To Tube or not to Tube......


For quite some time now I've been thinking about switching from a solid state to a tube power amp. My Threshold T-100 has been real good to me and I do like it, but it's really the only "high-end" amp I've ever owned, so it's all I know. I'm intrigued by the "warm" sound of tubes and do have a tubed phono amp and CD player, but I am by no means well-versed in the sound of tube power amps having never really auditioned one. I know that goes against the prevailing wisdom and I should listen before I buy, but I don't think I will have the luxury of doing that.

That being said, I've gone through about 20 pages of this forum reading about the benefits and detriments of tubed power amps but nothing I've read has swayed me either way. The posts I've read have been informative re: bias issues, reliability, blowing fuses or whatever else might blow up or go wrong with the tubs, etc. So, if I were to go the tube route, I would not want deal with too much of that hassle. At lease I know that the amp I have doesn't have any such issues. That's why I was leaning toward amps like BAT with their auto biasing (I also need balanced inputs), and would want at least 60-100 wpc. I would be willing to deal with adjusting bias so long as it was a relatively simple process.

I figured I would pose my main question to the exerts here (and this I did learn for this forum): given what I already have in my system, what tube amp would be a good match for me? My pre-amp is a SS Threshold, JM Lab speakers with a "minimum impedance of 4 Ohms," EAR 834P phono stage, & Unison tube cd player.
Much appreciated.
ebuzz

Showing 1 response by zaphodbeeblebrox

Tube!

My first tube amps were Jolida 502p power amps and the I moved up to a pair of Jolida 1000p powers amps running bi-amped to my speakers. I have moved on to a pair of Bob Carver Cherry 180m mono blocks.

First, from my experience, biasing is not a big deal. The Jolidas were manual bias but even with me using them for hours on end in my Home theater setup I never had an issue with tube bias. I never blew any fuses and had only one tube failed after probably 3000hrs. The only problem I had was one of my Jolida 1000p (which was very low in serial number) had an issue that when watching a movie at very high volume and if the movie had a particularly loud noise like a single gun shot it would trip only one of the amps, even tho multiple other amps were also hooked up. Jolida replaced it with a brand new one at no charge.

My current Bob Carver Amps are Awesome, and if you can afford them. Would recommend a pair. I have had absolutely no problems with these amps. I have thousands of hours on them. They have a bias system that is not quite auto but you have one knob and a built in meter that adjusts all the tubes at once.

So I would not worry about bias or blowing fuses.

The main negative I can say about Tube Amps is the heat they can generate, when I had my Jolidas I had five stereo tube amps running a Home theater setup. The Jolida but out tons of heat even when listening at a low level. But they Carver amps do not put out anywhere near the heat of the Jolidas. Of course even Solid State True Class A amps put out a lot of heat, thats what the heat sinks are for. So it really might not be a negative after all.

I say go for the Tubes!

I have Tube pre-amp with tube regulated PS, tube DAC, tube amps, heck if I could find a Tube Blu-Ray player I would buy one. I have seen the tube mod that Modwright sells for the Oppo player but I hate the look of those players.