Lower cost 300B easily bettered by higher line IME, greater transparency/resolution eaily heard in revealing system. Given the choice between Acme and Western Electric 300B, WE superior to Acme. Nothing wrong with Acme, I happily lived with for a couple years. simple curiosity led me to purchase the WE at great price from Upscale Audio holiday sale. Right off first thing that stood out was higher level of transparency vs Acme, now they've been in system around 50 hours, extra measure of transparency remains most salient upgrade, however, longer term listening has brought out a noticeable increase in resolving capability. And here the most important development, WE's pop/bloom with more burn in, harmonic development/color, more natural timbre. Acme relatively analytical in comparison although I wouldn't describe them as analytical in an objective sense. Acme nice, WE sublime.
PSVane 300B comparisons wanted
In December I bought a set of PSVane Horizon 300bs for use in my Elekit TU8900 with Lii Audio F15 open baffle speakers. I like them but I don't have previous experiance with 300Bs.So they are only a datapoint of one. I wonder if anyone out there with more experiance than me and, hopefully, similar equipment can offer some comparisons with other brands of tube. My frame of reference are my Dynakit ST-35 and my Decware SE84UFO, both of which are EL-84 powered amps. I find the ST-35 the cleanest sounding of the group followed by the TU8900 with its PSVanes. "Clean" is good, but I also enjoy the low order harmonic distortion so frequently equated with "tubey" sound. The Decware amp is sweet but has a slight hum problem which I am working on eliminating. All in all I think it fair to say the 300bs and the el-84s are not worlds apart. Actually kind of similar sounds given how difficult it is to focus only on the power tubes and smooth over the differences in the amp circuits and driver tubes.