Tube Swap for Blackstar ht-dist

[shibby]

Dear softies,

I intend to do a tube swap for a blackstar ht-dist on my own. A few questions before i attempt to do this for the 1st time.

1)Can it be done by someone with no experience of tube swapping (me) ?
2)Where can i purchase the tube?
3)What tubes are recommended for this pedal?

I am aware that i can send it to woodworks where they can do the tube swap. But i would like to learn and do it myself and even experiment with different kind of tubes to get different tones. I have read up some articles on tube swapping. It does not seem to be impossible to be done by someone with no experience. Has anyone tried swapping any blackstar pedal tubes before? Please do share some pointers with me yea.

Thanksss!

 

[J.custom]

Why do you want to do a tube swap? Unless the tube in there's blown, I suggest you don't swap it out because the difference in tone is just very small.

Different story if you're swapping tubes for an amp.

 

[shibby]

It has been close to two years since i used this pedal w/o changing the original tubes. I might be wrong but a normal tube lifetime is about a year right (average use of 1hr/day). So i thought it is about time to swap the tubes. =)

 

[penta-tonic]

testing testing

 

[J.custom]

well not really, tubes can last for years if you take care of them. Plus there isn't a high current flowing through the tube in the pedal, so it's lifetime would be really long as compared to a tube in an amp.

 

[Rohai]

well not really, tubes can last for years if you take care of them. Plus there isn't a high current flowing through the tube in the pedal, so it's lifetime would be really long as compared to a tube in an amp.

speaking off which whats the general lifespan for tubes in an amp?

 

[mightyboy88]

Hi, i own a distx and i swapped the tube.

I replaced it with a tungsol 12ax7 bought from a shop at darlington sqaure, near sim lim square.

I bought the pedal second hand, loaded with a jj tube, i thought it was abit noisy, made some research online and decided to do the tube swap. After swapping i find that the tone became warmer, pedal less noisy and the range of eq increased. Yep all these changes are slight changes so maybe its up to you to decide if its worth the 20 plus dollars or so.

As for swapping the tube, it is quite easy as there is no soldering involved.You can actually 1) remove the top cover which overviews the tube 2) pull up the metal clip that is holding the tube down 3) remove the tube by shaking it from left to right slightly while holding the tubepin socket with the other hand, try to be as gentle as you can as the connection from the socket to the pcb is not very strong 4)put in the new tube gently in the same fashion as step 3, try to ensure that the tube fits well in the socket 5) put back the metal clip and the cover and rock on !!

Alternatively you could remove all the knob cover, unscrew the jacks etc the remove the whole pcb from the pedal. This would give you more control in taking the tube out but it would be quite troublesome

Hope it helped. As for tube selection i found that the tungsol 12ax7 worked well for my distx. For the dist, my friend used a tungsol 12ax7 gold pin version(50 bucks) and he said it was great, no hiss at full gain was what he claimed haha

 

[shibby]

Heys mightyboy!

Thanks for the sharing bro! Its really very helpful. appreciate it lots. I did found some info that the jj tubes will make the pedal noisy and that the tungsol works better with the blackstar pedals. I didnt know there is a place selling tubes. Will check out the place at darlington square. =)

Thanks again bro!

 

[mightyboy88]

No worries bro.

Anyway i made a mistake. It is burlington square and the shop is Martin Electronics on the first floor