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winged c 6550c is not good for ref 5se??

I ordered 3 of svetlanan SED winged C 6550c from 'Upscale audio' last week and it was not shipped until today, so i call them to find out what is going on here.
They told me they didnt send it because " This tube is not going to work well with your audio research amp and it will failed almost every time".
Is it right?
brandon1103

Showing 2 responses by bifwynne

bifwynne
2,206 posts
 
Kevin Deal is a pretty honest guy. If he declined to ship the Winged Cs, he had a good reason.

Kevin also sells the 6550 WE, which is the tube ARC is currently uses in the power supply of its Ref 5 SE linestage and other input products.

I was surprised that the Tong Sol 6550 sounded pretty good too.
bifwynne
2,206 posts
 
Veerapaneni ... I'm a coward. I bought 6550 WE tubes from ARC for my Ref 5 SE, Ref CD-8 and Phono PH-8 and they 'ain't' cheep. But even if Kevin Deal found a good batch of original "Winged C" tubes they 'ain't' cheap 'neither.'

If you have a hankering to try rolling, call Kevin Deal at Upscale Audio and ask his advice.

Having said that, I buy all of my 6H30s (platinum grade) from Kevin and never had a problem.

OTOH, I've had mixed results with Upscale's KT-120s. Just seems that when sourced from ARC, they bias much closer (within 1 or 2 mV between set tube and slave). It's been more hit or miss from Upscale. Dunno why??? Maybe he matches pairs using different specs than ARC.
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