Tube rolling is part of the culture of tube amplifier. It is a norm that tube amplifier manufacturer will select a low-cost highly reliable tube as stock tube, and encourage users to enhance the audio performance and personalise the sound signature of the amplifier to meet their preference through tube rolling.
There are a few things that matters a lot to us when we select a stock tube. Cost is definitely a consideration, we have to keep the price competitive against other tube amplifier in China, not just the international market. For overall branding purpose, we prefer to work with tube manufacturers who can printed our logo on the tubes at their production line directly. With around 20 tube amplifiers in active production, amd around 100 models on our support list, we also need to control our supply chain, we can't afford to go for different tube supplier on each model. We also need to make sure steady long term supply and avoid changing of stock tube in the middle of production period. For instance, we have changed the 300B stock tube two years ago, we had issued world-wide notice to all dealers and posted a notification in this forum, but we still received inquiry frequently asking why their new amplifier has a different tube with compare to this or that reviews or show reports.
There are a few things that matters a lot to us when we select a stock tube. Cost is definitely a consideration, we have to keep the price competitive against other tube amplifier in China, not just the international market. For overall branding purpose, we prefer to work with tube manufacturers who can printed our logo on the tubes at their production line directly. With around 20 tube amplifiers in active production, amd around 100 models on our support list, we also need to control our supply chain, we can't afford to go for different tube supplier on each model. We also need to make sure steady long term supply and avoid changing of stock tube in the middle of production period. For instance, we have changed the 300B stock tube two years ago, we had issued world-wide notice to all dealers and posted a notification in this forum, but we still received inquiry frequently asking why their new amplifier has a different tube with compare to this or that reviews or show reports.
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