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Audio Research REF 3

Dear all ARC REF 3 owners,
I just bought an REF 3 preamp which has replaced my LS25MKII preamp. To be honest i'm little disappointed by the result so far, but i guess tubes have to be replaced. My concern is especially on the sound image which is not precise as my LS25MKII image was.
The number of hours of used displayed by the my REF 3 is 1670 but i realized that hours counter increased only for full hours of used, so i can estimate the number of hours of the tubes inside my REF 3 to be the double i guess.
My question is the following
What do you recommend for tubes replacement and source for the replacement of REF 3 tubes.
I used sovtek, EH gold, and 6H30-DR on my LS25MKII and i was pleased with all those tubes even if i didn't find the DR much better than the 2 other brands.
Thanks in advance
ARCL60
arcl60

Showing 1 response by elberoth2

elberoth2's avatar
elberoth2
1,223 posts
 
Arcl60 - you should go an extra mile and get NOS TungSol Black Plate 6550 tube. The improvement is not trivial, and much, much greater than what can be acheived by putting DR tubes (I have both DRs and NOS 6550 in my Ref 3).

We discussed it over here:

ARC Ref 3: Tung-Sol 6550 in power supply?
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