REF5SE tubes


Time to retube. If tube’s direct from ARC and NOS tubes are not in the picture, what would be next best  for tubes? Haven’t purchased anything from Upscale , so that’s out.

Appreciate any and all advice.

128x128skids

Showing 1 response by mulveling

Does Brent Jesse even sell any 6H30 tubes? They’re not listed anywhere on his site, even the "complete stock list". I would never have picked him as a source for these tubes. He’s good for a NOS GE 6550 on the power regulator, though.

Viva Tubes still lists up to matched quads of the Sovtek and EH Gold variants in stock. I’ve had good luck with them when sourcing matched KT88 tubes.

I collected some sets of ARC Select and Platinum grade 6H30 from Upscale over the years - though I’ve now moved on from my ARC Reference components. Quite frankly, I found "plain" Platinum grade non-cryo just as good. Also tried those ARC Select in a Rogue Hera II preamp (octet of 6H30), hoping to quiet it down, and it didn’t make a lick of difference - still noisy as hell on 96dB speakers 😅