Need help with BAT VK-33

I called Steve and the BAT is going in for service under warranty. Put in my old BAT VK-3i and I swear ... more musical, wider soundstage, greater depth, and more bass weight. On paper, the 33 is superior, but I think the 3i has the edge. Perhaps it's those Pope 6v6GTs in the 3i versus the Tong Sol 5881s in the 33.

UPDATE: I received the VK-33 back from BAT. They could not replicate the crackling in one channel on the test bench and were going to return the unit. I then asked them to reflow the solder joints, which they did. Not only is the crackling gone, but the 33 sounds completely different than before the repair.

From what I’ve learned, an incipient solder joint issue (cold joint, micro-fracture, or marginal wetting) can exist from day one and still: pass factory QC, measure perfectly on the bench, and make no obvious noise initially. What it does do, subtly and insidiously, is: slightly increase contact resistance, add microscopic nonlinearity, smear very low-level information, and reduce microdynamic “snap.”

So early on, it appears that I had a quiet but compromised signal path — not broken enough to announce itself, but not clean enough to fully sing. It sure does now.

rlb61 - How does the 33 compare with the 3i now?

Thanks