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hey all
I just picked up the Epi Valve special. Its a Class A 5W tube run into a 10quot; speaker. Overall I'm impressed with the design and quality. its plenty loud at grungy levels.

However, there's a few things I'd like to change, and I wonder if anyone who's been through this sort of process before can help me out.

Is there anything to be suggested that would allow me to hang onto a clean tone at higher volume level before it starts to break up? It happens pretty quick...with the master maxed up, the breakup occurs at around 3 on the gain knob. So the only quot;playable with a drummerquot; volume will be dirty. That's ok, I guess, but I was hoping to be able to also use this for cleans too, at rehearsal and gig levels. Also, I'd like to get a tighter bass, rather than the flabby bass that comes from the stock Epi speaker (model spec's unknown to me).

I'm sort of leaning on a speaker upgrade, but am wondering if I should change tubes as well. For what its worth, I already tried 2 pseudo speaker quot;swapsquot;. I hope these comments help enable any advice to be offered.

First off, I ran it into a 2 x 12 (16 ohm, 100W rating) cab with Jenson C12N. Instantly, there was a significant increase in volume, but not much tone change. Slightly more bass, slightly more tight distortion. Very room-filling sound, so much so that it felt like the sound was coming from everywhere, not just direct from the cab itself. The break-up still occurred at about the same dial levels as when the amp is played as normal. And even at extreme gain/vol, the speakers did not fart out or clip. (Hence, I'm already determined I probably need a speaker upgrade)

Then I ran it into my Rev Kingsnake cab, which is a 12quot; jenson Neo (8 ohm, 100 watt rating). The bass was nice, quite improved over the stock epi, and the breakup occurred at quot;4quot; instead of 3 on the gain knob, but still, that's not very loud in the clean zone. At extreme gain, the speaker did not fart or clip out. Just a nice wash of fuzz.

However, I don't really play with that much gain, and I don't need to base my upgrade selections on making sure the sound stays together with everything on 10, but I wanted to mention it anyway.

So, what course of action is next? I've researched a bit about speakers, and would consider Celestion, Weber, Jenson, and Eminance, based on what I've read/seen. (remember, I need a 10quot;, so my options are a bit more limited than all the selections in the 12quot; category). One common thing between both of my speaker experiments was that I was driving a 100W rating with merely 5W of juice. So do I need to look at low-watt rated speakers (ex, weber makes a 20W 10quot;), and will that enable me to hang onto cleans before the breakup? do I even know what I'm talking about? (no, LOL)

Or should I go right to the tubes and mess around with them? If so, where do we start?

Because life is a journey and its all a big learning experience for me, I prefer to make one upgrade at a time and evaluate the changes one by one. However, all suggestions will be noted and eventually tried until I reach the tonequest I've set before me.

thanks to all who took the time to read this and to offer whatever suggestions you may have. If anyone is thinking about buying one of these amps, and has any specific questions I'd be happy to answer in my best capacity. I've had it for about 2 weeks now, and have been messing around and collecting my thoughts for this inquiry to the forum.

regards,
sabe