Switchblade 50 combo V1 (non tsc)

Does anyone still have one ? I have had mine since 2007 and it’s been unused for a few years cause it needs re tubing and a new speaker ..
Just curious what Tubes people have used and how they went about Biasing?
Did you have it done by a pro ? I am not sure that a local shop will know what to do with this amp! Any other things you have done to keep the amp serviced and up to date?  I miss gigging with it and it’s probably the best amp I’ve ever owned and gigged with solid for a decade ...

I just put some Tad Preferred series EL34B, and Tad 7025 S Selected preamp tubes in both V1 and V2. I'm running it into a Port City OS Wave loaded with a Jensen Blackbird, and ET90. I don't much care for the ET90 on it's own but it sounds damn good when the Blackbird is taking over the sound. I love the 7025, I also tried the Tad ECC83 selected in V1, paired with a Sovtek 7025 12AX7WA, in V2. Those two were pretty good sounding. I had tech that tried to fix the broken output capacitor by hiding the sound with two dull (in my opinion) JJ ECC83s. Seems like amp repair guys always want to put those tubes in my amps. I had two different guys put them in the Switchblade. Not sure why but I like the brighter frequencies being present not dull.

I only did this because I didn't buy two Jensen blackbirds. I paired the it originally with the Tornado, which is a very bassy and really has a rounded top end. I currently have that Tornado at a shop and I'm hoping they can fix it.

The Tad S selected is pretty bright and chimey which I found works really well with the Dark tone that I get with the Switchblade. This combo really sounds amazing in my opinion.

I'm really thinking of selling my Coreblade which I've had nothing but trouble with finding a good tones out of the Ultra channels. I believe they are way compressed, and may only really work ok with a 4x12 cab of which I don't have. I mean to test this at a friends house who has many 4x12 cabs to try in the near future.

I bought a Quad Stage Bias Pro Mq13, but using it is not a easy thing to do. You have to tare the amp down and pull out the metal chassis. I had tried years ago to do this because I had a really bad noise floor, and taking it to techs, well they called themselves techs, but they didn't fix the issue. The biggest issue I had was just getting the plastic caps off the handles. I had to use a really small thin flat head screw driver. Once you finally get those caps off you can take the handle screws that are also screwed into the metal chassis. Once you get the chassis out you don't really have much length on the speaker wire to get the chassis that far away from the speaker, which obviously would be better if you could extend the speaker cable, which gives you more room to work. The noise floor and octave low noise on the very tiny strings was do to the fact that one of the two output filter caps legs had broken off from the circuit board.

I made the mistake of having the chassis sitting up on a on a plastic part of a handheld vacuum I had tore down. I did this because the power cable had to be compensated for, and this put the chassis on a angle. This plastic part slipped out and hit too of the middle power amp tubes and broke off the plastic center positioning key of the two center tubes. I bought four Tad Preferred series power tubes, but did later managed to fix the tubes with some high temperature steel epoxy. I haven't yet tested the tubes though:).

Biasing is doable but at a cost of the meter. I think I spent somewhere in the neighborhood of a 120 (I might be off a bit on that price) for the meter and two probes. You can buy the probes and use them with a multi meter as well, which makes it much cheaper.

You can get the Switchblade 100 service manual online with a little looking so the 50 service manual I would think could be out there as well. That would help you figure out if you want to dig in to fixing it yourself.