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Matched & Balanced Can Kiss My Euphemism

Good tubes are like good components: The only thing wrong with them is "sins of omission". After years of trying to match and balance everything I've finally found out you can pair different brand tubes to complement each other with fantastic sonic results and the only downside a slightly weird but still coherent soundstage. Sound is more important to me than vision. Not posting this for an argument, just wanted to share the wealth. If anyone's interested, I've had great results pairing a Funkwerk Rft Ecc82 with a Bugle Boy Ecc82, and a Telam el84 (airplane cooling fins) with an Rft el84 (Funkwerk, with the mickey mouse ears). These two combos have given me the air and sweet, extended treble of the bugles with the wonderful tone and PRAT of the Rfts. And the ethereal beauty of the Telams. With no downsides apart from the slightly wacky soundstage. Obviously if you have a million tubes to roll you're in trouble but my system only has seven tubes and if you're in a similar boat I strongly recommend mixing it up. Anyone have similar tube synergy stories?
uberdine
7 responses Add your response
truemaineiac's avatar
truemaineiac
249 posts
 
Are you saying you put tubes of different manufacturer on either side or you completely mix them up? How is the soundstage whacky?
uberdine OP
100 posts
 
Yeah different manufacturers, exactly. Not mixed up though. Lovingly paired would be a better analogy. The soundstage is slightly wacky because different tubes have different presentations, especially noticeable in the linestage: In my case the Bugle Boy side is slightly deeper (in a 3d sense) than the Rft side. All the images are solid but, for example, the "cello on the left" seems slightly closer than "the one on the right."
truemaineiac's avatar
truemaineiac
249 posts
 
I would rather find a full set of tubes that optimized the attributes that are important for me and provided a symmetrical soundstage, better imaging, and overall cohesiveness. I was recently concerned about having pairs with different test levels on each side, doesnt seem so consequential now.
uberdine OP
100 posts
 
That's exactly what I was trying to enunciate: With only four tubes per side I wasn't able to achieve the sound I was after. By pairing different tubes I finally got there.
The thread's title was a bit playful, the tubes I have are close enough to have a wonderfully centred image.
ebm
9,311 posts
 
Not this week.
uberdine OP
100 posts
 
Ebm: Try it. Start with your linestage or output tubes. If your speakers and source are as neutral as possible you'll be amazed at what you can achieve. As I said in my OP good tubes have no errors, just sins of omission. Mixing them can make up for their sins, if you get it right. But if you're happy with your current sound then so be it.
whart's avatar
whart
3,046 posts
 
A similar approach was advocated by the designer of the Audiopax 88- which had two mirror image amp circuits in each monoblock and a pair of user adjustable controls to adjust bias- 'Timbre Lock' was the name of the feature. I had a pair of those amps for a while, and while I don't remember using different brands of tube, I do recall that there was a 'zone' in the adjustment range where the amp seemed to truly 'lock in' on a particular speaker set up.
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