Tubes for the BAT VK5i

Indeed time.. The bass on the 5i should be anything but light. One of the best attributes of the 5i was its bass. As a former owner, I found the combination of Seimens 7308 gold Pins in the 6( 3 per side) gain stage tubes and the AC shunt 6922(outer L & R tubes) with Amperex 6922PQ. Finally, for the Power supply gain 5881's. The absolute best was(by no small margin either) Tung Sol 5881 NOS. If you can find them by all means get them. They will absolutly kill the stock Sovteks and make the sound so smooth. In fact it was like a different pre amp with them! I also used JAN Philips 6L6 in them and they were better than stock, but not the Tung Sols. Much easier to find though.

The down side of all these upgrades is definately the price tag. New 6922 Sovteks will be better than what you are now hearing anyway. Good luck!-Ken

One more question I didn't get in the first message for some reason is who is a good supplier of older (or new, for that matter) tubes? Any suggestions?

Roland

I was able to get all my NOS tubes here on Agon from various buyers. The best tubes were from "fat_cat"..Mike should be able to help you. Also "sam1104" talk to Sam.
"Guidosmalibu" talk to Vassil. and "zkid" Bob sometimes has nice 6L6's avail. There are the tube stores such as tubeworld and the tube store you can check out.

I've bought tubes here and had great service. Even had 2 go bad 6 months later and he replaced them free. Wasn't his fault and he really took care of me. I have 2 friends and between the 3 of us I've bet we've bought 2-3k worth of tubes from BWS. We've all been happy...

http://www.bws-tube.com/

Roland, check out Kevin @ Upscale Audio, I can't think of a better supplier of tubes. Very helpful and knowledgeable, Kevin will tell you exactly what you need.
Happy listening.........
David