Anyone rolled tubes in an ARC Reference 3 preamp?


Has anyone rolled tubes in an ARC Reference 3 preamp?

What were your results and how much did it cost?
128x128mitch4t

Showing 2 responses by rodman99999

Hate to rain on anyone's parade, but you CAN "roll" the vanilla 6H30's for these: (http://thetubestore.com/russian6h30pdr.html) There are a couple other versions, but that's the hot-rod of this small family right now.
Everyone has different goals, ears and systems. Some systems won't resolve the differences between cables, tubes, etc, and some can't hear, or perhaps don't know how to listen to the various changes that component swaps can make. I've got some Ken-Rad(bottom getter) JAN CKR/6SN7GT's that sound identical to my TungSol(round Plate)JAN CTL/6SN7GT's, BUT- the TungSols give me a few more feet of sound stage depth(as drivers in my Cary mono-blocks). I have no doubt that 6H30 tubes hand picked by Kevin(I recommend his services often) would have performance very close to that of the DR's. BUT- What if he went through a batch of the DR's and hand picked a few? I've owned my BAT VK-D5 for a few years now, and have the bufffer stuffed with six Siemens CCa's(1960's,NOS 3yrs ago). I won't be having the unit upgraded to the Six-Pac/SE for that very reason(I'm too attached to the openess/transparency/ambience recovery/top extension w/o grain, glare or sibilance/solid, well defined bass of my CCa's). I've never found tube rolling to present any problems in the least, having always done my homework in advance. The rewards always have outweighed the efforts by a very wide margin.