[gamefreak054]

  Got me interested on the Philips Miniwatt 12AT7. Might be a future purchase. Maybe.

I highly recommend it, as if I were to pick one tube it would be that one. Make sure you purchase the French ones though. I believe the GT. Britain ones are Mullards, and the JAN ones are Military tubes iirc. My dad said he disliked the JANs a while ago, and other people agreed but then randomly took off in popularity. 
 
If you do end up buying a French Philips/Amperex and greatly hate it. I would potentially trade you a different 12AT7 tube or one of my 6DJ8s. I would not mind having another one of these tubes on hand.The only problem would be I do not want to give up my Telefunken nor my Sylvania Triple Mica, and I can not guarantee the quality of the tube (well they would work) as my dads tester is testing the 12AT7s and 6DJ8s kind of funky. The mullard blackburn would not be available due to the poor testing (sounds fine though). Both 12AT7 and 6DJ8 are testing inconsistent and lower than it should so its potentially needs a re-calibration. I believe out of all the 12AT7s I am pretty sure only the telefunken tested strong, and recently there was decent difference in the cathode readings from the first test I had a week ago went from 105/103 to 100/90. The 6DJ8s all tested in the same range which was pretty poor (generally averaging around 60/50).

 

[gamefreak054]

Got my CBS tube today and sure enough it tested bad, and on top of that we re-calibrated to make sure it was not the tester. I decided to test it in my amp anyways as I have a mullard black burn that was testing similarly, but sounded fine. Of course it let out a buzzing noise and I quickly shut off my amp and pulled it. I should have known better not to buy a non tested tube, but my curiosity got the better of me. Well I guess lesson learned (I will most likely get my money back anyways).
 
Also I hope to test a few more of my dads tubes before the weekend and will post the impressions here. He has a couple of more he said I should try. So I will probably give them a quick whirl.

 

[jeffbear7]

Is there a recommendation for a tube to tame the sibilance or treble spike for the HE 400s?

 

[gamefreak054]

  Is there a recommendation for a tube to tame the sibilance or treble spike for the HE 400s?

I will have to pop the mullards back in there to test those as I think that did a good job at taming treble. However they have more of a mid-centric presentation over most tubes. Otherwise I hate to sound repetitive but I felt that the amperex/philips holland/france tubes tamed it a decent amount on my ADs. I would avoid the Sylvania and Telefunken ones I tried as those could be harsh sounding and did not help sibilance what so ever.  I  can not speak to how these tubes would sound on the HE 400s though.

 

[connieflyer]

I have two of the Sylvania 6 DJ8's and do not find them to be harsh or sibilant.  I also have an Amperex "Bugle Boy" 6DJ8 and it is just a small bit sibilant, the mids and bass are great.  Don't know why you are seeing this sibilance but I have not seen it.  Perhaps th difference in headphone or Ember settings.

 

[gamefreak054]

  I have two of the Sylvania 6 DJ8's and do not find them to be harsh or sibilant.  I also have an Amperex "Bugle Boy" 6DJ8 and it is just a small bit sibilant, the mids and bass are great.  Don't know why you are seeing this sibilance but I have not seen it.  Perhaps th difference in headphone or Ember settings.

I was more so talking about the 12Ax7s and 12AT7s, which do not always sound the same as it siblings. It would also depend on the tube you have. The amperex 6DJ8 is harsher than the 12AT7s and 12AX7s I have. I have no idea about the sylvania 6 volts. 
 
I guess I should have been clearer in the other post, but I kinda figured he could just take a peek at the first page.

 

[jexby]

Having owned a Lyr for about a year, and dug through reviews then collected a number of 6DJ8 tubes like:
  RTC French E188CC 1960s gold pins
  Ediswan CV2492
  Matsu Nationals
still perhaps wanting
 Siemens ECC88 (or similar) for soundstage, clarity and even-ness across the spectrum.
 
With my Ember going to be ordered in March, and a number of (new to me) tube families available for this amp,
can anyone make a comparison between 6DJ8 and 12AT7 (or others) , by specific manufacturer?
 
 Siemens 6DJ8 variant would be better / worse (sound or microphonics or # hours) vs. Siemens 12AT7
or
 Amperex 6DJ8 vs. Amperex 12AT7 
 
 
or can no direct correlations in manufacture be made between these tube families, and it's caveat emptor?
thanks for any guidelines to these 12A* tubes available these days.

 

[gamefreak054]

  Having owned a Lyr for about a year, and dug through reviews then collected a number of 6DJ8 tubes like:
  RTC French E188CC 1960s gold pins
  Ediswan CV2492
  Matsu Nationals
still perhaps wanting
 Siemens ECC88 (or similar) for soundstage, clarity and even-ness across the spectrum.
 
With my Ember going to be ordered in March, and a number of (new to me) tube families available for this amp,
can anyone make a comparison between 6DJ8 and 12AT7 (or others) , by specific manufacturer?
 
 Siemens 6DJ8 variant would be better / worse (sound or microphonics or # hours) vs. Siemens 12AT7
or
 Amperex 6DJ8 vs. Amperex 12AT7 
 
 
or can no direct correlations in manufacture be made between these tube families, and it's caveat emptor?
thanks for any guidelines to these 12A* tubes available these days.

Its kind of hard to compare the two as they are different gains, and is harder to volume match. From what I have heard comparing the Bugle Boy Holland 6DJ8, Bugle Boy Holland 12AX7,  and Phillips France Miniwatt 12AT7 (French ones have same Holland construction). The 12AX7 and 12AT7 were very close sounding, but the 6DJ8 had somewhat similar qualities that were reduced. The 12 volt tubes sounded like they had bigger sound stage, and were smoother.

 

[jexby]

Thanks for the general tips and possible differences in 12volt tubes, EXACTLY what I was looking/hoping for.
Once the Ember arrives was hoping to focus on finding a couple good NOS 12volt tubes to roll in,
especially excited for them now if the soundstage can be bigger, yet retain good balance and separation.

 

[Johan-71]

I need to update my list of tubes since I bought my HE-500. I had the HE-400 before and they needed  smother tubes.
I bought some new tubes after i gott them, and my new favorite is Telefunken E88CC.
I can also recommend Philips E88CC SQ and Mullard E88CC/01.
I didn't like Siemens E88CC, sounded harsh. Maybe a bad tube?
I also tried an unknown 7308, bought it from UK from a seller who had a bunch of NOS unknown brand.
It had a lots of air, almost to much but i missed the bottom end, A great tube for acoustic Music.
 

 

[J&J]

If you have the SC option on PE try some 12bh7/a tubes very musical and inexpensive Plenty of rca/ge on ebay This is the tube Mcantosh made there reputation with

 

[stupidmop]

I love the tall bottles. Rca blackplate 12bh7 is spectacular.

 

[gamefreak054]

I may have to buy the SC kit just to try some 12BH7 my dad uses for his MC60s. He has plenty of those to test out.

 

[Johan-71]

I haven't visited garage1217 for a while, can you order the SC separate now?
Would really want to try 12bh7. One of my friends have Mcintosh monoblocks, I can borrow some of him.
Is there any specific brand i should try out?

 

[J&J]

The super charger is available as diy or send unit to them for install, check site for costs. RCAs are very good I have some 60s gray plates. To be perfectly honest this tube type was a big surprise in Ember