Which specific tubes does Vai use in his Legacy?

[bkornaker1977]

to be honest, i really think steve doesnt give a damn about tubes. Of all the amps he used ( carvin, marshall, soldano, bogner, etc....), they all come stock with something different. And yet the way he plays all these amps sound "Vai'ish".

Hes the "plug in, ...and play yur guitar!" kind of guy.

As far as my legacy goes, i didnt care for the stock tubes either.......which many tube freaks and tone mongers all understand that stock tubes really arent that great. They are basic workhorse tubes that outlast the amps warrenty so there isnt any problems ( like the sovtecks and most russian tubes).

Steve knows he will sound "good" what ever tube is in there, el34, 6l6, various 12ax7's.......it dont matter to him.

But i did change my tubes to Ruby el34BSTR, 12ax7-M's and NOS RFT 12ax7's. and i still am tring to sound as good as Vai does........

[Van]

Interesting to see how this works using a singlecoil only axe.

I presume Steve soundchecked the prototypes using mainly Jems.

Care to run your 7v through that setup and call in the results?

I play the clean channel a lot more than Vai does and also I feel tube testing is more easy to conduct on the clean channel than with a distorted channel but sure, I'll soon post my JEM7VWH/Lead channel findings...

[mcclano]

Does steve really use his Carvin the most?

[Jeroen]

Does steve really use his Carvin the most?

Yes.

[Drew]

Van- great read on the tube testing. You should have just done that in the first place and saved yourself the agony.

Tone is incredibly subjective, of coruse, so there's no "right" answer, but I've been meaning to pick up a bunch of preamp tubes and do some swapping to see what I liked (Mesa Nomad, not legacy- sorry, never really got comfortable with the "marshall" school of tone, and this thing's like a Mark-IV with a touch more aggression- score), but it'd kinda slipped my mind in the last year or so.

I'm digging the tone of my current setup, but, well, tweaking is so much FUN...

-D

[toz]

I was looking for the same answer. Disappointing to see so many replies without an answer to the original question. He might have reasons to do otherwise on tour, but I can not believe he doesn't have a preference at all, that doesn't sound like Vai to me. And that was the simple original question, which has not been answered at all.

[molgolsonden]

I'm still using the GTEL34R's from the original Legacy-2009