Glad to hear that modern tubes can sound great. I listen to a DIY 6V6 with RCA's but they won't last forever.
Do clothes make the man?
This post is directed at all you golden oldies out there who are old enough, or in a rare case, educated well enough to be aware of the question the title asks.
I bought a used set of Quicksilver Horn Mono amps looking for some tube magic for my efficient speakers. I was less than impressed by what I heard. Let's just say the sound was as flat as a day old Doctor Pepper.
I changed the clothes on these little amps by installing a new set of Chinese made Svetlana El34. Omg, I now have a new man in front of me. The sound is what I expected originally, but it was totally suppressed by the unbranded Viva Tubes it came with.
The moral of the story? The tubes make the amp like the clothes make the man. Be aware though that you can't get by with putting lipstick on a pig.
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Funny i remember going to the local drug store with my Grandfather and testing tubes.I worked in a electronics firm in 1970...They had so many tubes ,but tube were going away and power amps took over.With the price of times now,who would of thought they would still be around.I feel tube amps are great...you don't need 100 wpc....20 to 30 is fine. |
@markw1951 I will let these modern tubes break in and see if I am satisfied, but I won't be because I think there are some NOS waiting for me out there somewhere. The good news is that this very simple and inexpensive amp lets me spend a little more for some great tubes and I still will have arrived at my destination with a bargain fare. |
Many years ago when I had big, wonderful tube amps and a tube preamp, I hadn’t yet learned about rolling tubes. In the last 10 years, however, in my two home office systems (one headphone only; the other headphones + speakers/sub), I’ve done fairly extensive rolling of tubes in headphone amps and the NOS DACs I have that use tubes in their outputs. And I can attest that high quality NOS tubes sound as different from each other as people look from one another. It’s that simple. Sometimes it takes 3 or 4 tries to find a tube (or matched pair) that completely locks in and synergizes with the component in question. Speaking of Reflektors, I was unaware of these tubes until recently. I have a wonderful NOS DAC, the Lab12 DAC1 Reference 1, which uses a matched pair of 6922s in the output. I got very good sound with a pair of Amperex Bugle Boys, then with a pair of JAN 7308s. One of my headphone pals was kind enough to send me a pair of 1975 Voshkod Reflektors. I put them in the DAC and am getting easily the best sound ever with them. The other tubes sounded very, but the Voshkods simply take it higher; they lock in with this DAC. It’s easy hear this, particularly on the speaker & sub (vintage KEF 103.2s + JLAudio e110). |
@desktopguy Coincidentally, I own the same dac and enjoy it a lot. I tried a different 6922 and didn't notice any difference. Now you have given me another path for experimenting. Thanks. BTW, I also have the Benchmark Dac 3 with all of its correctness and find that it works very well when I run the output through the tube pre and power amp. Fun, huh. |
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