Need help picking my first tube amp
Hey guys i want to get into tubes, i have heard wayyyyyyy to much and am dying to try a tube amp. I have a budget of 650 us dollars, not sure if i want a pre amp, or full tube amp. Im thinking pre amp cause i would really like it to drive headphones and then run it into a amp and then to speakers.
Been reading alot about Chineese tube amps and not sure what to think. I have my eye on Xduoo TA-26 gets rave reviews has anybody used it ? anyways looking for any input i can get, thanks.
Michael
@pwerahera I ordered some new tubes… They have been in since the last millennium … But the whole thing sounds pretty nice, and I am not expecting an ah-ha moment. But it would be nice if it happened. (It really cannot get a lot better) But maybe they drive them harder in units after 1998… I dunno. |
@holmz It is possible they did it after 1998. I saw this on Joe's Tube Lore "Special warning to Audible Illusions preamp users: The one you can say for the Sovtek is that you can run it hard and it can take it - and apparently that’s exactly what AI does. Unfortunately the classic NOS tubes in this family just cant take this kind of treatment and will rapidly fail when used in these units (and some of you guys have the fried tubes to prove it!). So you AI users are probably best off limiting yourselves to the Sovtek, the Russian 6H23N & 6N1P, the 7DJ8 and the E288CC. There may be others the range of tube types and variations is quite literally bewildering but these are the ones I’m aware of that should be able to handle the higher stresses of this brand of preamps. I review the Edicron, Siemens E288CC and 6H23N here but there are other brands for some of these. I’ve seen Phillips E288CCs & Amperex 7DJ8s advertised on some web sites in the past and there are probably others. It might be worth your while chasing them down & evaluating them for yourself to increase the number of alternatives for use in your AI." This was posted in 1999. https://www.audioasylum.com/scripts/d.pl?audio/faq/joes-tubes.html |
I had the Xiangsheng 728A preamp, a Chinese product. Once I worked through a couple of quality control issues, it was a workable tube amp. I didn't notice glaring defects in the sound, nor did I hear any notable excellence from it. I went to a Van Alstine Transcendence RB 10 tube preamp, around $1000. By comparison, the sound is accurate yet not oversharp like some solid state preamps. All in all, a delight to listen with.
|
