Saturday, May 7, 2011

Email from Italy - Mission Chicago 32-20 Amp

Ciao Rick,

just a brief note to let you know that this amp is really great; Bruce Collins did a wonderful job; apart from the cosmetics (that I like), the amp is very flexible and this is the feature that I like best; today I received some tubes I bought to try a few substitutions; I swapped the rectifier with a 5Y6GT and the 6L6s with a pair of EH 6V6; as expected the power decreased proportionally but the tone became deep brown (too much for my taste !!); however, it is interesting with fixed bias, deep off and pre-amp switch in "no boost" position; then I tried the original GZ34 with a pair of tung-sol 5881 RI and ... wow ... big power and organic crunch; using this pairing the deep switch really works (night and day) and sweeping the tone controls I achieved great tone results; this amp is a winner, I don't understand all the negative discussion about you, mission amp etc. This amp is versatile, sounds good and is under-priced for its cathegory.

Thanks for introducing me to this amp


Gianandrea

You're welcome, Gianandrea. I haven't tried the 5881 tubes in the amp, but I surely will now! The Tung Sol RI tubes are among my favorites; nice warm tone.

As for the negative discussions... It's mindless noise from those who feel a deperate need to defend their own purchases. I ignore it.

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