I have a set of Mullard CCA’s in right now. It’s like liquid.
I am a big fan of having tubes somewhere in the chain. It doesn’t necessarily need to be in both the Pre and the Amp. Either does the job. It’s really helpful in dialing in the sound I am after. With the 625 S2 in amp position I’ve found that tubes in the Pre do a remarkable job. I’ve started thinking about the 625 S2’s big brothers, the rare and elusive 725 S2 mono’s. After that an Audio Research 6SE Pre and I should be in a very sweet spot for a while.
That’s very good advice. I must have one of the Pre’s that play nice with 6 volt. It’s damn near silent.
Now I need to listen to a pair of 12’s. I have a few pairs in my drawer. I’ll do this after another week or so of listening to the MKII on Antero to get my aural baseline established.
Sure I can see that. Putting in non-recommended tubes isn’t a good idea. But the Pre is designed for 12AU7 and 6DJ8, hence the jumper. I must be one of the lucky folks to have success with 6DJ8.
I know @brian.fitterman just changed his tubes out. I’m very interested to learn about how they sound in the first few days.
I don’t have any idea anymore how many pairs of NOS 6,7 and 12 volt tubes I have in boxes at the house in Florida as I have gone to strictly 6SN7 based preamps at both houses. To my ears that’s where the tube magic happens with preamps. Both of mine also have separate tube rectified power supplies.
Yes, I just swapped out my Gold Lions for some NOS Mullards. I was not sure if they were matched so I had the local person I could find who needed to measure while in the Pre. He (I did not tell him so my bad) did not flip the jumper to 6v. When he measured it was way off. I told him to move jumper and poof measured right. See attached. Last night after about 10 hours burn in they sounded great. Nice and warm and smooth. Great match for my Focals. Have to thank @vkennedy61 for the tip in their direction.
I heard good things about NOS 6DJ7 and 6SN7 tubes, and I really like the Telefunken 12AU7s. I may try a pair of 6s in pre to see how do these compare to 12au7.
Interesting. The 6SN7 and its high mu sibling the 6SL7 are the true, original small signal super tubes. Renown as the ultimate NOS tube type for preamplifier applications. Known to be sensitive to microphonics, so have to be carefully selected. It happens I just took advantage of holiday pricing to bring a Cary Audio VT-500 phono pre in-house. I’ve long wanted to try a 6SN7/6SL7 based piece in my system and the VT-500 was just too tempting not to swoop on. It also utilizes an external 5AR4 rectified PSU. That was another feature I lusted after for this experiment. Different presentation to be sure compared to my reference SS Sutherland Little Loco Mk 1. Luscious midrange to die for. Haven’t drawn any conclusions about the frequency extremes yet and it isn’t going to permanently displace my Little Loco, but I intend to keep it as a permanent addition to my stable. I love being able to swap gear in and out just for the fun of it. Cary ships it with a new stock Sovtek 5AR4 and new stock (New Sensor) Tung-Sol 6SL7s. I have a Mullard UK manufactured NOS 5AR4 on the way as a first upgrade. Paid too much for it … willingly. Can’t wait to swap out the Sovtek tube. Have my eye on a hideously expensive matched quad of NOS 6SL7s. I now get dawkinsj’s enthusiasm for his 6SN7 based gear and why that family of tubes is in such high demand.
I’ve also got a BHK Preamp from 2/2021, and there has been a slight hissing sound on the right channel, for couple of months, not so bothersome, but the other day the hissing sound was worse along with tapping sound from the same channel. Also noted a soft whining sound from the Preamp itself, not coming from the speaker. The hissing and tapping sound only comes from the Preamp and is volume dependent which goes away when the volume is at zero. It’s not coming from the DS MK II nor the M 1200, nor the Martin Logan 13a. I switched the location of the PSVane 12AU7 tubes inside the BHK Preamp, and the hissing moved to the opposite speaker, softer and no tapping sound, but the Preamp still has a barely audible whining noise. Is this a normal characteristic of tube components? I’m looking forward to possible rolling over to couple of Gold Lions from Uncle Kevin, noting the few incompatibility and majority of satisfied owners, or perhaps a pair of Mullard. Anyone has a suggestion? I’m fairly flexible in my taste of music from warm analogue to slightly bright detailed sound, mostly jazz vocals though.
The noise eminating from the preamp itself is a voltage regulator. I had that issue too before my preamp went in for service. They changed the mainboard and it has been quiet since. This seems to be quite common with the Gold Lion tubes in the BHK preamp.
Now got 16 hrs into the BHK Preamp with my reserve PSVane 12AU7. The whining noise from the unit occurred with the original stock PSVane tubes. Doing well so far. Hope I won’t have any circuit board problems. Thanks.
