New video OCD Mikey nat amplifier

December 26, 1991 the Soviet Union (Communist Russia) ended, to be replaced by a gangster state ruled by Vladimir Putin. Tubes made before that date at the old Reflektor plant are considered better than current production. I use them in my Golden Tube SE40. It is a single-end stereo amp with 3 parallel 6L6GC's per side. About 18 watts beam tetrode per side. Made around 1990.

Communist Russian tubes in it from Reflektor

LOL! I didn't know tubes could have a politico-ethical persuasion. If I drink vodka from Russia is it communist too? If it's from Alabama is it hillbilly? LOL!

Always wondered how the existence of four or eight Power tubes on an amplifier impact the sound in light of all the travelling in and out of every single tube that occurs.

In this case you’ve got one big tube and I wonder does this benefit the signal or does it really matter? Seems it would be helpful in some mystical way.

Single-ended topologies start with one power tube per side - because that 1 tube is handling both the "+" and "-" phase of the musical signal, all 360 degrees of phase, all by itself.

Push-pull topologies always start with a pair of power tubes, where one operates for the "+" half and the other the "-". When there is no overlap in the 2 sides’ operation (180 degrees each) you get class B, and with "some" overlap (> 180 degrees per side) you get class AB.

Single ended is the more "pure" approach since you don’t phase-split the signal, and it’s always "100% pure class A" by definition.

However with both topologies, you can increase power by paralleling extra output sets. With push pull, you always have to add in extra pairs of tubes per side. You would never see a PP amp with 3 output tubes on one side, but you could see 3 pairs (e.g. Rogue Zeus, Apollo). You could see a SE amp with 3 output tubes per side, but that’s pretty rare.

I don’t have experience with SE amps, but with PP amps I always always find extra paralleled outputs to be better. Often MUCH better. The more the better. Not only do you get significantly more output power (assuming PSU and output transformers are scaled up to match), but I think any asymmetries you’d find in a single push-pull pair (this causes increased distortion) will become averaged / smoothed out as you add more pairs (law of large numbers).