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Old 01-19-2014, 02:32 PM
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DonBattles DonBattles is offline
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Location: Northern California
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You probably already know this but the the McIntosh phono stage will like balanced/matches pairs of tubes with low micro-phonics. While I didn't have a C2300 I did have a C220 for a while and tried a few different tubes. What I liked best were NOS RCA Black plates and also found Tung Sol gold pins and Gold Lions (both new production tubes) to be pretty good as well. As for the charts shown these are primarily spec's you would be interested in for guitar amp use and not fully applicable to audio use. For example they rate the Gold Lion 12AX7 as bright in tonality, to me they were pretty warm sounding overall. What it comes down to is there is no right or wrong tube and you will simply need to try some to find what you will like. And don't get caught up in new vs. NOS but you should try some from each era to see what sound good to you.
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Last edited by DonBattles; 01-19-2014 at 09:17 PM.
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