New KT150 tubes?

Hey Bif, don't sweat it. The post above from Tsushima1 states that he ordered KT150's from Upscale and put them in his REF150 with no apparent issues. All is good.

You can not order KT150's from ARC because Kalvin will ask what amp you want to put those in and if you say a REF150 he'll tell you that the amp will blow up and take the house with it. You know why? Imagine each owner of a REF75-150-250-750 calling into ARC for matched pairs/quads/octets of KT150's. If they commission the use of the KT150's in those amps they will likely be "stuck" with a BIG stash of KT120's that no one would want and to make matters worst, most of their older amp models won't "sport" the use of the KT120. I don't think that ARC want people to trade their REF150 for the new GS 150. They just want to keep their little precious KT150's for that new GS series.

Having said all that, you can now call Kevin and get a matched set of Octet for your REF150, put them in and enjoy the music!!!! If you wait for ARC's blessing on the 150's the KT200 will be out.

Smoffat, let me be clear. I am not interested in ARC's precious cache of KT-150s. I understand that ARC will charge $200 a tube. I have no intention of paying $1600 for 8 tubes ... period. Instead, I will probably buy 2 quads from Upscale Audio. Upscale is charging about half that.

I only want to know one thing and one thing only. Will the KT-150 damage or prematurely age the Ref 150? That is it.

Oh ... and as far as Tsushima is concerned, he is in no position to know the answer to my question. Just because the KT-150s presently "work" in his Ref 150 is not responsive to my question.

OTOH, if I learned that the innards of the GS-150 were identical to the Ref 150, then I could fairly infer that the KT-150 would do no harm.

Will the Ref 150 work with KT 150 tubes, probably yes, but is it optimized to be used with KT 150's, probably not. That is why they developed the GS 150.

Brf ... you touch on my very question. How does the GS-150 differ from the Ref 150, save the fascia and the tubes?

Not getting any definitive answer to my question. In the absence of any information to the contrary, all I can see is that the GS-150 and Ref 150 share identical specs ... on paper. I concede that published specs do not speak to whether other important components have changed ... but so far, no information in the public domain ... yet.

Whoa!!! Pause it there, please. @Smoffatt, would you care to re-read my post of the 12th Inst, perhaps paying a little more attention to the punctuation.

@Bifwynne, please note the above.
For my part, I am no stranger to frustration with Obfuscation Central myself, remember 'Capacitor Gate'?.

Whilst recently discussing the GS150 with an ARC sales rep and the main ARC distributor for Europe, I asked whether they had utilized the stock output transformer from the Ref150 line, merely deigning to output the 16 Ohm winding? I was assured that the OPT's as sported on the GS line, had been the subject of an re-design to the winding spec.
They could not elaborate any further, however, one might hypothesise this to indicate larger 8 and 4 Ohm winding sections over the Ref OPT?!?!?