Speaking of the 5e3's do you make your clones
completely stock, or mod them in any way. I prefer to
do mine with the 'bright' channel stock, and do a few
thigs to the 'normal' channel myself, so to get the true
TD sound, yet achieve a variance of something a little
more 'modern'

Now if you put the first leg toward the output stage,
and the second toward the preamp, and the third to
goround, no matter where you have the voulme set, the
other channel will see that pot as 1meg to ground...
Made that mistake before a while back... and with a
5e3 not using mixer resitors, it's VERY easy to do it
(the mixer resistors would keep that from happening to
some extent)

I think octal tubes sound pretty good, especially as
driver stages. One bummer - the larger a tube is, the
greater the chance that it will be microphonic. You
might want to go with a 12AX7 or 5751 in the first gain
stage and octal from there out. Another option: Groove
Tubes makes octal-to-9-pin adaptors, so you can put in
the octal sockets and try both. One of my customers
has a tweed Deluxe that he's been using the adaptors in
for about 8 years now, and they've worked fine.
 
Ray Ivers
RA.G.E. Electronics

Ray is pretty much on the mark Tim!  I love octal
preamp tubes. I usually use the RCA's as they are the
most consistant and typically not microphonic.
 
I prefer the 6SL7 myself. As Ray said there are two
seperate cathodes where the 6SC7 only has one. 
 
Trace

"The 6SL7 sounds fatter clean"
Steve, That's my experience too, I have an old Gibson
that I rebuilt similarly to yours, it has 2 6v6 in parallel
(actually I mostly used the "super SE" scheme at
Angela). It's my first real experience with rebuilding an
amp. It originally had .047uf coupling caps and the 2
VERY old 6v6gt's that were in it when I got it. At low
levels it the biggest fattest sound (an old 15" Altec
helped) I've heard and a raunchy, flabby (but good!)
cranked tone. I haven't compared a 12a?7 in this amp,
but I'm convinced the 6sl7 is a big part of that tone.
Had that same tube in there 1 1/2 years and no
microphonics yet. I don't gig a lot (1 or 2 times a
month) and don't throw the amp around. I believe
Trace mentioned that the microphony that could
develop is related to the tube being more delicate, and
not tolerant of banging around.

Using 130K on the plate is about right. Most of the
designs I've seen have high plate resistors. The tube
only has a gain factor of 70 where as a 12AX7 has a
GF of 100.
 
Like I was saying earlier, the RCA's seem to be the
best way to go. I've had nothing but good luck with
these.
 
Trace

 I tried a bunch of different
6SL7s, and the best sounding by far were the JAN
6SL7WGT made by Sylvania with brown bases.

I just looked at the ampage version of hte schematics
for the 5e3, and noticed that it shows a .1uF cap
between the input of the splitter stage. The fender
schematics have this cap unlabelled, BUT the parts
layout show a .022uF cap, as does the Hoffman board.
Did fender use different values at different times, or is
there a misprint? .... .022uF is what you want.
You could even use a .01uF.
Bruce

MHO, I would not use an 12AT7 in a tweed deluxe in
any position. The 12AY7 is smooth and vintage
sounding. The 12ax7 again may be too much for the
6v6's but works great if you switch to 5881/6L6'. I like
a 5751 personally, with a good 12ay7 as the runner up.

as another side note, a good substitute for the 12ay7 is
a 12av7 (12ay7 has a gain of 41, whereas a 12av7 has
a gain of 40, which is close enough for rock and roll,
and a hell of a lot cheaper!)

I'm pretty sure these used linear pots for both volumes
& the tone knob; yeah it comes up quick (I think that
was the idea!) Old Bassman & early Marshalls were
the same way.

 the tone was too murky on my
homebrew 5e3. The solution was experimenting with
the 1st stage coupling cap. I fiddled with a .22 & .47
before settling on a .33 sprague. Mind you, I really like
the deluxe's clean tone so I wasn't going for a
screaming distortion monster. The bass is still deep, but
tight. Also with the .33, the tone knob is pretty
centered

Bruce,
 
I remember you suggesting that 680p in a previous post
a while back. I think you also recommended reducing
the brite channel's 1st stage coupling cap from .1u to
something like .01u or .022u. Can you refresh me on
exactly what that change was? I definitely need to
reduce the bassiness in my homebrew 5E3.

I.E...... Use a star ground method for grounding instead
of the chassis. Bump up the 16uf/450V PS caps to
20uf/450V for a little extra noise filtering. Use shielded
wire for all your grid inputs and signal runs to any pots.
Twist your filament wires super tight and keep them
away from as much as possible.

But the bottom line is, a 3K to 5K 2 watt dropping
resistor, in the stock position of the B+ rail, is
controlling the current to the screens anyhow. 
So, I guess I'm saying, I don't think it really needs the
extra resistors there unless you are trying to cheat with
high voltage to the plates.
But, use them if it makes you feel better.
Bruce