REVIEW: Audiotailor “Jade” Vacuum Tube Headphone Amplifier - Page 8

Yes ! Audiotailor - Tailor made what you want.

edwardpang is your email ? Payment rceived. Will process it soon.

As i have both SACD and CD player, would like them tweak the RCA input for me, to use the same amp for comparison.

BTW, i would like to ask, what kind of tubes (6AS7G and 12AX7) do the owners rolled?? and your preference on it?

No comment to it

So, any good options for them? e.g. Neutrik headphone jack? Alps potentiometer? Gold-pin tube sockets??

Thanks

Hi AudioTailor,

I purchased my AudioTailor HM1 amp in Hong Kong, Oct 08.

Few weeks ago, I noticed that the output sound volume of the amp was much lower than it used to and suspected that the 12AX7 tube had died. I reported the problem by writing PM to your head-fi acc and an email to your "sales" email account. Mr. J. L. replied and told me that the partnering shop in Hong Kong has not the replacement for the 12AX7B tube and said that he was going to handover to me a replacement tube in person, the Wed before last week. So far, he had not contacted me and I've written to him a couple of emails without reply.

Can you help?

Thx!

You request me to hand cary to but I'm very busy last week, had not return to HK. I had reply to you by email. May be blocked your server. You can email your home address to me. I will send it directly to your home. You can request Hong Kong Dealer(Mingo) replace it and we will send replacement to Mingo.

Ok, just got in my first set of replacement tubes, the Chatham 6AS7G and the GE 5-star 5751 both came today. I'd been listening to the stock tubes all afternoon and was all prepared to hear a subtle - or maybe not so subtle - improvement in the sound with these.

But no, it was terrible! I may not be well trained in listening to this sort of thing, but there was very obvious distortion after just a few minutes of listening to my reference tracks, especially muddy lows, weird noises in highs around e.g. a violin solo. Also everything is off-balance, noticably heavier in the left ear, like someone tweaked a balance knob without my knowledge. (Of course I changed nothing else in the system, just the two tubes.) There must be something wrong with one or the other of these tubes, maybe mostly (or all) in the right stereo channel, since the distortion appears greater in the right ear - though this could also be because I listen mainly to classical and the lower instruments (cellos, basses) are on the right side of the orchestral stage.

I also noticed I had to turn the volume knob up higher to reach the same sound levels as before, presumably due to the lower gain of the 5751. Not necessarily a bad thing as it seems like there should still be some extra room, but maybe that exacerbates any tube weakness...? Maybe a 5751 isn't the best for me, given that I use low-impedance K701's, and I should go back to a regular 12AX7? Not sure.

Anyway, tomorrow I will try switching out one tube at a time with the stocks, to try to isolate where the problem is occurring. Both these are used tubes, so it could just be that I got a dud. Though they tested well according to the sellers. Fortunately I didn't spend a lot on these two, although they were't dirt cheap.

Impedance mismatch shouldn't be your problem as my W5000's impedance rating is 40ohms which is lower than the K701 and the Jade is working great.

Ok thanks, that's good to know. You're using a 5751 too, right? Pretty sure you are, just verifying.

Thanks and i'll resend my address.

Discovered this morning that it's definitely the GE 5751 that is messed up. It was used, guess you get what you pay for. Oh well, I was looking forward to comparing the GE with the Sylvania, maybe I can find another one sometime.

Anyway, for now I've got the stock 12AX7 and the Chatham 6AS7G, all seems fine, at least in terms of the ugly distortion I was hearing last night. So at least that tube seems to be ok. I'll reserve judgment about whether the Chatham sounds any better than the stock until I've had a chance to listen more. But I will say that there seems to be a larger difference between the two outputs of the Jade with the Chatham in place. (Or else my ears are getting more sensitive... not sure.) I definitely prefer the right output closer to the volume knob (which I assume is the "yin" Skylab describes) with my K701's, which I think isn't surprising.

General question: is it the preamp tube that generally has the most effect on SQ? That is, would one expect to hear larger differences between different 12AX7/5751's on the Jade than with different 6AS7G/5998's?

I have a Tung-Sol 5998 and Sylvania 5751 on order (both NOS), waiting anxiously!

May i know it is use 12AX7 or 12AU7?? or can use both tubes?? bos i found both 2 kind of tubes were mentioned in this review. Thanks

There was some confusion because the manual that came with my Jade says 12AU7, which Audiotailor says is a mistake; the "native" tube for it is the 12AX7.