Are My Tubes Blown?, how can i tell? Options

[Khaos Keith]

hey guys... im fairly new to guitar amps. i started playing bass and am now switching over to guitar. i was able to start with a marshall half stack as my first set up (hand me downs from my dad haha) but this setup is sooo old, as old as i am and im 22 now haha. so i got a new amp.

tho this isnt a "new" amp, it was a friends and he was getting rid of all his stuff cause he was moving. naturally i jumped right to the opportunity to take some music equipment off his hands haha. i got from him an ampeg tube amp. now i thought it sounded great clean. but the distortion was hooorrrible, i just couldnt get it to sound good so i bought the metal zone distortion pedal to fix that. but why does the distortion on the amp itself not work well at all?

then after sometime, ive played with some people, two of which asked me, "well why doesnt it work? are the tubes blown?" to which i had no answer haha. i ask when how do i know? and they are like "well you can just hear it"... now im assuming i got the amp with blown tubes. so ive never heard what it "could" sound like. so how do i know? could the tubes be blown? and is this fixable? and how can i find out without just buying new ones?

thanks for the help guys this would really be great to get an answer for haha

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

Don't miss today's free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

Don't miss today's free blues, jazz & country licks. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!