tone. i might change the speaker out to a alnico form the ceramic it has now.

[Cups]

Looks to be nicely built. Not a clone but looks to have some cool tweaks. It's a low powered tweed twin variant. Looks like input 2 has the a "linked" feature.

[HotBluePlates]

I've seen a 57 tweed twin RI that is like the 5E8A, but not one with a single GZ34 (unless the prior owner just unplugged both 5U4Gs and plugged in 1 x GZ34?)

With only a pair of 6L6's, 2 5U4's aren't really needed, except for low voltage drop in the rectifier (a single 5U4 easily handles the current of a pair of 6L6). It looks like the 5AR4 was introduced in 1956, explaining why the early amps couldn't use a single 5AR4 for low voltage drop.

I'm guessing the builder wanted the 2x 6L6 format, but not 2 octal sockets for rectifier tubes.

[tubeswell]

My bad - reading '57 tweed twin' in the OP's initial post, I thought he was meaning the RI.

[Seegs]

i was able to talk to the builder today, he said the guy i bought it from wanted the tweed sound but alot of other things the tweed couldn't do. SO this is very loosely based on the tweed twin. with tweeks everywhere. either way i am very impressed with the clean headroom the super warm fendesque tone and build quality of this amp. the tone controls really control the tone and for 40 watts i can get very usable tone at a very reasonable volume. over all i am impressed. i am tempted to have it gone through and checked. it was giged 3-5x a week and practiced on every night for a couple hours. so it has seen some use in the year it's been around.

would using NOS WGB tubes be worth the 150 on a matched set? or wouldn't i notice the difference. right now it has JJ's

[drew]

My 2¢: if you like the way it sounds, and there isn't any smoke coming out of it, leave it alone.

[HotBluePlates]

I always hear more difference with a preamp tube change than an output tube change.

The exception is generally if you're comparing the distorted tones of different output tubes. That's often different, but clean tone differences are harder to discern.

[6G6]

^ What Drew said. ^