6L6 or variant

The audiophile interest in 6V6 tubes is interesting. Back when I first became interested in audio amps the 6V6 tube was what you got in Stromberg-Carlson console gramaphones, and similar mass market audio equipment. 6V6 tubes were everywhere except in amps for audiophiles, which had EL34s or better. If an amp used 6V6s it was ineligible for audiophile consideration. How fashons change!

For full disclosure, I had a neat little Craftsman 10 watt power amp that I used for the midrange/tweeter of my second experiment with biamplification, and it had 6V6 tubes.

If you can afford it I would go with NOS Genelex KT-66's..... However in another post I am running right now, a gentleman wrote that the new reproduction GEC's are very good.

Beyond that, I have always thought the black-base RCA's sounded best in my old Fender guitar amps.

Chris

Well actually Dared has a 6V6 based amp. I have never listened to it or read any reviews, so I have no idea of it's quality. Seems though 6V6 tubes are not so available. 5881-6L6 etc are quite abundant still in NOS. And if one switched from integrated and desired to run them in a amp-preamp setup, there are few outfits that have amps to accomidate this. I was also curious about the offerings from the new Tung-Sol line. Supposedly these tubes are slowly improving? They also offer 6L6 as well as KT66.

I think the GEC KT66 is safely out of my range at this point. And even if I did have a set, I would then miss them when they were gone. Ignorrance is bliss :)

88

Eldartford, perhaps you would be interested in these: http://cgi.ebay.com/RCA-MI-12180-6V6-Tube-Theatre-Amplifier-Amps-20W-Pair_W0QQitemZ370033495803QQihZ024QQcategoryZ50593QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Kt-88....I just looked at those amps. They get to 20 watts, instead of the usual 10 watts, by using four 6V6 output tubes. I am sure that performance is limited by the small audio output transformer. A substitute would not fit on the chassis unless the power transformer, and perhaps other parts of the power supply, were put on an outboard chassis. An interesting project for someone.