golfbravobravo
Headphoneus Supremus
I was curious about the LISSTs and found a used quad that I decided to try out. That’s what I was up to when I took that pic actually.
The quad of LISST I found had nice tonality and density, but lost a lot of that tube openness and spaciousness and soundstaging. So I decided to try out a pair in each of the stages along with a set of tubes. By swapping back and forth I was able to determine that you can retain a lot of the openness/spaciousness by having good tubes in the left side output stage, but still gain a lot of the tonal benefits from the LISST in the right side gain stage. This is my favourite sounding tube setup for Freya so far.
Based on that, as far as putting different pairs in Freya, you may want to try tonally rich or bassy tubes in the right side, and more spacious/open tubes in the left side to achieve a good balance and benefits of each.
Thanks for that! I got the Russian 6N8S tubes from Schiit this morning and immediately plonked them in the Freya. I just loved the bass response, but the mids (voice like Leonard Cohen "You want it Darker" and Elvis Costello "North") are disappointing so far. The top end is not as smooth for things like big band (Gordon Goodwin). All this vs the Schiit TungSols. Of course, I have no idea how much time (any?) is on the 6Ns, so it may be that they mature.
I do have the LISSTs that I bought with the Freya but thought them a little too flat across the range. Your idea is fascinating, it had never occurred to me to mix varieties in matched pairs, seems so obvious now!
Thanks again,
Cheers