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Re: Been there!

Stefan -

Been there as well. Better iron will make a big difference particularly in the bass. The Hammond 125ESE's are surprisingly good for the price, but the limitations are real. Look into the offerings of Magnequest of Electraprint. The nice part is that "iron is forever" and can be reused or resold.

The next big step for me was getting away from the mainstream 45/2A3/300B world. There are many seriously underpriced and underused tubes. Try a 46 for example - good NOS examples are still $15 and it's a great sounding directly heated "almost triode". The 1625 is a cool and inexpensive tube (most anything with a plate cap will be inexpensive). The "TV triodes" are a wonderful - 6EM7, 6BL7, 6BX7, 6DN7 are the octals but there are minature and compactrons as well. Also the Chinese 211's and 845's are great fun and relatively inexpensive.

The stuff is still out there, and at good prices. I'm at a conference in California and turned up several places that had tubes during a free afternoon. I'm bringing home a box full of WE407A's (a 20v version of the 2C51/396A) at $3 and Bendix 5993's (similar to the 6X4 rectifier, but amazing quality) at $2 as well as some Nixies and an Eimac 75TL. Should be fun going thru airport security! I hope the uranium glass seals on the Eimac don't set off any radiation detectors...



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