[OctavianH]

If you put the king on the amp, the mighty 4654/EL50 then you need to propery listen to music. So I was forced again to go to the CD wall. Bad times when I go there, last time it was Slayer. Now I am more civilised. Today I chose the first Black Sabbath album, this time a 2010 Sanctuary remaster. I have several versions of this album which is for me the alpha and the omega of music. Big words, I agree, but nothing made me feel the same as this album, so for me EL50 and Black Sabbath's first album are somehow similar.

Now comes the time for The Wizard.

 

[triod750]

Yes, stay true to yourself since you know what you like...

 

[OctavianH]

Yes, stay true to yourself since you know what you like...

Even if I try to go on other way, I always return to these. There is a point in life when you get "stucked" to something, this is not necessarily problematic because it is the way you were always meant to be. Going on a more general path, I always wanted to get away from EL50, to find something better. But there is a time when there is nothing better. At that time you say The End, because you feel you reached infinity. Then you try and you try, you know...

 

[OctavianH]

Went to the CD wall to search for another version of Black Sabbath's first album and could not find it. But I found a Paranoid nice version.

Well, I'll never go back to the CD wall. But this is good stuff. I am lazy to order my wall but one day I'll do it.

 

[OctavianH]

I made a small trick while listening to Ozzy, put fast the GEC A2293 with the Philips 12AT7 Herleen code just to see if indeed the mighty EL50 can be surpassed. Well no, comparison is always hard to make, especially on these big tubes which are not cooperating on tube rolling. But EL50 dwells on a different level. I alwways try to trick it but I am too small to do this. EL50 is the king and my efforts are useless.

This is a small sound, good but not at the level at the true Philips old sound the Philips EL50 is providing. So my tries to surpass it were in vain. A2293 is a very good sounding tube but not at the level of the 4654/EL50. Here the discussion goes longer because I feel the triodes are more musical as pentodes. And here we get again to the elephant in the room: Is there a triode sound or a pentode sound? I feel that the triodes in Eternity's output are more musical.

 

[OctavianH]

So I had to get back to the EL50 right? Because the british veiled tubes put Ozzy in a cage, they somehow rendered the sound smaller and made everything sound good but veiled. We have to return to the true old Philips sound guys, believe me.

This is why I love EL50, because it sounds natural, sometimes dry because of the lack of distortion on my amp which makes the sound sometimes unexciting. But even in this case, being unexciting, EL50 is natural, it is the true old Philips sound many chase and call it the best. Many years I have read about amplifiers and tubes and so on, and found about people searching for the Philips sound. Well, I started in the wrong way with a Philips ECG 6SN7 which has in fact the sound of the Sylvania latest house sound. I was not knowing anything at that time and I had no clue about what means Philips. They made the best tubes in the world, they got the most of it in the EL50 and EL51 and then they stopped. Maybe EL60 makes sense but it's extremely rare. Now I know more and I am also telling this to the community: the true hi-fi sound is the old european pentode Philips sound. Sounds emotional, I know, but this is the truth. They made the best tubes available and nothing will surpass them, this is the true value. Call me crazy, I am sold to the old pentodes Philips sound.

 

[triod750]

I have the same conflict between natural and exciting/forgiving sound. When the recording is well made you don't need exciting/forgiving distorsion but many (most?) recordings are not well made. So I need both kinds of sound. I would love to find one tube combination that caters for both but so far I have had no success. I probably never will...

 

[OctavianH]

I have the same conflict between natural and exciting/forgiving sound. When the recording is well made you don't need exciting/forgiving distorsion but many (most?) recordings are not well made. So I need both kinds of sound. I would love to find one tube combination that caters for both but so far I have had no success. I probably never will...

There is a big truth here. People should read this carefully.

 

[OctavianH]

Now speaking about similarity and shape of the glass, while looking at these new Philips 4654 I am using to compare different construction types, I see that the left channel is using one which has a smaller glass than the others. It goes crazy how different are all of them and you can find small differences everywhere.

