huh?
The tubes ARE the amp, as in amplification of the electronic signal. You aren't "pushing" anything. The instrument, say...you bass, is putting out microvolts and, well, I guess microwatts as well. The tubes in an amp are what do the majority of the amplification. If you remove any tubes it's doubtful the amp will work. Why not just turn the gain way up, the volume way down, and fine tune the sound with the volume on the bass?

im wanting to buy this bass/guitar head and hears
what the add says:


For Sale/Trade: Early 70's Rickenbacker 100w 4x6l6
Tube Head

This is quite a rare bird! Although the majority
of the amps manufactured by Rickenbacker in the
70's were solid state, they DID manufacture a
handful of tube amps...of which this is one. There
is practically zero information available for
these amps online - this appears to be a Dual
Showman type design with master volume - 4x6l6 for
100w - very tweakable EQ with tone switches -
MASSIVE iron! Originally offered in 115 or 212
combo form, it is currently housed in a custom
built head cabinet. I have it loaded and biased
with only two 6L6 tubes in the output section for
lower headroom.

As you can imagine, this amp takes pedals like a
champ!

http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/82/dsc00625kg.j
pg


the amp uses 4 6l6 tubes and he only has 2 6l6s
installed for lower headroom.

could i just do this with say a Ampeg tube amp??

here is also an email i got from the seller.....



Yes, the Rickenbacker is all tubes - 2x12ax7 in
the preamp, and 4x6l6 in the power section
(currently loaded with 2x6l6 to lower the headroom
a bit so you can get a little breakup without
making your ears bleed). It is similar to a
Fender Bassman, but capable of getting A LOT
louder like a Fender Dual Showman. The
transformers on this are closer in size to a
vintage Hiwatt, Traynor, or Sunn. Yes, it
functions as both a bass and guitar amp, and has
separate channels for each

I think the remaining tubes would have to work harder if this really does cut the wattage in half.

There are power soaks out there that would allow you to run the amp hard at a lower volume. You might even be able to find the info on making one.

There are amps that have a switch in them to make them operate at lower power - perhaps you could read up on those to see what the switching circuitry does?

Well.... perhaps. I don't know this for fact but my gut tells me this would be like pulling some spark plugs out of and engine. The car will still run but it will have to work harder to run and seems it may create problems down the line since this is not the way the engine was designed to run. And I am well aware that is one long run on sentence but I'm too damn tired to correct it.

Dave

i agree dave

I agree too ... that it was a run-on sentence! :)

I also concur with his;
assessments
analogies
statements!

P.S.
Isn't this a rehash of a
recently asked question ?