McChanson amps tube rolling thread

[Isaacc7]

Hello,

I only have the 807 Brimar aka Gec VTS25.
And left it at that.
I'm sure there are still some good and other 807s out there that are uncovered.


Easter was very quiet for me, I like to isolate myself with good music.
I stuck with the EL38 Phillpis Dario with the 6CG7 Matsusita and Ez81 rectifier from Electro Harmonics.
Audionote has remained and I have fired the EL38 with 240v.

I listened to all 3 ZMF headphones with this pairing.
1st place Verite Closed, 2nd place Auteur OG, 3rd place Atrium Open.

Auteur was already great, but with the Verite closed the whole thing gets even more texture and bite.
I only liked Atrium open to a limited extent, maybe I'll have to test it with a hybrid headphone cable to get the remaining warmth out.

The absolute killer album I'm listening to at the moment is
Terisa Griffin - Revival of Soul
A good mix of soul and jazz, and the jazz is a bit forward, not to put you to sleep. Vocally, this good woman also has something to offer.




Edit 24.04.25

Unfortunately, no more doubles are allowed, which is really annoying.
Today I received a nice pair of 6F6G Raytheon tubes that I was able to buy very cheaply on Ebay.



When they arrived they were not only dusty on the packaging itself, but also the tubes themselves were very dusty.
After cleaning it was clear how well they had been maintained over the decades.
When I plugged them into Ultimate they ran without any problems as if it was nothing.

In the construction I recognise black plates, a semicircular getter at the top and bottom, a rectangle with rounded ends and a U-shaped wing.

As a reminder, these may only be operated at 200v.
So I switched to 200v, kept the Ez81 Electro Harmonic and 6SCG 7 Matsushita as well as the Audionote active.
And the first notes were really wow.
I like to run them on stereo speakers for the first few minutes and they sounded really great straight away. You could immediately hear the fine resolution.
Confirm and emphasise again with the Verite closed, holy crap can you say.
Because the fine detail really comes into its own here and starts right at the back.
Vocally organic organic organic organic, but how?
In a really good analogue way that immediately captivated me.
The same continues in the tone, timbre and instrumental, it remains fine and at the same time very high-resolution, but this analogue also remains here.
The treble also remains very well dosed, it is not pushed forward or pulled back.
After a few hours break the whole thing continued in the Atirum open.
Here, for once, I used a hybrid headphone cable.
So as not to make it sound too thick and too warm.
Everything remained the same there in terms of resolution, instrumental and vocal as with the Verite but just a little more musical, rounder on an analogue level.

That's a great result, even though the tube hasn't even been running for 10 hours, it already sounds great.
As a historical reminder, the 6F6 was the pre-stage of the KT63, i.e. before the KT66/88 and today's other KT tubes that are significantly more powerful.
And you can still find some here and there at good prices.


@UntilThen
I just remembered your birthday.
I thought about it and then forgot again, happy belated birthday.

The 6f6 is a really good tube. Don’t overlook the metal ones!

The no repeat poster posts is a mixed bag. The problem with edits is that no one knows that there is new info because it doesn’t generate an alert. I once had to wait 6 weeks to add a follow up to a thread. It does cut down on posters spamming threads but I wish the limit would reset after a day or so.

 

[g0ldl10n]

Unfortunately, no more doubles are allowed, which is really annoying.

I think that's a good thing, it stops the serial posters posting one after another after another. An edit isn't so bad is it?

The no repeat poster posts is a mixed bag. The problem with edits is that no one knows that there is new info because it doesn’t generate an alert. I once had to wait 6 weeks to add a follow up to a thread. It does cut down on posters spamming threads but I wish the limit would reset after a day or so.

I think there is something else going on here regarding the "double post" restrictions rather than just trying to stop actual people posting multiple times in a row - I mean, I can sort of see why you'd implement something like that, but on the other hand, it makes no sense to stop someone from posting actual relevant content with "double posting" that isn't actually any sort of spam. Case in pint, @OctavianH was doing this in the Ultrasonic Studios rolling thread, and all of his "double posts" that are no longer allowed were very informative, never spam, so IMHO it doesn't make much sense at all, especially considering what @Isaacc7 has mentioned, no notifications that an edit was made, so you're not aware that new content is there.

So, what I actually think is going on with this limitation imposed is that the admins of this forum/site are attempting to get ahead of AI bots fronting as humans, and at least limit their bs interactions within the forums. Why do I say this? Because I have been seeing obvious AI bots pop up on multiple threads making posts that are clearly AI. Some of the posts I have seen are super obvious, where the AI will quote/reply to a user's entire paragraph, and then repeat just the first sentence of the quote, word for word .. this is obvious - and the sentence is not even controversial or anything that could be seen as trolling, so it's a sort of "malfunction" of the AI attempting to interact as a real human.

Sooo, guess that is just my theory on the whole thing, because nothing else makes sense - it can't be good for traffic, which is not good for sponsors, which in turn would be worse statistics to have to show how much the site is worth to sponsors/advertisers.. but ya, my 2 cents

 

[Deleeh]

Hello,

agree with you if it's double posting that helps to stay on topic I think that's perfectly okay.
Never thought it was a bad thing in general.
Well, that's just the way it is.
I have seen 6F6 metal but not as a pair, the Ebay Eu market doesn't offer much.
I'd have to look more specifically if I did.
I've left the 6F6 Raytheon in since I got them, and they've done well over time.
Nice and musical, clear, never harsh, always very balanced.
I like them very much.
Since I have some time right now, I'm listening to them again.
I still have a 12AV7 General Electric that I got from Eric back then.
It also goes very well with the Atrium open.
And I also like what I hear in combination, otherwise no changes have been made and everything has remained the same.
I still try not to do much with all the hustle and bustle we have at the moment.
Because I want to know how the Audionote resistors are establishing themselves.
Every time I hear music I think oh holy crap how good is that.

