Blue Hawaii tube amp

Are you running some custom built / commissioned Blue Hawaii, a Mjolnir Audio (Iceland) Blue Hawaii, an older Headamp Blue Hawaii (circa early/mid 2000s), or the more modern Headamp Blue Hawaii SE? Just curious.

The warnings against KT77 are correct - don’t do that. I found the late 1950s / early 1960s Amperex (Holland) brown-base EL34 to sound absolutely superb (xf5 and xf6 codes). Much better than the 1970s Mullards (xf3 and xf4 codes), which were too dark, warm, thick. However some will prefer the warm Mullards with 009 because they find those headphones too bright or analytical - personally I say that if you prefer Mullards with 009, then those headphones are probably not for you, and you should just go for the 007 at that point.The Blue Hawaii pairs wonderfully with both 007 and 009. But 009 with Amperex EL34 tubes was my favorite.

And either way, the 009 with any Blue Hawaii isn’t going to be able to compete with high-end planar bass. It can yield satisfying bass, it’s not AWOL like with some of the Sony MDR-R10, but you’ll have to see if you find great value in the electrostatics’ speed and purity of sound to favor it over the many alternatives available today. When the Blue Hawaii was in its heyday, I don’t think there was any reasonable dynamic setup to compete with it. Classic amp, still a great alternative, and still MILES better than any of the Stax-branded amps! You know of the Stax-mafia DIY T2 builds, right? Those are crazy, rare and expensive, but they do achieve that one exquisite level of sound quality higher than even a Blue Hawaii SE. The Blue Hawaii was Dr. Kevin Gilmore's first attempt a recreating the original Stax T2 amplifier, "blind" before he got hold of an actual T2 amp and cloned (and improved - the original had a few serious flaws) it for the DIY T2 project. 

Also agree the "Siemens" EL34 are nothing special (not worth $500 a quad, certainly), though I’d not used them in the Blue Hawaii SE. The Russian re-issue Mullard EL34 are quite serviceable tubes for cheap, until you source a good vintage set.

Larry and golfnutz, I really wish to thank you for the info. It is very helpful.

For my particular taste, the 009 is a bit too bright and analytical sounding; the 007 is better in that regard.  But, the 009 goes substantially deeper in bass, is more efficient and can play louder than the 007, so there are trade-offs involved; I chose to stick with the 007.  I really like the Dan Clark Audio Voce electrostatic phone with the Blue Hawaii--it is a smooth sounding phone that is quite open sounding without too much brightness (Dan Clark Audio use to be called Mr. Speaker, so you might find discussion of this phone under that name).  

http://www.tubeaudiostore.com/elpremgrad.html - " The Siemens EL34 is one of the best EL34s made. These tubes are rare, new old stock tubes made with East German precision at the original East German factory, so basically Telefunken". These are black based tubes, not brown based like the ones on the bottom left in the link below. The rest of the tubes from Telefunken " EL34 tubes made by Telefunken in West Germany are pretty rare and Siemens and Lorenz never made any EL34 tube.

Take a look at the bottom of the page on the right hand side from the link below. Read the comments for the other tubes as well - http://www.tube-classics.de/TC/Tubes/SieTel%20EL34/EL34.htm

No way I’d pay $500 for a quad of those. I had 2 quads of the Siemens RFT tubes (East Germany) and never liked either of them. You could probably find mint NOS Mullard xf4 for the same price if you look hard enough.
Link to Philips/Mullard -  http://www.tube-classics.de/TC/Tubes/Valvo%20EL34/EL34.htm

Thank you for the comments. I have did  some research before I asked. The Siemans EL34's were reviewed well so am leaning toward them. I just bought the amp and I don't even have any headphones for it yet to try. I currently am using the Abyss 1266 phi CC with the Audio-gd master 9 and wanted to upgrade so I thought I would try the BHSE and am deciding what headphones to try first. I read that someone said the Stax 009's gave them a headache after 20-30 minutes. 

When I got my Blue Hawaii, a good friend came over with several sets of vintage El 34's and 6CA7's.  I think one nice sounding pair was an xf3 tube, but, its been a while so I may be wrong.  I ended up liking a quad of Telefunken EL 34's, so that is what my friend gave me (I had a choice of any of the tubes he brought over).  The have, so far, been working out well for me.  I use them with Stax 007 mk1 headphones.

Read the review by David Robinson in Positive Feedback. He substituted the stick tubes with Siemens EL34.

If you want to ruin your amp, go ahead and use the KT77 tubes - NOT RECOMMENDED (you can verify this in the BHSE forum on HeadFi).

I’ve probably rolled 15 different types of EL34/6CA7 tubes in the BHSE, and found the vintage tubes to be very good - the older the better. Metal based sounded the best to me, than DD halos, followed by OO halos. If you don’t want to spend a lot of money, see if you can find a couple of used matched pairs of xf3 to get an idea of what the differences are between vintage and reissues. I don’t know if QC is better, but I wouldn’t suggest using Psvane tubes due to reliability issues (I never had a quad that last more than 1200 hrs).

You should really be asking this question on HeadFi, or reading through the BHSE thread on HeadFi if you haven’t already. I doubt you’ll get much help here.

EL34 headphone amp, correct? I've found a good replacement is GoldLion KT77, readily available from many on line sources. However, Facten is correct.....it would be nice to hear those questions answered.

What tube type is in your amp? What brand tube is presently in your amp, and what do you like/dislike about the sound? What if anything sound wise might you be preferring?