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I've been using my Egnater Tweaker at band practice and playing my Triwatt exclusively for the past few months. Today I fired up the sIII and...WOW! I forgot how rich and full the tone of this amp is! I can't believe I've neglected playing it.

I'm wondering if the Triwatt has tired tubes or something, I loved it when I completed the build but now it doesn't seem to have the harmonic richness of the sIII. It's only 6 months old, but I've put a lot of hours on it.

The 18W is a great amp, very rich and harmonically complex as you noted.

Maybe your ears aren't use to the new tones if you been using the older amps so much. Maybe they seem kinda stale and boring in comparison to this "new" 18W sound.

That said rolling some tubes in an amp is always fun. I'd try that, maybe one of the preamp tubes is dying.

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It's more usually the power amp tubes that start to lose their liveliness after a lot of playing. So I would probably start there. Maybe get some a pair of good NOS 6V6s.

Having said that, and as most folks know I'm a huge fan of both the Marshall 18Ws, as well as the Triwatt, which I had a hand in the design of. So here's the thing, the 18W has a unique harmonic richness due to the EL84 power stage with no negative feedback. So IMO it will always have that edge in harmonic richness over a Hiwatt/Triwatt. On the other hand the Triwatt has the advantage of being a very versatile and tight, pro-players' amp. So both amps have their strong points and are great to play in their own way.

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Great tones come in small glass jars!

I replaced the power amp tubes tonight with another set of Tung - Sol tubes, biased them the same (~20ma). The difference is hard to imagine. The richness returned, I turned the master volume back down as the amp played much louder. These things deteriorate over time and I didn't realize how much it had faded away. Near as I can reckon, the tubes have between 250 and 300 hours on them. We'll see how long this set lasts.

Maybe I should've posted this in the Triwatt forum.

That's very interesting to know. 300 hrs is not that much really so I'd really like to know how this set fares in the Triwatt.

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Stephen
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