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Discoveries during my 12AT7 quest

Posted by jeffreybehr (A) on March 5, 2011 at 18:02:08

In Reply to: 12AT7s--Genelex, Shuguang Treasure, CV4024, JJ, Sylvania--compared posted by jeffreybehr on February 27, 2011 at 22:26:10:

1. They're all at least good; I could live happily with ANY of the 6 I heard.
2. The 6 are more the same than different, at least to my ears and in my system.
3. The 6 again divided neatly into those with slightly more treble energy (Sylvania, Mullard, JJ, and T-S) and those with slightly less (Genelex and Shuguang-T). ALL of those with more treble energy also exhibited more midrangy ambient info and stronger decay of instrumental sounds.
4. As my system continues to improve, I can listen to a higher-overall level of treble, which, of course, increases detail and, I now know, ambient info too. This increase in treble over 6 months is NOT subtle at about EIGHT dB. I believe most of that is due to the huge-to-these-tin-ears increase in the quality of the caps in series with the tweeter. I'm now using an extremely large (6.8uF!) SoniCap Platinum by itself in the 1st posistion and a 3-12 combo of SCP and SoniCap gen.1 'propylene in the 2st position.

Amps now have c. 300 hours on them; each tube has c. 48 hours of break-in.

The 1st five tubes are named in my initial post; tube #6 is a Tung-Sol with chrometop, round getter, black plates with single rib and single wrap-around flange with single crimp, code 3226224-3.

My ultimate fave is the Tung-Sol, one of the 4 with slightly more treble energy AND spatial info; TYVM for the recommendation, Jon L. Detail and MR character are excellent. The JJ is my 2nd-fave, with MAYBE slightly edgier treble.

The Mullard and Sylvania had good detail and treble energy but were maybe slightly less warm than the other 2 members of the more-treble quartet.

The Genelex and Shuguang-T, the 2 with slightly less treble energy, both sounded just fine if a little dark compared with the other 4. Both would be, IMO, a good way to tame a bit of edgyness from a system.

So I'll be buying more T-Ss. Interesting that the 2 least-expensive tubes in my bunch turned out to be my faves. :-)

WOW am I glad I'm finished with this--it's mentally exhausting work for me.

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Schiit Audio

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