Sakahara,
You replaced your wonderful Tron amp? what did you find better with the replacement?
You replaced your wonderful Tron amp? what did you find better with the replacement?
Favorite 300B: Sophia vs KR
Which do you prefer; S.E.T. Princess 300B Carbon Plate or KR 300B WE Clone?
I've only experienced NOS 40's/50's WE so my expectations are pretty high. Which do you think captures the essence of the WE most closely? I'm trying to keep the cost down as much as possible so EAT is not an option, as much as I was blown away by their KT88. I considered current WE but they're not in production until Spring 2011.
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So maybe sacrilege but have a push pull 300b tube amp (actually on the way its 23 watts of power). It runs four 300b's. Comes with EH 300bs. I also have a 300b set with Full Music se 300bs which are very nice tubes but only 2 of them so you can afford the luxury. So 4 of the high end 300bs is going to set me back at least $1,000, maybe even $1500. Yikes - what do I do - will play with the Eh's for a while but know I am already scheming for some Sophias or something else.....? Is there a budget tube that will give me what I need out of my new amp? |
one of the things I always wonder about with 300b's is how wide the gulf is between various manufacturers. Prices vary wildly - is something like a Electro Harmonix to Svetlana to new Royal Princess a $700 gap in terms of value and sound. I know only my ears can tell me the answer to that questions so a bit rhetorical. |
@Ladavid Probably quality of material, process and control procedure, but also the quantity. For example, Shuguang, TJ and maybe EH manufacturing like 500 valves a day, maybe more, but KR, EML or EAT manufacturing like 500 in month, all hand made, from start to the end, that's the difference. As for the sound, I never tried any cheap Chinese or Russians so far, so, nothing I can tell here. |
"So maybe sacrilege but have a push pull 300b tube amp Ladavid, The 300b is a great tube and no less so because its used in a push-pull amp. Given the money I had just sunk into my amplifier when I acquired it, I decided to stay with the stock tubes for a while. Since then, in addition to adding the Sophia Royal Princesses, I upgraded the small tubes with the best that I could find. In my system, the improvement has been so great that I wish I hadnt waited. It might be somewhat more challenging to find 300b tubes for push-pull amps, like ours, because most 300b tube reviews are conducted with SET amps. I have been advised that the findings in those reviews might not coincide with ours, using push-pulls. |
Phaelon, You`re right , it`s a wonderful tube.SET or push pull, it does`nt matter. If it`s a well built/designed amplifier it will simply make music sound devine. Regarding your 2nd point it seems if anything running the 300b as a SET would be more demanding on the tube than splitting/sharing the signal as in a PP circuit. I don`t understand why a tube that functions well handling the full signal would be less good when asked to do less. It appears counter intuitive, at lease to me. Best Regards, |
Charles1dad, I actually feel sorry for my tech when he goes into detailed explanations with me. But he has worked with some very high end amp designers. What I did take away from our conversation is that it is enough that the demand the two designs place on the tube is different; regardless of which is more demanding. |
I ordered 4 Shuguang Treasures for my amp. Pricey but grade b tubes came to $700 for the four. This is the down side to 300b amps is that a) the tubes do make a significant difference and b) you pay almost as much as the amp for good tubes. My new amp is a Mactone so a little more than the the price of tubes but seems to be all about the quality of the tubes with 300b amps. Will be interesting to see if the quality tubes make as good a difference with my push pull setup as they did when I upgraded tubes for my 300b set. |
Two more things about 300bs: 1. by all accounts these new Treasures take a ton of hours to break in - like don't even listen seriously for 100 hours so Charles1's dad might be a bit before I am back but this is my intent. Hoping the upgraded tubes sees the amp jump forward in significant ways 2. counter intuitive one is that I swapped out my high efficiency Audio Note E's for low efficiency Ellis 1801's and the Ellis' just sing with this amp and the EH tubes. Almost like the Audio Notes are too revealing of the flaws in the 300b tubes...so would I expect the opposite in that I might not notice much difference with the Treasures on the 83db Ellis' but should be a wow with the Audio Notes. Curious. |
I used a number of 300B amps before and they do work better with certain tube brand. One common thing I found, however, is that the TJ/Sophia brand (mesh and carbon) is not as reliable. It's actual tube life is also 30% - 40% less than advertised, depending on who you buy from. Initially I thought I was scammed by independent sellers. However, the most recent pair was purchased at full price from authorized dealer. The tubes tested below weak way before they should be. The tubes don't hold bias well neither. Every other few days, I would need to re-bias the tubes. Since I used different 300B amps, the issue cannot be the amps themselves. I have not tried the KR300B. Based on my experience with the 842, I would definitely give it a try. Just my (incomplete) $0.02. |
