Tube DIY Asylum Do It Yourself (DIY) paradise for tube and SET project builders.

---

[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ Tube DIY Asylum ]

---

[ Alert Moderator ]

---

RE: Mcintosh Tubes

Posted by Michael Samra (D) on June 25, 2016 at 21:57:54

In Reply to: Mcintosh Tubes posted by totosooner@yahoo.com on June 25, 2016 at 19:35:01:

My question.....how can everyone bash Mcintosh tubes and then say something like Sovtek or NOS GE/RC/Sylvania, which were all very pedestrian mass marketed products, are better than what the Mcintosh engineers required a manufacturer to deliver. These were specified and chosen by Ncintosh design engineers and cost $600 a set? What difference does the country of manufacture make? I DONT GET IT?

Let me start out by saying the performance of your Mac amp has to do with execution and design of your amp and not the brand of tubes..I own and rebuild and upgrade a lot of Mac tube gear for people and I can tell you that they will go well beyond 20khz and stay flat as a pancake. I'm talking Mac amps from the 50s and 60s even.

There are also other vintage amps that will do this such as a Harman Kardon Citation 2. It isn't unusual for an amp to make excellent frequency response at 1 watt, but it's when you get into the higher power ranges and to be able to maintain that frequency response,lower distortion,and power bandwidth.That's where upgrading comes in with more modern power supply caps,ground schemes,channel splitting in the power supply on stereo amps,and better diodes.
The tubes in a Mac amps are the same tubes you can buy from tube dealers like Jim McShane that know how to match them well. Mcintosh doesn't have tubes built to their specs,they simply put their name on tubes that they buy and they pay to have them matched and tested is all.
Back in the day,the McIntosh used KT88 Genelex Gold Lions..In the Mc60s they used TungSol 6550s. When the reissues came,they used SED wing Cs and then they went to JJs in recent years which I'm not very fond of for reliability issues.
Any mainstream tube can produce good numbers as long as you have a capable design.I have swept my Mac and HK Citation amps all the way out to 80k flat after the McShane type rebuild and this at half power.Both of these amp brands will go well beyond a 100k but you will start to roll off a bit.
Nobody denies that you don't need good tubes to make spec but as much as I love Mac amps,I'm not crazy about the JJ output tubes they picked a couple years back for overall reliability.It is very common for Mac amps to make more power than spec and to have their distortion be half of rated spec.

Take a look at this mono Mac amp that I rebuilt a couple weeks back and it's one of a pair..Link provided. This is an Mc30 rated at 30 watts from the factory at .25% distortion..I did do a nifty rebuild but I kept the original design but also used a different rectifier tube..It makes just a hair shy of 48 watts at .11% distortion. Even with the original type 5U4 rectifier it made 42 watts which proves that Mac conservatively rates their equipment.

I see I didn't properly answer your question so I'm reediting here a bit.You mentioned certain tubes as being very pedestrian however,many of those companies made the tubes for Mcintosh as well as other companies like Fisher and Sherwood.I don't know who says they are better being the same tubes however, audio manufacturers do tend to choose better matched and better testing tubes for their equipment even tho these same companies made the McIntosh labeled tubes.Does this mean you can't get tubes of the factory quality from that same manufacturer? Not at all.This is why you go to top reputable tube sellers like Jim McShane who puts these tubes thru rigorous testing, and matching, and balancing as the McIntosh factory would so you will have that same quality tube.
You also asked why does the country of manufacture make a difference? It doesn't. It all depends on a lot of factors such as materials used,skill of craftsmen,quality of building equipment.
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong" H. L. Mencken

• http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/tubediy/messages/24/246898   (Open in New Window)

Edits: 06/25/16 06/25/16 06/25/16

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

---

[ Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]

---

[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]

---