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Call it curiosity or stupidity but I had to go out and get all the different tubes to try them all and find what I like and what works best on my system. Then my friends told me I might as well make short videos to share my experience so anybody interested can learn about these tubes. It hasn't been easy on the wallet since I have acquired all of these tubes fairly recently. But at the end it has all been worth it. 🙂

Absolutely. The Mullards didn't float my boat, great sound from the Mullards but I didn't like the vocal placements on the Mullards. These Philips Brown base Dual D getters are just awesome, very neutral, great sounding tubes. The early Teles are also one of the top tier tubes with amazing mids and highs, no surprise there but to my surprise the RFT Telefunkens I have from the 70s are also some real nice tubes, they are essentially Philips I believe, they have the most bass of the EL34s I have heard. So the early Teles and Philips from late 50s-early 60s and the RFTs from the 70s are my favorite EL34s right now.

In my experience, none of the new production tubes of any type sound the same or as good as the NOS tubes unfortunately.

@@vintagetannoy Ok cool. Thanks for the info. Watching a separate video you explaining that.

What amp were you using the TungSols in that showed diminished output? One factor I looked at was the plate dissipation on my monoblocks and I was able to confirm that they auto-bias and run the TungSols a little cooler so I don't think my amp affects the TungSols adversely but you are right about their rarity. I too keep the good tubes for the "occasion" and run the TungSols 3 holes as my work horses, which are also good tubes, I'm spoiled!

Yeah, maybe I can share my playlist. That could be helpful.

Agree. I guess it's a lot to ask for to assume people know their amps and what tubes it can handle. I have seen the data sheet for these vintage tubes and there are some differences between the 6550 and KT88 tubes in terms of the max values but I also read that some of these differences are attributed to how TungSol and GEC were not publishing to same standard, one was publishing "suggested/optimum" max and the other was "absolute" max hence some differences existed but GEC is supposed to have a better build quality and has longer lifer from what I understand. But you are right, I should add that folks should refer to their amp's specs and requirements and match appropriate tube to the amp.

@vintagetannoy I honestly do not know your amp. It might handle them like a champ. I am just saying that until the amplifier is on my bench and hooked up on oscilloscope and tone generator with a dummy load and a few DMM's I can't tell what is the amp doing with certain tubes. I build boutique point to point guitar tube amplifiers of my own designs. You start from your idea. Then you choose parts that should be able to do the trick. You design the topology. You go and calculate every gain stage and the tone stack. You use your experience, and you build the amplifier. But every time you do new things and choose new iron or tubes or change anything, your result might not be what you were aiming for. For example, power transformer promises higher voltages than what you actually get when biassing. Or you get lower voltages. That changes things. Or your output transformer has too much difference between primary taps. Or it just doesn't fit the impedance curve of the speaker used. Plus, it is even more complex because you want some distortion and breakup, but you want specific harmonics as well. Home audio tube amplifiers do not make good guitar amplifiers. Talking about preamp, they are completely different. What is flat on the guitar is actually highly compensated for very boring and middle heavy pickup signal character. Sure, I made home amplifiers as well, and a lot of knowledge is transferable, but goals are different. By now, I know in advance what should I get, and still, the most important part is adjusting pre calculated things to sound good in real life. For example, I have just finished one new amplifier with design and iron I have never used before. I have redesigned gain stages to get more gradual gain buildup, and I have used new, more powerful iron and tubes I use in completely different amplifiers. Biased it perfectly (although that's book for it self) and it looked great on oscilloscope. Output tubes use lower filament current and can take higher voltages, and power supply is bigger, and AC HT tap rating is 5V AC higher as well as current rating of the HT side. So you expect it will not be pulled down much from the fillament current, while per tube, it draws 0.7A less. Plus, that 5VAC bump and one would expect higher B+ than what I get with the other amplifier. Nope. It's actually lower. Capable of more current and power but lower volage. So yeah, until it's measured and biased and tested and heard, I do not trust anything anymore. Good educated guess is fine as a starting point, but proof is in the pudding. Regarding to biasing. We do our best, but if you do not have a good power conditioner with fixed voltage output, extremely accurate biasing is hit and miss. Mains voltage changes, and different buildings have different msins voltages. People bring amplifiers to tech, and he biased it at his place, and then people go to their hime, and their mains voltage is 10V higher or lower. That changes B+ even more, and the biasing might be off. It gets complex if you want to go in deep.

Yes, I remember 🙂. Absolutely, the GE 6550A is a great tube and I recommend people start with the GE if they are new to NOS tubes. Tubes will sound different with each amp, therefore it eventually comes down to personal sound preference/taste with a given system and source. I will be wrapping up my KT88 assessment shortly so I will post that video soon. Thanks

@@vintagetannoy I had a NOS quad of the Gold Lion KT88s years ago and sold them. Recently I decided to try the new production GL KT88s. After an hour I pulled them out and have no desire to put them back in.