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I have my new Treasures in the Mactone amp. Have only 15 hours on the tubes but these are big improvement right out of the box over the EH tubes that came with the amp. Everything I read is that I need to be patient with these tubes as they burn in ...good thing they sound so good right away and very listenable as break-in happens. Would love to do a lineup of 300b designs - set, parallel and push pull and compare sound. I have first and third and will be interested in comparing these two with same tubes with my Audio Note speakers. |
Fred Crowder compares the Treasures (with 300 hrs on the clock) and new old stock Western Electric 300Bs in his Audio Note U.K. Balanced Kegon amplifiers at Dagogo. http://www.dagogo.com/View-Article.asp?hArticle=858 Regards, |
"The tubes don't hold bias well neither. Every other few days, I would need to re-bias the tubes. Bsimpson, My experience couldnt be more different. I installed the Royal Princesses and after three hours, set the bias at 1.09. By the next day, one channel drifted to 1.08. Having read your post, and it being about a month since my last check, I took new readings and measured one channel at 1.07 and the other at 1.08. While I only kept Sophias Carbon Plates for about a week, they seemed similarly stable. I guess I can only hope that your experience with short tube life will prove equally atypical. At least for me. |
Do not want to repeat myself again, but I think for those who own mono's or not Adaptive auto bias amps this can be a very huge issue. Thing is, many manufactures offering auto-bias right now, so, this keeps you away of the fact what ever your tubes are stable or not, cos you just don't see that, so, why bother? The guys from PrimaLuna developed Adaptive Auto Bias http://www.primaluna-usa.com/product-main/prologue/prologue-two , which offering you the best possible solution and the reason, I believe, is basically the mass production of really bad tubes, which are used all over the world. You should see the stock KT88 I got when I bought Prologue Two, very poor quality and cheap material. They even dare to say that they produce a decent sound. Well, I dont think so So, to me, tubes should be at very high quality, especially when their price range starts around USD 350-400 for a pair, not even want to start about USD 1000 a pair, which Royal's are, but that's not what we were talking about, cos not many users are around who bought a pair , I guess, and I do hope their quality check is better now. But than again, if you have to get the quality at that price range only, man, I am out, even they sound great. |
Maxmad & Charles1dad: Yes, the Thoress F2A11 integrated. It's too early to judge the stereo amp, and my system is still being completed, dialed in, but so far the sound is very musical and satisfying. I finally tracked down a NOS 1945 Tung-Sol Black Round Plate/Bottle 12SN7GT and awaiting it's arrival. I'm eager to hear the result. It should provide some positive sonic improvements. The 6SN7 of the same is my one of my top two favorite (Ken-Rad being the other). I was also trying to find some earlier NOS F2A11 (black plates, non-perforated metal base...) but it's proving to be difficult. Otherwise, I think this amp will be a joy to listen to. It already is. Not the Tron Cantata of course, but nonetheless a highly pleasurable listening experience, one that'll only get better once the system is finished. No more 300B for me. I'm kind of glad. hard to choose and expensive. Btw, I also have the Thoress FR20CD mkIII speakers. |
Sakahara, I was an admirer of your Tron/Horning system. I`m happy to hear you`re pleased with your Thoress components(they seem to be very well made) and wish you many years of musical enjoyment with them. As for me, I absolutely love my 300b SET amplifiers and will keep them for a long time.A good 300b tube in the right amp makes beautiful music. Best of Luck, |
Charles1dad : Now you can admire Thoress. ;-) They are of a high caliber design, especially the F2A11. Love the early retro design homage. And I'm not bashing the 300B at all. One of my favorite sounding tubes thus far (I actually wanted the Thoress 300B mono's). But there's much to explore with other power tubes and the F2A11 casts a very musical presence overall. Maxmad: That's where I found the 12SN7. Where did you see Siemens F2A11 (at SND)? |
I compared them to AVVT 32BL and AVVT 300B C37, where both of them are simply superior to Sophia's. Sophia's do not sound natural to me, they have to metallic tone on top and to upfront midbass, they are simply not balanced enough, which is totally not acceptable in that price range, imo. Also they are not airy enough and goes not further than 2D kind of picture, while AVVT's are totally 3D with everything in the place: deep bass, smooth mids and lovely top end, where detail aren't forced, like at Sophia's. It seemst that Sophia's tell you how the music must sounds like and not just let you enjoy it, especially with complex things, they just dont keep up the level. These tubes are USD 500-600 range, sound and quality wise, but even then, I wouldn't buy them. Their metallic tone was in their "Mesh" model I owned in the past as well, sold it pretty fast. If these tubes were the only 300B's on planet, I will be changing my amp fast. They had around 100 hours on them, if somebody interesting. It may sound to negative, but I simply don't accept any faults anymore, especially for such money. |
