Salves For Valves

Jamie Dickson checks in with tone-meister Dan Coggins who shares his tips on getting the best from your valve amp

- Jamie Dickson

As regular readers of this column will know, sometimes we focus on very specific topics and sometimes we meander a bit more freely across the topic of guitar tone. Recently, I picked up the phone to one of the most knowledgeable tone-smiths on the British scene, Dan Coggins. Dan was the designer behind the highly influential Lovetone effects pedals from the 1990s, and today he's a frequent collaborator with ThorpyFX and designer of the Gear Of The Year-winning Dinosaural Cogmeister overdrive. What fewer people may know, however, is that he's also a valve-amp maven with years of meticulous repair and restoration experience under his belt. So while we were chatting, I took the opportunity to draw on his know-how regarding the myths and realities of how to get the most from your valve amp.

We typically see power valves sold in matched pairs - is that crucially important?

"Yes and no. I mean, it's not as crucial as you think. It's only important if failing to do so results in background noise coming up because if [the two power valves] are not equal and opposite in a push-pull arrangement, then they won't reject the power-supply noise or hum. But most amps were designed to - or should be designed to - tolerate a bit of mismatch. I mean, years ago, I bet you Hendrix's output valves weren't all matched in his amps. He probably just replaced them every five minutes because he was caning them so much. But I heard or read somewhere that his favorite Marshall - that he used in many of the studio recordings - was one that still had the original factory KT66s in it, so it was one from, like, early '67 and he used it on a lot of gigs as well. So they obviously weren't changing stuff that often."

Are there any aspects of valve amp tone that are under-appreciated, do you think?