The Brimar 5Z4GY arrived yesterday. The vendor did get in touch and advised that they just depend on a receipt being sent from PayPal and that did not occur in this situation.
I wanted to get a few more hours on the semi virgin SP so did not turn on the new light bulb until today. For a ~ $26 tube, this is great right out of the box! I do hope it will get some more low end as it matures. But for $26 I will not whine one bit due how nice this is for easy listening so far. I was getting so wrapped up in the nice and interesting sound that I ended up doing entire albums intead of my barometers, ha ha. Thanks fellow Head-Fiers for mentioning how nice this tube is.
So why did I not pull the SP yesterday? Being fully aware of extended burn in required, I had noted that the HD650 sounded kinda meh, but the HD598 sounded much better. So did a little A/B on this fresh tube, and it appeared to bear out on various types of music. Will be a long burn in for this one before I can draw a personal conclusion as to how much I like this tube.
This sure is going to get interesting! So far still getting first impressions from rectifiers and how some seem to excel at one genre and are not quite so stellar on others...Now discovering that different valves sound better with different cans. Fascinating. This is going to be amazing when I start rolling drivers too....Good gosh, those poor folks with the WA2 have another type of tube to throw into the mix! Not just a combo of 2 tubes, but a combo of 3!
Anyhow, straight out of the box this 5Z4GY has a very enjoyable, interesting and relaxing sound. Thanks again for mentioning it here. I just might want to get some backups!!! Initial impression via HD650.
Just wanted to say that reading your posts cracks me up
You just love all this so much, it reminds me of how excited I was when I first got my WA6. I hope you get many years of enjoyment out of it. I do think it offers things that not much in its price range can really match.
About your Sophia Princess, I think that it is unfairly trashed on this forum. I can see why, it has a somewhat flat signature, and much of head-fi seems to value detail retrieval (or maybe artificial magnification) above almost anything else, but it is definitely a fun tube, and you just want to smile when you look at it in a dark room. Makes you feel like you're a high class cave man in the world of 2016. But it is very wide, almost like the size of the tube accounts for some of its soundstage. I think that with the right driver tubes, it can sound really quite good.
In other news, I finally fixed my amp. I posted about it in the main woo thread, but I figured it would be good to document this here in case anyone ever runs into the same issue. I (drunkenly) stepped on a cable a few months back, and managed to flip the WA6 onto the floor. Aside from a shattered TS rp, the 1/4" jack was destroyed. It took me a long time, but Woo was helpful in showing me the replacement. I do have to say, they said to get an Amphenol Audio jack that costs about one dollar online, then of course you pay 5 in shipping. While it is probably perfectly sufficient, it is not near the build quality that the original jack was, and I ended up getting a different jack for about 3 dollars that is much better. The reason being that the connectors that you need to solder the wires to had extremely small openings, also they felt a bit loose inside the jack. I ended up with a switchcraft jack, which also is plastic despite the pictures from the vendor, but feels more solid, and has much larger openings for the wiring. Again, both are probably fine, I just went with something that feels more solid when you insert the cable.
Also, I needed solder. Trying to clean the solder off of the wires and reuse it was just too difficult. I'm sure you already know this if you solder much, but I don't, so I learned the hard way. I got 10ft of cardas quad for not much money, and it will probably last me a lifetime of minor repairs. Also, you will need a wire stripper for very fine wires. Trying with scissors, a knife, fingernails, all very difficult. One of the wires, the ground wire, the insulation is very tough. Maybe they use different wire now, but I needed a 24 awg stripper. Took seconds to get a clean strip as opposed to an hour of frustration before.
The last thing now, is to get the volume knob back in shape. It is apparently quite finicky. Anyways, that's all about that. Just wanted to post my experience if any of you ever need to replace the headphone jack.
Also I got some new 6C8G NU, but they are not matched, and from different construction, and probably different strength, and I can tell... Going to put the matched 6F8G back in. But they are so cheap in 6C8G as singles, so I imagine if I accumulate enough, I'll find good pairs eventually.
edit: I will say, the additional gain from the 6C8G NU is very apparent.
Sorry for such a long post.
