Good recommendations here. At the lower end of the price scale the SED Winged Cs are excellent. The Gold Lion KT77s I bought from Jim McShane were rock solid and sounded wonderful and I also really liked the NOS Siemens like the ones Upscale Audio is selling. The Siemens were made by RFT in East Germany and rebranded by Siemens but they're wonderful tubes.
EL34 upgrade
I'm currently experimenting with my Jolida JD302B and various tubes. I have 3 makes and each are vastly different from each. In terms of preference I would order them as such: (1) Svetlana, (2) Sovtek, (3) Shuguang. They are all the budget versions. I am considering upgrading to either the SED Winged C or Gold Lion Reissue. So my question, is whether I would expect improvements to the preferred Svetlana? I have a pricepoint of $200 for a matched quad and not sure whether I need to go higher to really hear a difference. Also I'm sure I'm sure there are others, so please weigh them in as well.
-JerseyWalt
-JerseyWalt