[u2u2]

   
Pretty picture!  What drivers? I like your practice putting less stress on the tubes by leaving the socket saver on when rolling. Smart.

Toshiba 6DE7 drivers. I have roughly thirty sets of various drivers that work in the WA6 and this set has become my favourite. They seem to do it all when paired with my 1958 Valvo GZ34 and HD800 phones. Perhaps a little fatiguing but I plan to address that with a future acquisition HD800S. I use socket savers to protect the tubes, let the amp run cooler, and even though I don't leave them on the amp they do protect the sockets. Different tube pins seem to vary in diameter and some are, comparatively speaking, roughly finished. The worst ones have excess solder on pin sides. Most of my savers/adapters are from Woo and have highly polished gold plated pins. They are much smoother inserting and being removed from the amp. The sockets stay cleaner are are subjected to less friction and force so they are still "saved". Here is a tighter shot of the Toshiba.
 

 

[Bitten by Bug]

  But then they're not "socket savers" anymore. 

 

 
Right!  You are correct!  Did not mean to confuse.

I like the concept of saving the stress on difficult to replace and/or expensive tubes.  For the less dear tubes, socket savers will be utilized as intended.  I can always fix or replace a tube socket, but a USD $200 tp $500+ GZ34 or favorite set drivers is something else.  When I met with Jack he did say that the teflon lined sockets can take rolling as long as you don't go nuts and swap out every 15 minutes and also that the connectors in the sockets can easily be adjusted to have more tension applied if needed.  .
 

 
Toshiba 6DE7 drivers. I have roughly thirty sets of various drivers that work in the WA6 and this set has become my favourite. They seem to do it all when paired with my 1958 Valvo GZ34 and HD800 phones. Perhaps a little fatiguing but I plan to address that with a future acquisition HD800S. I use socket savers to protect the tubes, let the amp run cooler, and even though I don't leave them on the amp they do protect the sockets. Different tube pins seem to vary in diameter and some are, comparatively speaking, roughly finished. The worst ones have excess solder on pin sides. Most of my savers/adapters are from Woo and have highly polished gold plated pins. They are much smoother inserting and being removed from the amp. The sockets stay cleaner are are subjected to less friction and force so they are still "saved". Here is a tighter shot of the Toshiba.
 
 

Thank you for the different angle close up!  That made me get a magnifying glass to examine mine as I had no idea how interesting these are. I believe you made a comment earlier on how well built these are. I really, really like these drivers with a specific 5Z3 rectifier on the 6SE.  Have not found them to be optimal with 1958 Mullard GZ34 in the 6SE, but when enough hours are on the brand new WA6, will be lighting them up there with the GZ34.  Only about 20 hours on WA6, too new to risk favored tubes.
 
My goodness, 30 sets of drivers!  If you have the opportunity, please be kind enough to share your experience with the top few driver/rectifier combos with the HD800 and if a combo excels with a particular genre, please don't be shy! 

 

[westermac]

Hey all, I recently picked up a WA6 (sounds fantastic with my HD600!) and have a HD800 coming as well. Has anyone heard this pairing, and if so what tubes are good with the HD800?

It came with the stock tubes, as well as a Sophia Princess 274B, extra RCA 6DE7's and a pair of 7N7.

I also have a Corda Classic which I will be comparing it to.

Thanks

 

[u2u2]

I find most any Woo listed driver tubes will work well with a good rectifier and the HD800. A sweet set of 6DE7 are in a post just above. I use mostly 6SN7GT and WGT variants. I have a set of 7N7 tall bottles that are very nice as well. 7N7 don't get a lot of love here but they offer huge returns for their cost. You should be off to a good start already.

 

[westermac]

That's good to know u2u2; thanks for the info!

 

[joseph69]

I find most any Woo listed driver tubes will work well with a good rectifier and the HD800. A sweet set of 6DE7 are in a post just above. I use mostly 6SN7GT and WGT variants. I have a set of 7N7 tall bottles that are very nice as well. 7N7 don't get a lot of love here but they offer huge returns for their cost. You should be off to a good start already.

I enjoy the 6SN7WGTA's myself, which also don't get a lot of love here.
I most recently started using some NOS-6FD7 (Big Bottles) which I enjoy very much as well!

 

[u2u2]

I concentrated on getting GT and WGT variants because they may get harder to find sooner than GTA. The only WGTA pair I have are Tung-Sol. Nice tubes that I ought to spend more time with. I fully understand why you are satisfied with WGTA versions. I tripped into my Toshiba 6DE7 tubes while trying to get some NOS 6FD7. The supply of 6FD7 seems to be dried up. They are the last tubes on my must get list specific to the WA6.

 

[gefski]

7n7 are detailed, delicate, and are nicely laid back if one has a headphone needing a little reduction in glare (row H instead of row A). However, their dynamics seem a bit lifeless to me, reminding me of my previous experience with a passive preamp in a speaker based system. I get bored and change them out after a couple weeks.

Then if I go back to 6fd7, it's dynamic, vital, alive again.

IMOYMMV etc.

 

[gefski]

The supply of 6FD7 seems to be dried up. They are the last tubes on my must get list specific to the WA6.

They pop up on eBay frequently. In fact, there are a couple pairs and a trio on there now.

 

[ChrisIsAwesome]

I went to my local hifi store to listen and put in the order on the 6se but they didn't have it on hand to audition and described it as being an 'odd' amp that only really works well with harder to drive darker sounding orthos and wouldn't match well and be harsh with my akg's. This seems to match up somewhat with the comments in this thread.
 