Which tube is better for you really depends upon the amp itself, and the extent to which you need specific voicing to compensate a sonic anomaly elsewhere in the system, or for tuning to your preferences. I'll go further in saying that even a given amp can be altered to completely change your perception of relative ranking of tubes. For example, I have a stash of KR Audio 300B, Sophia perforated plate 300B and Sophia Princess 300B. I also have Vaic VV32BL, Emission Labs, Shuguang and others. While I did find the Sophia 300B to have a lot of top end "spray" and euphonic bass bloat, and preferred the stiffer, more revealing and dynamic sound of the KRs, a change to my 300B monoblocks also changed this preference. I had my Audion Golden Dream PSET 300B monoblocks recapped by Bob Hovland (highly recommended). There was a small issue I needed diagnosed and took the amps to Bob. That issue was inconsequential but while he had the amps open I asked him to give me an opinion about whether he thought the power supply caps were worth keeping or replacing, given that the amps are a decade old and used heavily. Bob came back to me saying first that he is reluctant to change caps when an amp is already exceptional, and those Golden Dreams are truly outstanding. But he did believe that if I was willing to take some risk, a recap with Nichicon skinny cans would improve dynamics, definition and transparency further without degrading the tone density those high silver-content amps already offer. He was right. The Golden Dreams came back better in all respects after the recap. I was curious enough, however, to run my 300B tube rankings again. The Audions recapped with Nichicons, the Sophia mesh plates lost their bass bloat and the aerosol top end lost the glitter and gloss to settle back to a natural frequency extension with even finer definition, while all of the midrange tone density was left intact. Bass is deep, tight and comparatively lean. Spatial dimensioning is convincing and scales appropriately to the music. The Sophia mesh plates sounded beautiful in my Softone office amp but thick and syrupy in the stock Audion Golden Dreams, which is not remotely a quality of that amp. Meanwhile the KR Audio 300B sounded hard and spatially flat in the Softone but energetic, clean, lean and toneful in the Golden Dreams. After the Audion recap, The Sophia mesh plate is the more dynamically assertive tube with bass cleaner than the KR. The KR 300B now has a comparatively pinched soundstage width and it is dimensionally flatter than the Sophia. There are a lot of factors in play on resolving this question. If you don't like a given tube, it may not be that there's anything generalizable that's deficient about the given tube. It may be that the tube just isn't a good match to your amp, as it came voiced from the factory. Phil |
Maxmad, Thanks for your impressions of the Sophia tube. I`ve been completely happy with the Shuguang Treasure 300b for almost 2 years(sound quality and reliability). I`m however curious to hear an AVVT tube in my amplifier for comparision. Where are they available? Are they similar to the EML 300b tube? Best Regards, |
Dear Phil ( 213cobra ), Many thanks for your post and even agree with it, I still having doubts about the price v.s. performance of Sophia's. A good friend of my uses Royal's in his Zanden 7000 and after he tried AVVT C37, he started to hear all these things I have been describing more clearly. Sophia "Mesh" been described, at least by many Cary CAD 300sei users, as match made in heaven. It took me not that long to realize that its not. This is not the coincidence that Treasures, for example, didnt do it for me either, Royal's are for sure better, but not vs. AVVT's and KR's. My KR's are tubular type, not in production anymore and have pretty much identical inside construction as AVVT 32BL, but in much smaller glass. Going to give them more listening time, KR's I mean, because they just stay in box after C37 arrived. The easier way to describe my feelings is when Royal's are installed, I listen to Royal's, and when AVVT's, I listen to music. There is another player in town, Takatsuki TA 300B, made in Japan with huge influence of Air Tight, here is the link where you can read some impressions http://robertmusic.blogspot.com/2011/07/heads-up-coming-very-soon-takatsuke-ta.html I dont have anything to do with these guys and dont know more than you, after you read the post from the link, but he seems to have the best 300B's around and even he didnt compare them to everything he owns yet, but so far, he is very impressed with these Japanese... THX |
Hi Maxmad, Im a happy owner of the Sophia Royals. I wont disagree with your findings, which I couldnt do anyway because you compared them to tubes I havent heard, but Id like to say that 213 cobras points are very well stated. Ive heard a variety of tubes demonstrate their sonic signatures very differently in different amps. I have a friend who is almost constantly modifying and tweaking his tubed components. After a modification, like cobra, he frequently winds up exploring his inventory of tubes and finding that a former reject now fills the bill. A caution: In a conversations with Sue from Sophia, she expressed great frustration with the number of Sophia counterfeits floating around. |
