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Supratek Owners Thread

Greetings All - 
It appears that the 26-million-plus view, multi-decade "Preamp Deal of the Century" Supratek thread has been removed. I'm not sure why, but suppose there must be a reasonable explanation.
In any case, on that thread I recently asked whether there might be interest in a "Supratek owners thread" and received some interest. 
The purpose of this thread is for Supratek owners to share the details of their system, ask questions, share information about any tube-rolling they have done, and so forth.
I'll kick us off here with a few details about my system -
ancient Linn LP12 with Ittok arm, Dynavector 17D3 cartridge into Cortese LCR phono stage
Power amp is a fully serviced Innersound Electrostatic amplifier
Quad ESL63 speakers (not USA monitors) or JBL 4430 studio monitors
Digital sources are immature and evolving - ancient Fostex CR300 cd player/burner
DacMagic 100 DAC
Nordost Blue Heaven 75ohm interconnect
Due to the fairly long lengths of speaker wire required in the new listening room, speaker wire is Belden 12 gauge wire designed for low-voltage outdoor lighting systems. 
Next steps - dedicated circuit, new power cords, new interconnects, new wires.
128x128markusthenaimnut
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highstream
204 posts
 
I just got an email for a post by jeony about the Cortese and how well his tube rolling turned out, but I don’t see the post. In any case, in addition to liking the Melz 1578 the best and the Shuguang WE6SN7 Plus next, he mentions the 6922 and E108F. The latter two are not used in the Chardonnay afaik. The back pair are 6N3C. I tried the Tung-Sol 7581A as reputedly the best replacement but ending up sending them back, as I wasn’t sure one of pair was good. In addition, Mick made clear that he doesn’t like the 7581 and didn’t think the regulator works correctly with it. Has anyone had a different experience back there?
jeony
38 posts
 
As Highstream has mentioned above, I've tried a quite few reputable 6SN7 tubes on my new Cortese preamp for last 2 months (Melz 1578, Shuguang WE6SN7 Plus, Sylvania 6SN7W metal base, RCA vt-231 grey glass and the stock EH).
Among them, I like Melz 1578 most for their wide/3D soundstage and air of the music.
Also, I like the Shuguang tubes for their clean and organic sound.
For 6922 and E180F, Mullard tubes replaced them with very noticeable improvement. The Supratek Cortese sounded really good with the stock tubes, but once equipped with good NOS tubes, it sounds amazing to me.
highstream
204 posts
 
jeony, On the cool to warm spectrum, how would you rate the Melz?

For anyone interested, there’s a thread on Steve Hoffman Music Forums, "6SN7 tubes. Could you please put in order from best to worse these NOS tubes?" (links are not allowed on Agon) In particular, there’s a couple of photos of the Melz on page 2. I PM’d the writer and have learned a few more things to especially look out for: 1) a label or appropriate numbers showing legitimacy on the glass, and down below on the metal base an OTH; and most telling, 2) a pair of 5-hole vertical "plates" in front (not the solid ones), and inside them ridged posts (the hole and ridged post seem to go together). That eliminates the 1950’s ones and most or all of the 1960’s. And watching for those characteristics eliminates the counterfeits. Unless one gets lucky, it seems that virtually all the sellers these days are in Russia or thereabouts.
jeony
38 posts
 
For the tubes I tried, I would say RCA and Shuguang are warm, Melz as neutral and Sylvania as cool.

I purchased mine from a Russian seller on eBay. They are 1980 production with 2 lines of 5 holes in each plates with OTH stamp (OTH was told to mean OK for the Russian military use). I know some discussion of reliability of this tube in other discussion forum, but mines are trouble free so far with ~100h on them.
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