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Re: DEEP TRIODE!

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Nice to hear you guys are moving toward the truth.
Re the Chinese 2A3s, I get this feeling that some of the stuff said is based more on hearsay than practical listening.
Personally I think the sonic differences between NOS biplates and Chinese 2A3s is fairly subtle, with the Chinese winning for bass control and attack, and the NOS tubes (yes I am generalizing to some degree by grouping all those gassy NOS biplates together) having the upperhand in smoothness.
Either is usually whupped in the delicacy and subtle detail race by a NOS single plate 2A3, for the obvious reason that there's only one plate and therefore less chance to smear the signal.
The single plate KR2A3 has quite a different character than any of these other tubes, more ballsy, definitely the king of the group for dynamics and bass control. It is the tube I recommend for folks with marginal speaker sensitivities, say <97 dB. However with more sensitive speakers the KR exhibits a bit of a mechanical sound compared to the other 2A3s. They also exhibit lower mu.
And so, like damn near everything else we work with, any of these tubes needs to be considered as a part of the overall system.
I suspect the Chinese might actually be the ticket for George's amps, which present a bit of the more traditional vintage tube sound and could use the extra definition. They also run the tubes pretty hard, which the Chinese tubes can handle.


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