Maxmad, I can say that I would never recommend matching Sophia mesh (really, perforated) plate 300Bs with Cary amps. That's doubling down on the same basic sonic aberration. If someone likes that combination, one can't argue with that, but it would be a piling on of the same euphonic colorations that obscure what you value. I have a pair of KR VV302 Blue glass that sound beautiful and bell-like in some amps, yet hard and overbearing in others. I also have the older KR Enterprises straight tube 300B with the AVVT-like interior structure. Those tubes have strong, vivid transient clarity, probably the firmest bass of any 300B I have, and good top and bottom extension. But in amps I've used them in, their spatial presentation is great in height and width but cmparatively limited in depth. I'm aware of the Takatsuki but haven't tried/heard them yet. The Shuguang Treasure 300B has been unfailingly good in every amp I've heard them in, albeit a more modern sound than the typically vintage mesh plates. The current production KR AUdio balloon glass 300B nicely resolves a lot of the spikey differences between all these tubes. For me, a polar graph of its relevant sonic attributes is close to a circle in most amps. My mesh plates sound sensational in my re-capped Audion monoblocks, but I consider that a highly-specific match arrived at by chance since they didn't happen to be in the amp when the caps were chosen and installed. I will say the Sophias were much less expensive when I bought them. But so were KRs. About $900/pr. now for the KR Audio 300B in the US. Partly a result of the dollar's slide and partly result of that company and its distribution chain realizing they had to own up to the true costs of running a business. In all this discussion, interesting that this decade's production of the WE 300B isn't in the mix. Phil |
Phil, I must say I really agree with your observations. I `ve come to believe that ranking the performance of 300b tubes is not possible due to the many variables such as the ones you mentioned. Certain 300b tubes just seem to match better with different amplifiers based on circuit, passive parts,transformer, power supply design etc. It can get expensive after a while trying numerous tubes in the higher quality range. If I come across a AVVT,EML or other highly regarded 300b for a reasonable cost I`ll give them a try. Otherwise the Shuguang Treasure is a wonderful mate with my Coincident Frankenstein, so I`ll leave well enough alone for now. Best Regards, |
I suppose the notion implied in my initial reply here, but left unsaid in a direct sense, should be expressed unequivocably: The differences between power supply capacitors in an amplifier have, in my long experience making this change in push-pull tube and SET amps, been greater and more musically influential than the differences realized between any two alternative tubes. That's right, and I'll say this power supply cap difference is, further, much greater sonically in SET amps than in push-pull. Now, I'm not talking about mods that change the total power supply reserve in total capacitance. I'm citing changes in electrolytic capacitor construction between brands (or models in the same brand), that leave the total power supply reserve quantitatively unchanged from stock. I had the same experience with recapping my 845 SET amps. It's not a convenient plug'n'play change like tube rolling, so not DIY accessible for most. But everyone should understand that recapping can introduce improvements (or if not chosen well, changes of the better OR worse kind) that can dwarf the results from changing tubes. Another way to think about it: After my Audion Golden Dreams were recapped by Hovland, their performance with the cheapest, most prosaic $20 Chinese solid plate 300B everyone ships as stock, was better than their sound with my most exotic, scarce and expensive 300Bs prior to replacement of capacitors. Bob also loaned me a simple Glow amp (5w, SE, EL84) that he recapped and made a few other small circuit changes to, as an experiment and to ask my opinion. I could get reasonable dynamics and SPLs from it on my 101db/w/m Zu Definition 2 speakers, and my Zu Druids. Within its clean dynamic range, the little Hovland-modified Glow wiped the floor with a number of $1500 - $5000 amps I put up against it, musically. And compared to a stock Glow, which is a well-liked tyke of an amp, the modded version was transformed, musically. No change in power tubes from among many I had on hand could remotely approach the difference. Phil |
Hello, Montejay, last month I ask Israel his opinion on that very tube. He said it`s excellent but no better than the Shuguang Treasure, perhaps with continued listening he has a different impression now. If it(Pavane) in deed betters the Treasure 300b that`s an achievement. Regarding driver tubes is he really looking at options besides the 6EM7? That is a fantastic 300b driver IMO. |
Its been already described by some guys who owns the best 300B out there that these are new top range product, so, 6moons is bit late:-) But if I have to be more serious, its not that exciting for us, because the price in EU will be around EUR1300-1500, crazy, if you ask me. If thats the true, I am out. |
I have run TJ mesh, EAT and now Takatsuki 300b tubes in my Wavac EC-300b. TJ is fun but ultimately loose and wayward, EAT is too controlled to be real fun although seriously punchy and Takatsuki just sings beautifully although it ultimately has less grunt than the EATs. In terms of clarity and air as well as soundstage it is in a different league from the other two, though. By the way, I use Tungsol KT66s as driver tubes; after a lot of different trials they are the best 6L6GCs around, although that is less than obvious from their nomenclature |