Wuddup kids, I'm new here but figured I'd chime in.
I have had a 6505+ for over 3 years now, and about a year ago I decided I was kinda bored with it.
I'll say in stock form, it's a great metal amp as ling as you're not looking to swoon the ladies with underwear-moistening cleans and and impress tone-snob buddies with it. But by the same token, with a few bucks in the right places and some self-educating, you can make these amps sound pretty awesome.
Personally, I bias-modded mine, currently running the power tubes at about 40ma, which helped take a lot of the fizzy sounding crap out of the tone and tightened up the bottom end a lot. But my BIGGEST changes came from when I started messing around with the preamp section. And, in what is probably sacrilege to most metalheads - I actually ended up putting a 12au7 in my V1 slot. (Believe it or not, it came from an old Hammond Organ, it's a 1960's UK-made Mullard 12au7). That, in combination with 3 older Sylvania 12ax7's, a JJ ECC83, and a Sovtek LPS, and I finally got a USEABLE distortion tone out of this amp that I'm in love with.
Some interesting things - the "clean channel" is actually SPARKLING clean, it's not quite Fender-clean but it sounds
worlds better than it used to. the 12au& sucked so much gain out of the preamp section that, even on the lead channel, I need the pregain cranked to 9 to get that gnarly, 5150-kinda tone back. But the great thing is that all that hashy, noisy shit is GONE. It has all the distortion and sound of a 5150 without the static, you can hear every string ring out and it really sounds great. Had LOTS of compliments on it.
The only downside is that, without Active pickups & some kind of boost, the lead channel doesn't provide enough gain on it's own to really sustain single-string notes for a long while, you can't just pick one note and let it scream for 5 minutes, lol. So, if you do a lot of high-gain flashy lead guitar stuff, that particular combination might not work out for you. (Also, you've got to be much more precise with your squeals because if you don't bang 'em just right, they fart out and make you look like a bitch.
Either way, my stage settings with this setup usually put my lead channel pregain at about 9.5, Lows at 7, mids at 5, highs at 7, and postgain at just under 3, and I think it sounds awesome. I wish I had some soundclips for you but I lack the recording skills to record real guitars well, lol.
For what it's worth, I have a couple tunes on Soundcloud @
www.soundcloud/cheesebone , but those are just DI guitars with plugins.
And, of course, the cabinet you're using has a lot to do with overall sound.
