Does anyone own the Bel Canto SET 40?

I know this is an old thread but hopefully some SET 40 owners still have the amp. With the auto bias some of the newer more fragile 845 tubes are a no go. Have any of you folks tried anything other than the 845 B's. Some of the Psvane offerings look pretty enticing. Thanks and happy listening !

I have the SETI40 and I replaced the original tubes with Psvane Acme 845’s and two sets of 12AX7-T-MII/2 matched pairs. They sound great although if you are brave I recommend throwing away the Bel Canto internal 0.16uf capacitors and replacing with Audyn Copper Max 0.22uf or V-Cap CuTF.
The Copper Max's were fantastic but I could not resist trying the VCaps, I’m still running them in, they have a more analytic sound than the Copper Max’s but its early days and I can easily switch back if I desire.

ponderguy, wondering if you could elaborate on improvements with your various cap replacements.

I am running an SETI40 as well. And for those interested the Psavane Acme 845s were a pretty substantial improvement for me over the 845b.

 

I owned the SET40 amp several years ago. Was my First amp using the 845 tube. 
it was a very hot running amp, you could smell the heat as any dust or anything got blasted with heat.. It was a bit wooly and "thick" sounding, the lows were somewhat muddy, but it had decent power and lots of bloom in the mid range. Too much volume and it all became loose and bloated sounding. 
I found it to be too "euphoric" sounding,  Overly tubey but easy to listen to when playing not so well recorded CD's at the time, about 20 years ago..  When I opened the unit up, there were some caps and resistors showing signs of heat related issues, burn marks, etc...  I liked the gold rings tube protectors, looked cool..  but it wasn't a keeper for me.. 

The original sound of the amp was very bass heavy and bloated like you said but replacing the 0.16uf with a 0.22 V-Cap CuTF transformed it totally. I also tried an Audyn Copper Max that sounded as good but richer with quite not so much detailed.

All my upgrades are doc’ed on the Art Of Sound forum, just subscribe and search for SETI 40