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RE: The most expensive 12AX7s - TFK, Mullard, GEC.....

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ivan_terrible

In Reply to: RE: The most expensive 12AX7s - TFK, Mullard, GEC..... posted by andy evans on July 01, 2024 at 08:57:53

"Personally, I don't care much whether a 60-year-old tube amplifier makes 20 watts instead of 25 watts."

well actually I do.
It has to deliver, which means it measures well, and then ultimately it sounds much better.
I am no fan of that 50s and 60s distortion.
There are reasons why the reluctance or magnetic flux density/behaviour of the old transformers sounds different.

Usually an amp I have reworked produces more power than the original with a giant size drop in distortion.

I have some of the studies on this collected over some time.
Dave Gillespie has also gone into this in some detail.
He also is well known for improving the old amps well beyond recognition.

"It's the sound I want. :)"
Whatever that means!

I don't want the dirty old sound of the badly working old designs.
It's exactly what the Chinese are copying in their ignorance with the materials of today.
It has very little to do with this hyping of old valves and jacking up prices, which is exactly what people on the ASR forum are often moaning about.
ie. ASR consider and have measured many valve amp products and rightly consider them as horrible distortion pumps with bloated prices, - but because they never measured a good one trash the whole lot.

In the end your get an anti-valve lobby and the "audiophile" lobby fighting, both of which are basically wrong.

Btw.
out of the 5 KT8C I got there was only THAT dead one.
The others I revived by removing the bases and resoldering everything -using modern car exhaust paste to seal it up and stop the bases moving again.

Follow Ups:

RE: The most expensive 12AX7s - TFK, Mullard, GEC..... - Triode_Kingdom 00:17:40 07/03/24 (1)
"I don't want the dirty old sound of the badly working old designs."

Hey pal, don't use me as a launchpad for your personal pet peeves. 99% of what you wrote here has nothing to do with me or what I said, and certainly not my capabilities as a designer or engineer. I simply don't care about a few watts give or take. If that sort of thing bothers you, you're welcome to deal with it however you want. You know NOTHING about my work in audio, and my previous comment is not an open door for you to imply that my standards are lacking.
- RE: The most expensive 12AX7s - TFK, Mullard, GEC..... - ivan_terrible 00:45:54 07/03/24 (0)
  "don't use me as a launchpad for your personal pet peeves"
  
  eh? you misread!
  
  "I don't want the dirty old sound of the badly working old designs"
  
  I don't think that has any personal ref to you at all, I was referring to the vast majority of PRC made stuff saturating the market now.
  
  As for my experiences
  "I simply don't care about a few watts give or take."
  
  I certainly DO are about a few watts give or take.
  It's all about the dreaded distortion curve of valve amps, which spirals upwards from anything over about 30% of max.
  
  A few watts give or take is a giant sized problem for an amp of 10W when it it only delivers 5-6 cleanly.
  It leaves no margin for peaks.
  
  Drive a bit hard and you get low resolution mud with massive clipping
  +
  anything over 1-2W and up comes the IMD, but of course people are claiming they can hear the difference of the 12AX7 when the amp is actually incapable of managing 14 bit resolution.
  
  It's clear that magic dust is just bollox, and more and more web sites are using it to jack up prices with more and more hype.
  
  Add to that most of the current transformer winders today (as many have noted) make glorified guitar amp OPT nothing so close to hifi unless you blow those mega bucks.
  
  I had some guy going on about Cayin SET last week driving mega buck headphones....but he wouldn't have it - when I state he clearly LIKES distortion.
  ASR when measured both bits found they were just horrible.
  
  Proof in my book was changing a 50W amp from a miserable barely 20W clean to delivering 50W with nice low distortion.
  That is a quantum leap in performance which is very very audible esp with 2 in stereo.
  
  To be fair a lot of that hinges around very poor PSU performance especially on those old classics.
  
  I never made a single remark "imply that my standards are lacking".
  I dunno where you got that from!

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