Atma-sphere amps best power tubes


This question has been debated before on A-gon but without a clear onclusion. I wonder, is it worth it, to upgrade from stock Russian or China output tubes (6as7g), to American NOS tubes?

It seems that everyone agrees that upgrading the Atma-sphere driver tubes from stock Russian/Chinese to NOS is well worth it. This is my experience also.

I am wondering about changing the output / power tubes too. I wonder if a change to NOS is well worth it also in the output case.

It seems likely, judging from my other equipment testing.

My Audiotailor Jade OTL headphone amp uses 1 6asg7 and 1 12ax7. No surprise - it sounds better with a good NOS 12ax7 compared to Russian/Chinese stock 12ax7.

More surprisingly, it also sounds clearly better with a NOS 6as7g output tube (General Electric US NOS). The improvement is largest with the driver tube but not so much behind with the output tube. Almost 50 50.

A lot of output tubes are involved - 28 tubes in my MA-1 amps. Changing them all is costly, and so I would like to know some user experience before I go into this.
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Showing 1 response by bigboltz

I have to chime in on this....

I just put some Shuguang CV181-Z tubes in my AtmaSphere UV-1 pre. Best 6SN7s I have heard, and by a mile.  CLARITY.  I also run M60s and will be trying to figure out if they'll fit. They are not shaped like typical 6SN7