I haven't tried the Sylvania 6CA7 yet in my Marantz 8B yet. My current favorite EL34 tube is the NOS Telefunken along with the RFT Telefunken. But they are more of a hi-fi tube though. I will check out the Sylvania though, thanks. McIntosh outfitted the MC275 and similar amps with the early TungSol 6550s and then later with the G.E.C KT88s.

Agree with you there. I have tried the Svetlana winged Cs and they are pretty good as well for non-American vintage, I have a quad of those. I just wanted to stick to American tubes when it comes to making videos, didn't want to get into another rabbit-hole with newer tubes. 😅

Are you referring to the RFT Telefunkens? Those are some real nice tubes. I have been listening to them in my Marantz 8B for a couple of months now and they deliver a great sound. Best bang for the buck for less than half the price of NOS Telefunkens.

Well i did'nt even know about them are yhey as good as the ones i got in the 70's and 80's ? Thanks ! ​@vintagetannoy

​@@jerrywatt6813 just to clarify there are two types of "NOS" Teles.. the original ones from the West Germany factories and the RFT ones from East Germany. The West German Teles are unobtanium or they are prohibitively expensive. The RFT Teles are from the 70's and are also expensive but still less than half the cost of the West German tubes. I'm referring to these RFT Teles.. they are a great value in terms of sound and cost. I would stay away from current/new TFK El34s.

There is no sound difference with the JAN tubes. From my understanding, at some point GE/TungSol stopped manufacturing the tubes for consumers but still manufactured some batches for the military in the form of JAN tubes. Eventually these showed up as military surplus. They are the same exact tubes sound wise.

@@vintagetannoy Thank you!

It's actually rated for 200 watts so you are good👍. You can see the "200" in tiny print at the right end of the meter scale.

Yes, I was not completely sure if it would work so I was recording intermittently on a phone without a tripod. I have just uploaded another video detailing how I connected everything including the power supply. Here it is: ruclips.net/video/gNjrLIpb6VI/видео.html

The current Russian TungSols are not the same as the vintage American made TungSols. I have heard the Russian tube and they sound good for the price but the problem with current generation tubes I have encountered is that they are not consistent, both sound wise and quality/longevity wise. Keep your Russian tubes and try the most affordable vintage TungSol 6550 - v2.2 - grey plate with 3 holes. If you notice the difference there then you can upgrade to the more expensive and rare vintage solid plates. If your system is resolving enough and you can hear the difference then it makes all the sense to try to obtain older more expensive tubes. In my experience 1.1 and 1.2 are exceptional in their sound and they are best sounding 6550 tubes followed by 1.3 and 2.1. Followed by the TungSol 2.2, Sylvania 6550 straight bottle and GE 6550A. These vintage tubes sound better than any current production Russian or Chinese tubes. Regarding the amp current/voltage, I haven't messed around with it since I use the McIntosh MI-75s, you can look up the specs of that amp but when I checked last I read 430V at the plate with at average plate current of around 26mA.

@vintagetannoy Thanks for the info help. I'm putting around 830v on the plates and a very regulated 320v on the screen grid. The idle current is close to 38 ma. The test circuit is extremely resolving playing through an Altec 515 woofer, Altec 311-90 with a 290E giant voice compression driver and a Electrovoice T350 super tweeter. I will endeavor to obtain several sets to roll. I can confirm tube parameters with my calibrated Hicock tester.

👍 Yep, it was only for testing purposes. That Eico gets pretty hot with those EL84 tubes.

Agree, the needles can get distracting sometimes. If I do implement some sort of vu meters in my rack setup I would add a power switch to the meters to turn them off if I need to.

Blessfamy

@@MikeGilbert-zm9lb I learned a new word today. "Blessfamy". Not even in the Urban Dictionary. You should enter it and give a description on whatever it means.

@@vintagetannoy I don't even see them unless I am 2 feet away from the device. They are so thin like hairs for obvious reasons. That is a good reason why audio gear moved away from that nonsense and went to the LEDs or Fluorescent meters like the beautiful Pioneer Blue Flouroscan ones. Except for McIntosh which has millions of fans for the blue meters only. They could care less about anything but the McIntosh meters. Silly.

I absolutely love VU meters my sound room is small so I got 6 of them I watch montering any input signal I throw at it sorry I spelled the word wrong it's Blasphemy meaning irreverence towards something considered sacred or inviolable.

