ARC Select Worth Price?

Upscale audio burns tubes in for 72 hrs then matches them.

AR needs tightly matched output tubes to perform at best.

Upscale would be fine

I have a AR 610T amp

AR factory wants 12K for a tube set. 48 tubes

Upscale sounds like a safe bet for my immediate needs. Thanks to all for the detail and reassurance.

I did get a response from Upscale. He said to buy ARC select only if you have Audio Research Equipment and that these tubes are selected to pass higher standards so to hold up better in ARC equipment. To that effect. 

I did get a response from Upscale. He said to buy ARC select only if you have Audio Research Equipment and that these tubes are selected to pass higher standards so to hold up better in ARC equipment. To that effect. 

I wonder what ARC would say about the guys dropping 6N6 tubes in place of 6N30 (6H30) for Reference series preamps, to get a different sound :o 

I’ve also heard of folks rolling in different types than 6550 for the regulator tubes. I’ve heard EH KT90 is actually the best, but you have to run lid-off due to its height. I’ve personally used Gold Lion KT88 (Russian) and it worked great. 

AR factory wants 12K for a tube set. 48 tubes

Yikes! $250 per Russian tube. That’s a nice racket. Frankly, traditional tube circuits tend to be very forgiving, and I have to question the engineering that makes a requirement of extremely stringent tube matching. Also, it sort of blows my mind that Upscale's most premium tube option is relatively the "budget" choice.

I am not a tube roller in general, at least not for Audio Research equipment. I know Audio Research has put tremendous design effort into achieving the exact sound you get with the stock tubes and changing tubes changes the sound. I bought Audio Research for the exact sound I get.

 For more generic sounding equipment or less expensive I would consider tube rolling. And have in my PrimaLuna for example and my Woo Head amps. 

Having said all of that. One of my audiogon friends tried and liked a NOS General Electric 6550... which goes in the power supply circuit on the ARC Ref preamp, phono stages and DAC. So, just for fun I tried one. There was not a huge difference... but it was just a tad warmer more tubey. Not a lot... subtle. So I kept it and put one in my DAC. But as I said, not a huge change. If I had really trebly / hot speakers it would probably make a bigger difference.