Just be careful. In certain amps the B+ voltage will be raised too high with a solid-state rectifier, and you will start melting power tubes (and possibly transformers) in the process. The blackface Deluxe Reverb circuit is one of these.riantide wrote:Man, I have a 45 watt amp and my bandmates are constantly screaming at me to turn the damn thing down.
Elevate it for sure, you'll be able to hear it better. But if you want it to actually BE LOUDER, you'll need to look into mods probably. If you have a tube rectifier, a solid state rectifier will increase your headroom. You also might want to look into having your amp biased for 6550's as opposed to 6L6's. Those tubes have different breakup characteristics and will stay cleaner a little louder. And they sound cool, they're a little more chimey than 6L6's. At that point you're looking at changing the sound of the amp considerably though, so you might want to hang onto it and get another - louder - amp for playing with the band.
Additionally, the 6550 requires more current from the 6.3v filament tap of the power transformer than does the 6L6 or 6V6. Be sure your transformer is beefy enough to handle it before you go putting 6550s in there. Fender was pretty good back in the BF days about over spec'ing transformers so they would probably be okay, but I wouldn't do it to my own amp, personally.
As always, be careful accepting strangers' advice on internet forums, mine included