So now i'm back to where i originally was. Confused about what to get and if to get anything at all. I didn't have the time to try the wa6 but listened to the wa22 which i love, it ticks all the boxes other than price. The 22 had the clarity of my ak100ii while having added tube euphonics. 
The wa2 sounded extremely dull with my akg's, much worse than my dap alone which i accredit to impedance mismatch.
 
I guess i'll go back and have a side by side comparison of the wa6/wa22 but before that there's something that occurred to me while listening, I'll ask here before starting a thread about it.
 
I have a AK100ii as my dap which fed the amps using the 'line out' feature which sets it to maximum volume. Through my akg's listening straight from the dap i only set the volume to about 70-80% with max being too loud hurting my ears. So while at my normal listening levels this would mean that the amps where actually reducing the volume of the signal from my dap? doesn't this defeat the purpose of an amp entirely meaning all a dedicated amp would be doing is adding distortion and reducing the volume.

 

[Guidostrunk]

I believe when you use the line out feature of your dap, you're bypassing the internal amp on the dap, and only using the dac, which becomes a line level signal on max volume. Not sure what your dap puts out for line level signal. But most dacs are around a 2v signal.
I think the distortion issue you would have is if you were double amping the signal, ie.....using the headphone out to send the signal to an external amp.

I think I've read your post correctly. I'm still drinking coffee. lol

I went to my local hifi store to listen and put in the order on the 6se but they didn't have it on hand to audition and described it as being an 'odd' amp that only really works well with harder to drive darker sounding orthos and wouldn't match well and be harsh with my akg's. This seems to match up somewhat with the comments in this thread.

So now i'm back to where i originally was. Confused about what to get and if to get anything at all. I didn't have the time to try the wa6 but listened to the wa22 which i love, it ticks all the boxes other than price. The 22 had the clarity of my ak100ii while having added tube euphonics. 
The wa2 sounded extremely dull with my akg's, much worse than my dap alone which i accredit to impedance mismatch.

I guess i'll go back and have a side by side comparison of the wa6/wa22 but before that there's something that occurred to me while listening, I'll ask here before starting a thread about it.

I have a AK100ii as my dap which fed the amps using the 'line out' feature which sets it to maximum volume. Through my akg's listening straight from the dap i only set the volume to about 70-80% with max being too loud hurting my ears. So while at my normal listening levels this would mean that the amps where actually reducing the volume of the signal from my dap? doesn't this defeat the purpose of an amp entirely meaning all a dedicated amp would be doing is adding distortion and reducing the volume.

 

[copajohn]

  I went to my local hifi store to listen and put in the order on the 6se but they didn't have it on hand to audition and described it as being an 'odd' amp that only really works well with harder to drive darker sounding orthos and wouldn't match well and be harsh with my akg's. This seems to match up somewhat with the comments in this thread.
 
So now i'm back to where i originally was. Confused about what to get and if to get anything at all. I didn't have the time to try the wa6 but listened to the wa22 which i love, it ticks all the boxes other than price. The 22 had the clarity of my ak100ii while having added tube euphonics. 
The wa2 sounded extremely dull with my akg's, much worse than my dap alone which i accredit to impedance mismatch.
 
I guess i'll go back and have a side by side comparison of the wa6/wa22 but before that there's something that occurred to me while listening, I'll ask here before starting a thread about it.
 
I have a AK100ii as my dap which fed the amps using the 'line out' feature which sets it to maximum volume. Through my akg's listening straight from the dap i only set the volume to about 70-80% with max being too loud hurting my ears. So while at my normal listening levels this would mean that the amps where actually reducing the volume of the signal from my dap? doesn't this defeat the purpose of an amp entirely meaning all a dedicated amp would be doing is adding distortion and reducing the volume.

 
Sounds to me as if your local hifi shop wanted to sell you what they had rather than order the 6SE.  I have used easy to drive Grado RS1 and harder to drive Beyerdynamic T1v2 and both are just fine.  Just need to find the right match of tubes to go with your cans.  
 
BTW, props to Mike Liang of Woo who turned me on the the T1s.  Great match.  Thanks.  You steered me right even though I wanted to spend more money.  That's a pro!

 

[Bitten by Bug]

While I asked on a different Woo thread, this is probably the appropriate location to ask if anyone has experience with the TA-274B in WA6SE and/or WA6? Thanks.

 

[ChrisIsAwesome]

Thanks, i didn't realise line out bypassed the internal amp. Is there no way to compare a dap's power output of Watt hours to a dedicated amps output of Watt units

 
The store i went to didn't try to push me onto anything else and offered to order one in, it was just his experience with the amp. The 6se does have high power output and It seems that many pass theirs on in favor of either the 6 or 22 which has made me hesitant.
 
I either gamble with the 6se, stretch the budget and go end game 22 or stay with my dap.
 
Thanks for the responses.

 

[u2u2]

7n7 are detailed, delicate, and are nicely laid back if one has a headphone needing a little reduction in glare (row H instead of row A). However, their dynamics seem a bit lifeless to me, reminding me of my previous experience with a passive preamp in a speaker based system. I get bored and change them out after a couple weeks.

Then if I go back to 6fd7, it's dynamic, vital, alive again.

IMOYMMV etc.

Mail call today filled the void. First impressions are good but I won't get too much time with them for a while as I have other tubes arriving tomorrow and the WA6 is time sharing with a WA22. Very rare that I don't roll tubes at least once inside a two week period. My driver collection is all but done so it is time to figure out a favoured set. Thank you for the pointer on 6FD7.