Is there a worthy 6922 presently made?


Why hasn't any tube manfacturer designed a good sounding 6922 tube? The paucity of decent designs only fuels the exorbitant price gouging the tube dealers are doing with NOS 6922/6DJ8.

I think it is pretty universally accepted among tube fans that the Sovtek 6922 is a dependable & strong tube, but a sterile, thin, & dead sounding device. Some have praised the JJ 6922, while others have proclaimed it rather mediocre, and some have blown up their amplifiers, like an ARC owner who burned out parts of his VT-100's circuit board when attempting to substitute the JJ's for the stock Sovteks in the input stage.

Sovtek's owner, New Sensor, has come out with a "new" 6922 in the form of an Electroharmonix 6922, with claims it is significantly better than the Sovtek. But some have said it is nearly the identical tube and sounds nearly identical. Audio Research claims it is a better tube, but.....

Why hasn't Svetlana designed a 6922? Or someone else? We are left with two tubes made by the same manufacturer, and one from Czechoslovakia. That's it! Any thoughts or experiences?
kevziek
The majority of the new tube production is sold to musicians and related gear. The sales of tubes for Hifi are small by comparison. Like audiophiles, many musicians realized the sonic benefits of some NOS tubes and it was just a matter of time until tube manufacturers found it profitable to emulate the qualities of those old tubes. With proper designs, materials, and production techniques, there is no reason why new tubes will not be as good or better than the best of the NOS tubes, if they aren't already.
Without the musician's demand, it's very possible there would be no companies producing new tubes and the NOS supply would have already been depleted.

Newbee, Because of the good results from the new EH6922, I want to also try the JJ E88CC and Ei 6DJ8.
at this time...no !!!

i think alot depends on on the design, the designer may have designed the unit around current new tubes.

what unit is the tubes going into ?

tried the eh(gold pin), jj telsa, sovtek. but the amperex globe/bugle boys, and the dario (7308) blew them away ( pse hl-1 pre-amp)

it i a very rude awakening when you try to pu preimum tubes from a reliable seller ( major sticker shock) this is one reason why i avoided the bat 5vki...too many 6922 tubes. that is why bat and arc moved to the new super tube.

good luck,

mike
I tried the EH -6922 and actually prefer the previous generation Sovtek. The EH did sound warmer to my ears, bass was fuller. But it presented even less dynamics than the standard version. And neither one has the life of the Amperex Orange Globe or Bugle Boy 6dj8.
Eiiiiiiiiich! The EH 6922 has squashed dynamics? So many opinions......hard to draw any conclusions. I certainly don't doubt that Amperexes, Mullards, etc., sound better than current production stuff. I would guess the problem is that everyone wants to cut corners and main concerns are profits. It has been stated previously on this site that the metals and the techniques used on NOS tubes are not implemented by today's tube mfrs. It's time New Sensor, Svetlana and others get their heads out of their asses and learn how to do it right and be willing to spend the money to tool up to do it right.

Perhaps the 6H30 is to be explored. I know many dislike the result of ARC's designs with it. BAT loves it, and perhaps they do a better implementation. Tubes have become a love-hate relationship for some of us for these very reasons.
I've been accused (I think) of being a NOS snob. But look; in the 1950s when the 6DJ8 came into being, it was designed to be used as an RF amplifier for the -then- new UHF TV band. That market was HUGE! Billions and billions of tubes. Companies had the incentive and the means to spend a lot of money on research. Formulas for cathode coatings back then were as closely guarded secrets as the formula for Coca-Cola. Since the market was so huge, tubes being the only game in town, makers of the chemicals for those coatings had an incentive to provide a high purity product to the tube mfrs. We audiophiles may think we are an important market; but we are not. Even so, our market is dominated by the big players like AR who put a lot of price pressure on current mfrs. This can lead to QC issues like vacuum purity. It takes more TIME to achieve a high vacuum and time is money. The 6DJ8, 6922, 7308 family of tubes were designed to be 10,000 hour tubes. A decent pair should last several years. What I have a hard time understanding is why someone would pay thousands of dollars for a piece of equipment and then bitch if he has to pay more than a few bucks for tubes. Sure NOS tubes cost more. But they don't make then like they used to and aren't likely to in the future.