Ggroch
500+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2014
- Posts
- 776
- Likes
- 651
You said you had a LD MKiii? How do you like that? I’d it worth an upgrade from the mkii? Any tubes you recommend?
i have never used an MKII, so cannot comment on the difference. I owned a Darkvoice 336SE for a while and like the MKiii a lot better for what some may think is a strange reason. The 336SE does not have adjustable gain switches like the MKiii has, so it has lots of gain all the time. I could only use the first 1/4 of the volume control with half of my headphones. The MKiii has 4 different gain adjustment settings, so I can use both high efficiency phones, and my Powered Montitors (preamp mode) and still have great volume control. I think they both sounded great. I did not own them at the same time, so I cannot directly compare. I am very happy with the MKiii.
Best tubes: As my above post 11456 indicates, I have very little experience with different tubes. My 1st upgrades are GE JAN 5654W. Chosen because they are very highly rated in the first posts on this thread, and because they are in very good supply (cheap). I think they sound great.
I have just ordered 2 more tested pairs to try: Voskhod 6J1P-EV , and Tung Sol JTL-6AK5 - I got them from highly rated sellers, but not Yenaudio because these sellers were cheaper.
I am pretty convinced that the quality of sound when you tube roll is not at all related to how much you paid for the tubes. In fact, if we assume that back in the tube days radio manufacturers and other users, like the military, chose tubes because they were the best functionally, then it makes sense that many of the very best tubes were made in large quantities...and should be pretty cheap now. So in many cases (but certainly not all) some of the more common tubes, like the GE JAN 5654W, a military tube, can be some of the best.