Anyone prefer EL34 over 300B?

i think you are headed in a good direction chinook

i think a 300b amp will have a hard time with controlling the bass drivers of your tektons, unless you have a small room and or listen at low volumes

black plate rca’s will be smooth... clear top side getter rca au7 or ax7’s are known to be hot in the treble (5751’s are just a lower gain variant of the 12ax7, no big deal)... note which tubes in your amp are the input stage tubes... those are ones that will dominate the sound character... much moreso than the driver stage tubes feeding into the power tubes

good luck have fun

i don’t know those chinese willsenton amps but i think many of those new chinese brands sold direct are knock offs of primaluna designs... so they will perform pretty well, so long as they didn’t cheap out on the output transformers... i think you know with a tube amp you are hearing the output trannies as much as the power tubes driving - transformer quality is very very important

does the willsenton amp have a triode/ultra linear switch (like the primaluna’s do)? if so you will get a glimpse of what 300b’s will sound like -- more spatial cues, but less drive, a bit sweeter midrange, softer bass, more rolled off high treble if your amp can run in triode mode

your tektons are 4 ohm stated impedance even though they are quite high efficiency... that raises a red flag for me... can a 300b amp control the bass? they are less powerful for sure - so depends on your room and listening volume

other thing i would say is that chinese amps come with chinese el34’s (obviously)... they are the brightest (treble-centric) el34’s currently made imo (shuguangs)... so to alter the sound profile you might try a set of russian el34’s which will give you more body and less sizzle - the tektons are tuned to be very alive, so using the amp you have to ’round off’ the sound a bit through tube rolling the input and output tubes could well be more cost effective than going with a 300b amp...

my thoughts

i missed that you had said below you have tekton electrons

sorry i should have seen that

what is the el34 amp you are using now?

@chinook9

sorry to disappoint you with truth and reality

my experience with these output tubes only spans the following amps over 30 years:

el34-6ca7 --
music reference rm9ii
airtight atm-1
vac pa 90c
marantz 8b
primaluna dialog prem hp
cj mv60

300b --
cary 300b sei
vac ren 30/30
vac ren 70/70
audion silver night se
wavelength cardinal xs

but i have no idea what the hell i am talking about... and you don’t even mention what speakers you are driving... seriously???

***************************************************************

oh yes, 300b’s are always much better -- always

happy now?

totally depends on the amp and the application

to choose by tube type only is foolish