A tade more briteness - Jolida 302b. Tubes?

Howard, I could NOT agree with you any more strongly!!!

My Jadis Orchestra Reference was a very good amplifier when I began with it. A silver power cord raised its level of performance by providing me with blacker blackgrounds, lower noise, better bass, more clarity, and more sparkle. The HGA SilverLace upped it even more. And, when I retubed with JJ Blue Glass E34L tubes, it became, in my opinion, a world class amplifier.

Should I have just accepted the performance I got right out of the box? That would have been VERY stupid. For a total outlay of less than $500, in my opinion, I raised the bar of my component from competing with $5000 competition to competing with anything. If I wanted to do that otherwise, I'd need to move into a completely different amplifier, at 2 - 3 times the price.

Glai, I think we agree on the Ei. They certainly are special. Ultimately, I did find Mullard Blackburn tubes to be clearly better than the Ei, but for about $7/tube versus $35 - $50, the value for money is with the Ei in spades. You really have to spend 7 - 10X more to beat them.

I cannot address your Jolida. However, in my Conrad Johnson MV-55, I have evolved my EL-34's from Svetlana to JJ to Electro Harmonix (EL34H) and finally have nice treble!

Can I substitute the 12AT7 with EI 12AU7 in the Jolida 302b?

I would change the input tubes with mullards or others. They make a big difference to the stock tubes.

Or look into an ASL aq1001DT - it is a tube integrated that sounds like a tube and SS - which will brighten things up. At least it has solid highs for me.

I have settled on the the following combination after much experimentation with current issue tubes.

Svetlana EL34 (also tried Mullard, JJ Tesla, Mesa Boogie, Chinese stock)

Tung-Sol 12AX7 (also tried Ei, JJ Tesla, EH, Sovtek)

Mullard 12AT7 (also tried JJ Tesla and EH)

Extension, detail and image are now the best I've yet heard on the 302B.