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Old 01-19-2014, 04:53 PM
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prepress prepress is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Brooklyn, by way of Nashville
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DonBattles View Post
You probably already know this but the the McIntosh phone 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.
Hello there,

Are you talking about the B759 GLs or the regular GLs? They listed two types. The cheaper of the two is rated much brighter and sounds like it's the one you refer to; I was referencing the B759.

With some of the tubes they give separate comments for hifi and guitar amps. I wouldn't consider any where no comments were given on a potential hifi application. I need something as a starting point and from there trust what I hear. Matched pairs are a good idea; the JJs I have are matched. I will stick with that for sure, whatever I do.
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