Thanks for your input. I will look into Fosi Audio and Douk Audio vu meters but I would really need a 19" rack mountable unit and I was hoping to maintain the authentic McIntosh look on the rack but McIntosh doesn't make it easy. Oh well.

@@vintagetannoy ruclips.net/video/TjbcQe_4swQ/видео.html

@@vintagetannoy There is also a custom maker in Europe that makes custom VU meters. This has a very Mc looking vibe. ruclips.net/video/TjbcQe_4swQ/видео.html They have many videos on YT of different designs. I was looking at having them make me something and the price was reasonable. I did not do the project in the end, but they were someone that seemed promising.

Audio Research I/50 looks like a nice amp. As far as the tubes are concerned, I would broadly categorize them into three based on how closely they sound to each other: 1. Black plates with D getters (1.1 & 1.2) 2. Solid plates with halo getters (1.3 & 2.1) 3. Three hole with halo getters (2.2) You can't go wrong with any version of these tubes, the sound gets more refined as you move up the chain with older tubes. 2.1 is closer in sound to 1.3. I believer the reason why the solid plate tubes are expensive is because: 1. Fewer of these were manufactured when compared with the 2.2's. Tung sol went through 4 different iterations from 1.1 to 2.1 in a span of 8 years which averages to about 2 years of production for each iteration from 1.1 thru 2.1. Whereas, the last version 2.2 was in production for well over a decade. 2. The 3-hole grey plate is a great tube but the solid plates and D getters do have an edge on sound that is discernible on a system that is resolving enough. I would start with the tubes I could afford and then try the next older version of the tubes when time and wallet permits to see if the sound difference is noticeable and then keep the tubes I like based on sound and value. I also have some tubes to sell that I usually list on USAM. You can contact me at vinttannoy@gmail.com if you have any further questions.

Needless to say, it's all going to be subjective but there is a discernable difference between the tubes as the gap gets wider. As far as percentage goes, it's hard to tell. I had a methodical way to A/B the tubes. Keeping everything else constant, I kept swapping out the tubes and critically listened to the same music on each set of tubes for at least two weeks before I swapped them out with a different set of tubes. I went from a set of current gen tubes to 70's tubes to 60's tubes to 50's tubes. I personally prefer the earlier tubes only because I'm able to hear the difference. As we all know it's very difficult to describe sound in words, it just has to be heard and experienced. The 1.1's were simply the best sound I have ever heard. It's like veils were lifted and I was in a studio listening to music being performed/recorded. Vocals and instruments just sounded so organic and real.. it felt like the 1.1's held the note a split second longer, the reverberations on the strings and wind instruments lasted split second longer, the noise floor dropped and the blacks were darker if that's even a thing.. the music on 1.1's either brought a smile to my face or tears to eyes. Speakers, amp, gear, equipment just disappeared and I was in a private concert. I'm sure the Tannoys had a a lot to do with it as well, along with the MI-75s, MX110z and the Tele 12ax7 in there. So, I just happened to have found my bliss in the coming together of all the equipment in the chain and I'm keeping it. :) The other revelation I have had through this process is that the- tube. is. the. amp! The amplifier with the transformers and the design allows for the tube to do it's job and a well designed amplifier will keep the distortion at a minimum and be functional for long periods of time without causing undue stress to the various components of the amp. That's why some of the best amps from the 60's - the Macs and the Marantz have stood the test of time with their impeccable design. Once you get the design of the amp out of the way.. the actual amplification happens within the tube. Think of the tube as a lens for the DSLR, the DSLR will define the limits for the camera.. the megapixel, the features etc.. the amp is the camera body but ultimately the lens will have the most impact on the quality of the image. Similarly, as you change the tube and the sound changes. It's as if various brands of tubes and tubes from different periods are EQ'ed differently. Some bring vocals forward while others sparkle at the top while some render the bass differently. So finding the right tube for you will require some A/B'ing and will also depend on your preferences for sound. Having said that, 1.2 is closer to 1.1, 1.3 is closer to 1.2 and so on. I don't know why the tubes from the 50's sound best on my system but they do. However, it's hard to justify the price of these tubes these days. I only got into tubes a couple of years ago so I have paid premium price for these tubes. I would say, start with the later tubes from 70's or 60's and then- IF your system, your ears, your wallet allow for it.. upgrade to older set of tubes and see if you can hear a difference. I definitely do not want to promote the 1.1's as the best but that has been my experience on my system and who knows - maybe someone will like the the 2.2's best or the current gen tubes best. To each his own.. everyone's journey is going to be unique. As long as you are enjoying the music, the system you have is the best system. Cheers!

They all sound different to each other. Some are drastically different, others are slightly different. At the end it really comes down to personal taste and preference. :)