Little Dot MKIII Tube Rolling - Page 3

They're great. The thing with RCA 6AK5's is that there are at least three 'flavors' that I'm aware of. Depending on when it was manufactured, you could get a white plate, grey plate, or black plate RCA's. They're all pretty good, you can't go wrong with them though there are sonic differences. Let us know what you think when you get them. Keep in mind that they need some burn-in time if you got them NOS.

Generally speaking, RCA is one of my favorite US manufacturer for tubes, they really took their craft seriously.

Oh yeah, I get most of my LD tubes from this seller on ebay. I think penchum mentioned him too, anyway he responds quickly to questions and the tubes are awesome.

a noob question, is it ok to try any tubes? trial and error? if it works, good, if it doesnt will it damage amp?

Welcome to head-fi, dikyllis. Unfortunately tube rolling doesn't work like that, and, yes, you could damage your amp with the wrong tubes. Refer to my post on page 1 for a list of tubes that can be used.

Another trick is if you search for "little dot amp" on ebay you'll see a few ads for tubes, read the ads and you'll know for sure if they work on your particular amp.

Also read the MkIV tube rolling thread, all of the driver tubes used on the MkIV can be used on the MkIII, so that's another good source of information. And MkIV users tend to be more prolific tube rollers as well.

Would just like to comment on my experience of driving the HD600 out of the MKIII. With the stock tubes, the music sounded a bit shrill and cold. The extended treble of the HD600 quickly fatigued my ears. However, switching the driver tubes to some EF92 (with bridging), the experience is much better: warmer and much more tubey. It calmed the highs of the HD600 down and emphasized its expensive soundstage and presence. With the proper tubes, the HD600 presents itself as a much better overall phones than the bass-dominant HD650. After months of spending time with the LD MKIII, I'm still impressed by it!

Thanks for sharing

Mine is on the way with some Mullard M8100, have you ever tried them ?

EF95 tubes do NOT need the jumpers. EF92 tubes DO need the jumpers on. I believe the amp comes with the jumpers off.

EDIT: So yes, ure right.

I'm dying of curiosity as I await my MKIII (which seems like forever but hasn't been very long in reality :-). So in the meantime I'm passing away the time enjoying my trusty ld2+ and reading up about the MKIII. I've got some spare Mullard CV131 tubes for my ld2+ sitting around. I see that this one of the type of tubes that can be used on the MKIII. Have any of you tried these out yet? If so then how do the compare to the stock tubes? Thanks

The CV131 is a variant in the EF92-family of tubes. Compared to the EF95 tubes that come stock with the MkIII, the EF92 draws a bit more current (200mA for EF92 versus 175mA for EF95) and therefore has more gain and runs hotter (the heat shouldn't be a concern on the MkIII, though). In theory, the EF92 should have a more linear top-end response owning to its higher gain and my personal experience has been that, when compared to each other, the best EF92 I've tried has a sweeter treble while the best EF95 I've tried has more authoritative bass. That said, there are more factors besides tube families that can affect how tubes sound, such as manufacturer, variants within the same family, and vintage, just to name a few factors. The sound of the amp does vary quite a bit with different selection of tubes (which is a feature of tube amps, I believe), and it's up to the individual audiophile to try out different types of tubes to find the best combination for yourself.

Keep in mind especially that since the pre-amp out on the MkIII is directly powered by the driver tubes only, your selection of driver tubes will affect the quality of your pre-amp output in a significant way.

how's the tube rolling, any impressions?

Can't stop drooling It's here on my desk!!!!

3 more hours of wait to get home can't wait