Blue Hawaii tube amp


What brand would you replace the tubes with and where to get them? Thanks
128x12826mo18pts

Showing 2 responses by larryi

When I got my Blue Hawaii, a good friend came over with several sets of vintage El 34's and 6CA7's.  I think one nice sounding pair was an xf3 tube, but, its been a while so I may be wrong.  I ended up liking a quad of Telefunken EL 34's, so that is what my friend gave me (I had a choice of any of the tubes he brought over).  The have, so far, been working out well for me.  I use them with Stax 007 mk1 headphones.
For my particular taste, the 009 is a bit too bright and analytical sounding; the 007 is better in that regard.  But, the 009 goes substantially deeper in bass, is more efficient and can play louder than the 007, so there are trade-offs involved; I chose to stick with the 007.  I really like the Dan Clark Audio Voce electrostatic phone with the Blue Hawaii--it is a smooth sounding phone that is quite open sounding without too much brightness (Dan Clark Audio use to be called Mr. Speaker, so you might find discussion of this phone under that name).