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Anybody tried the latest batch of Shuguang WE6SN7 plus?

When these came out originally a few years back there was quite a bit of interest in and enthusiasm for them. While some folks pointed out that Western Electric never produced a 6SN7 others praised them.

Don Sachs used them for a while in his preamps and thought they sounded very good. Some of the folks on this forum praised them very highly and thought they were better sounding than many of the most highly regarded vintage 6SN7s.

Then (IIRC) Shuguang had a fire at their factory and stopped producing tubes for a couple years and these tubes became unobtainium. When they were available, prices were higher than when new.

Now I see them back on the market. Anybody tried them? Anybody had a chance to compare them to the Linlai Elite E-6SN7s? 

I'm interested in naturalness and accuracy of  tone, soundstaging, detail, bass, treble extension and longevity. 

Any experience would be appreciated.

128x128markusthenaimnut
wag12wag12
9 posts
 

I can't believe those four Shuguang WE6SN7 Plus tubes that I ordered on on Jan 2, 2024 from seller " Shuguang Vacuum Store" on AliExpress were delivered today Jan 7, 2024. The four tubes that ordered were extremely well packed and came in two of the factory boxes with the foam inserts with two tubes in each box. These two boxes were wrapped in many layers of bubble wrap which were then put into a  plastic bubble wrap lined pouch which was put into a second  bubble wrap lined pouch. There was no way these tubes were going to get broke in shipping.  The boxes contained test cards showing Ia= 9 ma for both sections of each tube for all four tubes.  The first thing I did was get my tube tester out and test all four tubes.

Here are my results for the four tubes I tested:

WE6SN7 tube one:  2600-2700 micromhos

WE6SN7 tube two:  2850-2850 micromhos

WE6SN7 tube three:  2800-2900 micromhos

WE6SN7 tube one:  2900-2950 micromhos

Most places I have seen like to keep the tubes within 10% of each other so I'm pretty happy with the results as the tubes are within 10% of each other and the two sections in each tube are less than 4% different.

Two thumbs up to the"Shuguang Vaccuum Store for the quick shipping, great packing, and matching of the tubes.

I put all four of my WE6SN7 Plus tubes into my Schiit Freya + which is connected to a Schitt Vidar which is driving a pair of Martin Logan Motion 40i speakers. I played some CDs and WOW! I've never gotten better sound out of them.

I then replaced the two WE6SN7 Plus tubes in the buffer side of the Freya + with two Schiit LISST solid state tubes and I kept two of the WE6SN7 Plus tubes in the gain stage. I played some CDs again and it still sounded great, the four WE6SN7 tubes probably sounded a tad better but I was hard pressed to hear any difference. So after over two years of frustration dealing with Grant Fidelity over my lost pair of WE6SN7, I finally got my Shuguang WE6SN7 tubes. It was a long wait as the Shuguang factory had a fire back in August 2019 and stopped making tubes and it looks like they just started production again around May 2024. I lost $336 on the pair that got lost but at least I was able to buy four tubes this time for $330.

So I guess all is well that ends well.

ozzy62's avatar
ozzy62
3,195 posts
 

I have a pair en route right now to use in the gain stage of my Don Sachs DS2. I will keep the tung sols in the buffer side. Looking forward to it.

markusthenaimnut's avatar
markusthenaimnut OP
373 posts
 

Thank you all for your responses. I'll keep watching this thread, though I don't *really* need more 6SN7s. And I just order 6SN7 to 7N7 adapters. What was I thinking?

I don't know. Tube rolling is fun and a relatively harmless addiction.

;>)

 

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