Interesting info? Different sounding batches - what are your experiences - george

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Interesting info? Different sounding batches - what are your experiences

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Hi,
since I am in the middle of getting my UNISON Triode 20 looked over by an excellent specialist, I got some very interesting information from this guy. He is the tech-guy of a wellknow german high-end distributor. I asked him about what types to use, when we needed to replace the ECC82/83/EL34's and about different informations I found on the internet or got suggested by tube-retailers regarding sound.
He said, that over the years, they have bought, tested and built in large quantities of tubes and that you cannot rely just on the name like Svetlana or Mullard or whatever. Whenever they ran out of stock of certain types, they first ordered a bunch of samples from the new batch, measured and tested them and - most important - listened to them. There were huge differences, so sometimes they did not use the batch from the manufacturer, that with the "ran out" batch had produced amazing results.
He also said, that his boss once had said "no chinese valves" for a certain amp, but then they ran into a batch from one manufacturer, that just sounded better than everything they heard before with that amp.

For this tech-guy, the situation is clear: it's not the name, that counts, but the sound - he will only use tubes, that produce the desired listening result.
Another interesting thing: even when he made best experiences with a certain batch of tubes he never could guarantee for a long lifetime - 99% were perfect, and the one time he really was praising them to a customer, they blew after 2 months....
So, what do you say - did you have similar experiences? I thought, this was interesting enough to share.....
George

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Topic - Interesting info? Different sounding batches - what are your experiences - george 00:59:55 05/04/04 (1)

Re: Interesting info? Different sounding batches - what are your experiences - tvr2500m 12:40:54 05/07/04 (0)

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