The question is where to stop. I feel the left one has different shape than the right one. Inside they seem similar, at least what you can see inside a grey glass old tube. These were new tubes, NOS NIB as our fellow sellers like to mention, for me not very important. I believe only in my amp and my own measurements and saw NOS NIB performing worse than used, so nobody can make me pay more for it. As a wise man was saying, a used tube at least worked fine for a while. True.

PS. It's funny that at the point I got to evaluate shape of glass of 2 different but identical tubes the song in my playlist is "It's alright" from Technical Ecstasy. So Ozzy tells me I should enjoy music instead of performing my OCD based checks. 1976, a good year for Black Sabbath.

 

[triod750]

Differences are interesting as an indicator of this or that. What they indicate remains to be heard, or just concluded.

I have had good result with different tube types in right and left channel and bad result with the same tube type in both channels...

 

[OctavianH]

I have had good result with different tube types in right and left channel and bad result with the same tube type in both channels...

I agree.

Now speaking of same or different tubes makes me think again on matched pairs. I was reading this and honestly does not make sense to me. I had here totally unbalanced pairs which made me not hear any difference. Envy is a SET amp, why they hear channel imbalance with tubes which are not matched? I will follow this because maybe I am wrong, but honestly guys here totally different pairs make no difference. Are DHT different? He was speaking about drivers stage anyway.

 

[OctavianH]

I had enough of Black Sabbath today so I had to listen to something new. New or old? I put the latest UDO album called Touchdown.



This guy really ages? I am old and he is young, but he is 30 years older than me. LOL

This is why I never judge age, I think people are old when they stop discovering new things. UDO has no age for me, he is as good as he was 30 years ago.

Now, back to tubes, we have Accept on the playlist!

 

[OctavianH]

I said Accept? Well... In my view they never surpassed the Metal Heart era. I still have that T-shirt and wearing it. LOL

 

[Isaacc7]

Trying to figure out if it was the 13d1 burning in or the new operating points for the output tubes was responsible for the great sound I was getting I have to conclude that the answer is yes.

The 13d1 with the Sylvania 6bg6ga in triode has such a sweet tone. Not syrupy but there’s a bit of smoothness and richness to it that is addicting. My first test to see what was responsible for the great sound was to replace the Sylvanias with my beloved vt60. Right away I got the same openness and detail I was expecting. Except… there was a bit of an indistinctness to the sound. Notably they did not have the “hollow” sound I usually notice. While they are very detailed and have great bass it can sound like everything is made of air or something. The new operating point seems to have filled things in nicely. But that kind of veiled, indistinct sound bothered me.

Switched to ultralinear and it did its usual cleaning up through the midrange, adding depth and even more detail. But something just wasn’t right. The 13d1 just wasn’t the right tube for the job. A favorite combo with the vt60 has been c3m so what would that sound like with the new operating point? Stunning as it turns out I am now getting the solidity of the new operating point along with the detail and space I love so much. The c3m gives me such a transparent view into the music. It’s like I took a stage out of the amp and the output tubes are just super easy to drive now. Watching YouTube I can distinctly hear the differences between mics, the sounds of spaces, and so so much more tonal info out of voices. I need to try the 6bg6ga with these tubes as well. But that can wait a while lol.

For a while I was embarrassed at how many vt60 and c3m tubes I have but now I’m wondering if I should get more lol. I won’t get any more vt60, they have gotten expensive and I have a lot of good sounding output tubes. I can still get c3m for reasonable prices. Thank God for 20v heaters! They can sound great with a variety of outputs. Only problem is that the place I can get a good price on them has a minimum order which gets me back up to expensive. The life of a cheapskate audiophile! I save by getting cheap tubes but make it up in volume.

 

[hpamdr]

@Isaacc7 I'm using old Russian version 6П7С of the 6bg6ga. I'm very pleased with It and even more than with some 807 tube I have.
I'm a bit curious about the 13D1 tube, is it a 25V SN7 like https://frank.pocnet.net/sheets/155/1/13D1.pdf ? Have you ever compared with 12SN7GT (I'm only limited to 6.3 and 12.6 V for heater so 25V is not for me).
For bad recording or mp3 listening, i'm using RCA gray glass 6SNT7GT it make sound a bit smoother and makes recording default less hurting me than with 6SL7 or even sylvania 6SN7 or 7N7..