Psvane has two types of 12AU7 tubes which are the Hifi and Art Series. Has anyone completed any comparison between the two tubes for sound quality differences in their BHK pre? Which tube comes in the BHK pre? Thank you.
Hifi is the lower priced one and I have not heard their SQ, but BHK pre came with Art Series 12au7 tubes.
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Thank you dchang05.
Also, the current version of the Art Series used in the BHK preamp (12au7-S) has been reported to sound better than the original version (12au7-II.) This has been my experience as well. I can be an OCD tube roller always trying to find the last iota of improvement but I keep coming back to the latest Psvane 12au7-S and loving it. This or that parameter some old production tubes improve on the Psavane but for overall balance of performance I find the Psvane to be extremely satisfactory. I’ve got a 40 year collection of 6922 family tubes I tried extensively but in the end I’ve given up on those as in my system there’s no real improvement over the 12 volt tubes. Plus, the BHK preamp is incredibly fussy about having really well matched tubes and those are harder and harder to find in NOS. Quality NOS tubes have become very expensive and I’m delighted that the latest Psvanes are a viable alternative to a rapidly vanishing resource.
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I bought my BHK preamp in 2019, and I am not sure what Psvane type it had. They sounded so bland, I pulled them out quite early on. They were happily replaced by a matched pair of Gold Lion 12AU7. The second pair of Gold Lions went in last month.
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Last tubes I bought from PSA were the 12au7-s, which I recently replaced when they had 500 hrs on them. They were replaced with the 12au7 Gold Lions, which I thought made a significant improvement in my system.
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No doubt the Gold Lions are fine tubes, I have those as well. My first set of Psvane 12au7-II tubes sounded pretty “meh” to me so I am very surprised at my positive impression of the 12au7-S. One possible variable in my preamp performance affecting my tube preferences is that I had to send it back to PS Audio for a circuit board repair. I’d swear it sounds better now than it ever did before.
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Can’t say I compared the HiFi and Art variants of the Psvane 12AU7. Will say the Psvanes my BHK Pre shipped with were replaced within weeks of delivery. Some have described them as grayish or bland. I’m a harsher critic: the midband was sterile. Not to my liking and don’t know why PSA would ship the Pre with the Psvanes. Anyway, pretty much every compatible pair of valves in my tube box (mostly NOS Teles and Siemens, plus reissue Gold Lions) have outperformed the Psvanes. Which I threw away, seeing no future use for them. Knowing PSA needs to support production and reissue GLs are plentiful, were I deciding what to ship the Pre with in the future the GLs would be a no-brainer. IMO.
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