F-50 tone & Speaker

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KA1J

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Hi, my first post in the forum, so, hello.

I've been an acoustic musician since 1970. I've learned the flatpicking style and most everything I've done over the years reflects that. Recently I decided to work on fingerpicking & bought a 2017 remake of Chet Atkins 1959 Gretsch with TV Jones Classic Humbucker pickups, I also found a clean F-50 at a good price. My goal is to find a sound which lends to soloing, some Chet tone as well as some Les Paul tone. The 2nd channel will give any distortion I'm likely to want when I play rock. The "clean" sound is what I'm aiming for. I'm not looking to gig anymore, I'm looking for something to enjoy at home so increased volume is of no interest at this point.

I have a nice selection of 12AX7 type preamp tubes left over from my home stereo tube search some years back and I found a combination of 60's & 70's NOS tubes that are to me, ideal in the F-50, giving individual note separation and a balanced tone across the fingerboard. I know Mesa likes the idea of using their selected tubes but all the currently produced tubes I've heard don't have the richness of the original tubes. I matched the NOS tubes with a TV-7D/U. I also picked up some matched Mesa 454 finals and they really helped the tone over the Electro Harmonix 6L6EH that came with the F-50. I have a set of matched NOS Phillips 415 that I'm looking forward to trying out to see if that is a benefit but I want to first get familiar to the sound that's there at the moment before checking the 415's out.

So... while I'm not feeling the immediate need to get a different speaker as the Black Shadow C90 is sounding pretty, I know I'll eventually want to have the most ideal speaker in it for Jazz & pure tone in the F-50 and I'd appreciate some suggestions on what options I should look into.

Thanks for any thoughts & suggestions.
 
You will want to replace the C90 with a Celestion G12T-75.
People will tell you that's a bad idea.
They'll say it's a Marshall speaker.
They may be right about it being associated with Marshall amps but they will be wrong about it being a bad idea for your purposes.
One of the reasons it works well in a Marshall amp is the same reason it will work well for your needs.
It has a tight and punchy bottom end and it tames the highs while at the same time not imparting any of the specious artifacts given by other speakers purporting to accentuate the lows ..... like the TeleTubby and others along that line.
Perfect for a guy looking to improve his jazzy tones.
 

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