Tubes


I have recently come upon a tube amp a yaqin mc 13-s. I have been reading up a bit on tubes and different things to get better sound. I have asked some questions about speakers on here and received great feedback and its all very much appreciated, you guys who gave me your best input thank you. 

I paired my yaqin with a pro-ject tube box s2. Prior to purchasing the pro-ject preamp I came across a shiit lyr 2 and used it for a short period, unfortunately I'm not into headphones and it didn't pair well in my system the volume just want there because it's not really a preamp it's a headphone amp. Long story short it had ecc88 orange globe amperex tubes and that thing sounded smooooootthhh. 

So I have a few questions?
1. Should I change all the tubes in my main amp to matching tubes? It uses qty 4 (6ca7's or el34b's), qty 2 (12ax7's) and qty 2 (12au7's) for example if I were to use tungsol 12au7's should I use tungsol for the 12ax7's and 6ca7's or could I use gold lions for the 6ca7's? Does it really matter?

2. How big of a difference does it really make changing preamp tubes? like I said earlier the schiit really sounded great and I could only attribute it to those tubes but correct me if I'm wrong? I didn't have any other tubes to try.

Thoughts and opinions are all welcome and appreciated. Once again thank you all for the advice.
gguy767

Showing 2 responses by bsmg

12 tubes total in my system; about $2100 in the lot. All of them are at least forty years old and have been in operation in their current service since 2012; replaced one EL34 in that time and it was over fifty years old. 
Your amplifier uses a similar tube complement as mine other than the AU7s. As for having all your tubes by the same manufacturer, no, it's not necessary, or even recommended. My 4 EL34's are Holland dual D getter dated 1957, 1960(2) and 1961. The small signal tubes I now use are 80's vintage Tesla ECC803S for the 12AX7 slots and 60's vintage Telefunken ECC801S for the 12AT7 slots. I've tried several others but this arrangement is my favorite so far.