We're currently in the middle of preparing for the move to our new flat, so there's not much time to listen to music apart from going to work.
Not even time to look for tubes or anything like that.
We start in mid-June and still have a lot to do before then.
But we're really looking forward to our new home.
The media room will also be great in time.
And I'm also excited about the new space there.

 

[Isaacc7]

Hello,

agree with you if it's double posting that helps to stay on topic I think that's perfectly okay.
Never thought it was a bad thing in general.
Well, that's just the way it is.
I have seen 6F6 metal but not as a pair, the Ebay Eu market doesn't offer much.
I'd have to look more specifically if I did.
I've left the 6F6 Raytheon in since I got them, and they've done well over time.
Nice and musical, clear, never harsh, always very balanced.
I like them very much.
Since I have some time right now, I'm listening to them again.
I still have a 12AV7 General Electric that I got from Eric back then.
It also goes very well with the Atrium open.
And I also like what I hear in combination, otherwise no changes have been made and everything has remained the same.
I still try not to do much with all the hustle and bustle we have at the moment.
Because I want to know how the Audionote resistors are establishing themselves.
Every time I hear music I think oh holy crap how good is that.

We're currently in the middle of preparing for the move to our new flat, so there's not much time to listen to music apart from going to work.
Not even time to look for tubes or anything like that.
We start in mid-June and still have a lot to do before then.
But we're really looking forward to our new home.
The media room will also be great in time.
And I'm also excited about the new space there.

Metal tubes are usually easy to get through dealers. They mostly stock them for old radios. Once upon a time there were a bunch of dealers that specialized in radios and didn’t know what audiophiles were willing to spend on certain tubes. They have been dying off though.

 

[Nick Ryan]

Deleeh, good luck with your move, I did mine last year to 11 acres of an old dairy farm. Just finished building a !6.5 x 6.0 meter shed to put my gear in and build my workshop.

 

[Deleeh]

Deleeh, good luck with your move, I did mine last year to 11 acres of an old dairy farm. Just finished building a !6.5 x 6.0 meter shed to put my gear in and build my workshop.

Thank you.
Organising the move is not such a problem for me.
It's more the junk that has accumulated over the years.
Especially my wife's.
I have a lot less in comparison.
When we moved in almost 10 years ago we had almost nothing, the cellar was practically empty.
I could use a nice shed too, by the way.

 

[Nick Ryan]

Thank you.
Organising the move is not such a problem for me.
It's more the junk that has accumulated over the years.
Especially my wife's.
I have a lot less in comparison.
When we moved in almost 10 years ago we had almost nothing, the cellar was practically empty.
I could use a nice shed too, by the way.

I filled three 20 foot single use containers, have slowly been emptying them, have sold one. I will keep two for longer term storage of things we possibly "Need" (LOL) for the future

 

[N11ville]

Very nice.

Just having a bit of trouble with KT63.

The complete black Kt63 Gec at Langerex was a bit quieter.
And got a replacement delivered on Tuesday.
The pair is optically different but also from Gec, unfortunately there was a tube in the 2nd set that did not work directly in both amplifiers.
Now I'm getting another one sent to me with the hope that it will work.
My 2nd pair of Gec Kt63 which I also bought is on the way away, which will probably only reach me next week.
I have then made a working set from both sets.
I could hardly hear any difference between black or grey glass.

6BQ7A tubes arrive tomorrow, I'm curious to see how the Hitachi and Haltron do.
At the moment the EL34 tubes are still running in the Ultigreg and in the other amplifier KT88.
Both very good despite burn in.
With both pairings I can actually hear minimal differences from the Gustard R26 Dac when it is either running via Lan or I2S connected to the Singxer Su 2.
Via Lan it is clearer, fuller, somewhat brighter and nicely powerful.
With the SU2 there is a little less of this but more quietness, it seems a little tidier, a touch warmer and not quite as resolving.
I never noticed this before, but I have for a few days now.

I’ve noticed similar differences with different connections, pretty wild how those small things change the sound.

 

[Farrellc]

Just got my EL36 adapters in and test ran a pair. With low bias, I'm reading at about 25 mA, more than acceptable! I'm going to mess around a bit more and see if I can run it at the highest bias. If I can, then that means all Ultimate users should be able to use it as well. @Deyan also did a fantastic job with the adapters and disconnected pin 3 which is necessary for the tubes to function properly when adapting them to EL34.

 

[LoryWiv]

Mullard 6X4, Fivre-RCA 6V6G, Amperex Bugle Boy 12AU7-ECC82 & Telefunken EL84 in Super Ultimate:

 

[UntilThen]

Time was just too short... 3 days in Sydney is NOT enough. I want to visit again already!!!

You can always come again. Eric will take you to Chinatown for Yum Cha again ! I still have the photo of the 3 of us.

Pick me up on your way to see Matt, Zachi!

I would actually love to see you Lory.

@UntilThen
I just remembered your birthday.
I thought about it and then forgot again, happy belated birthday.

Thanks Greg. Can't believe that I have finally weaned myself from Head-Fi. About time! Can't believe the number of posts I made. It must be a mistake.

I last saw Eric a week ago when I lend him my EL36 tubes and adapters to try. At other times, I would have jump at trying to get EL36 to work in Universe but I am kind of done with tube rolling. I do have 3 nice pairs of EL36 though. Marconi, Matsushita and Mullard.

Anway, my holiday is coming up in a month's time and I will be away for 2 months.

All the best to all of you. Hope the love for tube amps, tubes and McChanson amps will go on.