Christmas mail deluge, but finally my tubes arrived. The (4) 12AX7s Bugle Boys (NOS early 60s) right out of the box, like Andy said, sound beautiful. I'm lucky, perhaps the owner of my Bel Canto SET 40 wouldn't have sold this amp if he had better tubes. (BTW the 845s were quite inferior to the ones I replaced them with, as well.) I'm going to mail Andy the counterfeit Amperex to see if he can give me the scoop. Just had time to check out an hours worth of some reference tunes. Oooh, is this going to be fun. I'll give myself a few days to amass a new tube vocabulary/referent before I pop in the two 6DJ8 Bugle Boys for the pre. It's going to be a very sweet new year...I'll keep you posted...warren :)
less than 24 hours later:
Who am I kidding? You think I could wait a few days. Put the BBs in the pre. Man o man, is this grand. I'll give you more, when I know more..
less than 24 hours later:
Who am I kidding? You think I could wait a few days. Put the BBs in the pre. Man o man, is this grand. I'll give you more, when I know more..