What is the application?
Headphone amp of course
They're my tubes, I plan to sell them on ebay and wonder if I should pair them up and split them out.
Using them in my WA5 I don't hear any imbalance...
What is the application?
I will prolly get flamed for saying it but the tests simply show that the tubes are functioning and precious little else. I have used pairs, that I have assembled from slightly mismatched singles and never heard a difference in volume, or tone in some nor frequency band.
As for yours, I would put them up as a pair just be up front and honest about the testing you have on them.
Out of curiosity did you say you used them in a pair application? Did you hear any significant differences in the two channels? If you can say you didn't then just tell the truth. If you did you can also be honest and say in very sensitive applications you heard a slight or-moderate or-all hell broke lose and you ran screaming from the room muttering solid state solid state !
Call me an idiot but I would have bought them as an slightly imperfect but likely functional pair.
How did they sound BTW, magical or ordinary? I know you really can't say if they weren't exceptional. I own 4 blah sounding TS RPs myself..
No flames from me. I match type of tube and the internals - and nothing else.
For example, I have several 6F8Gs with matching internals that are labelled 4 different ways - RCA, GE ...etc. I swap between them with no problems that I can detect. Bollix to tube matching.
I will prolly get flamed for saying it but the tests simply show that the tubes are functioning and precious little else. I have used pairs, that I have assembled from slightly mismatched singles and never heard a difference in volume, or tone in some nor frequency band.
As for yours, I would put them up as a pair just be up front and honest about the testing you have on them.
Out of curiosity did you say you used them in a pair application? Did you hear any significant differences in the two channels? If you can say you didn't then just tell the truth. If you did you can also be honest and say in very sensitive applications you heard a slight or-moderate or-all hell broke lose and you ran screaming from the room muttering solid state solid state !
Call me an idiot but I would have bought them as an slightly imperfect but likely functional pair.
How did they sound BTW, magical or ordinary? I know you really can't say if they weren't exceptional. I own 4 blah sounding TS RPs myself..
No flames from me. I match type of tube and the internals - and nothing else.
For example, I have several 6F8Gs with matching internals that are labelled 4 different ways - RCA, GE ...etc. I swap between them with no problems that I can detect. Bollix to tube matching.
I don't know where it became needed that Ken Rad had to have the staggered plates, I don't think they sound all that much different, but they are certainly more sought after. You should expect them to have very good deep and notable bass. That is what they are known for, their bottom end, and they are good at it. If you are a basshead you'll probably love them. I don't want to poison your thoughts on them any further critique. I hope you know that the clear and the black glass KR tubes sound alike, but the black look better.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that for amps that auto-bias, and even those that you can manually bias, tube matching is generally irrelevant, since you can tune for the correct amount of current draw.
It also depends on which tubes you are using. Preamp versus output.
So I guess I'm a little late to the b65 party but here's mine
I'm going to throw a word of caution out there though. These tubes are not $1k. The euro and gbp tanked and I got mine for under $300 shipped so if you live in the States I would not pay over $300. Also these are not always the best match for your amp and headphone. With my peak/volcano and lcd-3f's it is awfully mid-centric and while I enjoy the sound this was not very well received at a stl. headphone meet...err my much less expensive stax setup was much better received. At least to me a 5692 redbase is much closer to neutral and just as good in it's own way and was only $120 shipped. Does anyone have a closest to neutral 6sn7 that they recommend?