I have a Ibanez TSA30 Combo amp that is starting to make sounds that make me guess that it is time to change the stock tubes out for new ones. I have loved playing this amp a lot. I have never changed tubes out by myself before, or biased an amp, but have started to read as much as i can online about it. And everyone i know usually just takes it to a tech to be changed and biased. I believe that my amp needs to be biased if i am not mistaken. I thought i would post this here and ask about some things and see if anyone had any experience with this to share some information from experience. I don't live close to anyone who can really help me with this stuff, and have been wanting to learn about doing things like this for a while now. This year i am trying to learn more about being able to maintenance and do various repairs/upgrades on my gear (with amps, pickups, etc.). I would like to share this information with others here and possibly help people that are interested in these things once i can slowly gain this experience myself. So thank you in advance for any help or sharing thoughts. I really appreciate it and will try to share this will other people that are interested as well.
For the biasing, i know that i will need 1.) a multimeter and 2.) a bias probe. Eurotubes makes a bias probe that is pretty cheap to connect into a multimeter available for order online, but i didn't know what the cheapest options were for ordering a multimeter. Any suggestions? Is there anything that i should stay away from? Also with the Biasing, i am unclear about how to figure out what the numbers should read for the bias. If somebody understands this well, i would be thankful for someone to explain it to me a little bit more.
For the tubes themselves, i am considering using the EHX 12AX7 ECC83 and EHX 6L6GC, mainly because they are still being manufactured and are easily available for me. Do anyone have experience with these, and how have they worked for you?
Also, I am aware of the safety concerns about working on something like an amp. But any advice or forewarning about anything people thinks is important would be greatly appreciated. Like i said, this is my first time working on something like this, and i do not have any ego in relation to listening to what people have to say. All help and thoughts will be really great.