Signal tube versus power tube, sound impact?

And maybe if the manufacturers did a better job putting better quality tubes in the amplifiers when manufactured the demand on the industry would be to produce better tubes.

Manufacturers spend a lot of money designing their amplifiers and then screw things up by sticking a poor tube seems odd. I'll be curious to know what VAC puts in their amplifiers. I know Conrad Johnson uses NOS tubes for their pre-amplifiers.

jj tubes are like $40 apiece and the cheapest versus others in the $80 to 150 range

I’m looking for a cleaner Open sound. There are for preamp tubes and it seems this tube is the beginning which sets the stage for the signal and then the power tubes. So I guess starting at the beginning of the food chain makes more sense.

Although I do hear that the JJ tubes are more durable and reliable which is why I guess they use them as stock tubes.

@macg19

Audiotubes.com

He’s got a very interesting website with lots of commentary. Further his prices are incredibly expensive. Return policy is alluring but from a practical standpoint I doubt many even returning tubes because of the difficulties involved.

But it’s a pretty damn good website

I think mcIntosh is JJ tubes for stock. These tend to be generally cheaper and may be more reliable which may be why they use them.

I guess if they put in better tubes they see a lot of problems with people complaining about malfunctioning tubes when they buy the new amplifie…

So here is a case where durability and reliability may impact quality. So you maybe better off replacing these JJ tubes for something that may be better?

Sort of like the power cords which are kind of crappy that they supply with their amplifiers and they know the consumer will probably replace the cords.

Seems to me the preamplifier tubes Carry the most weight when dealing with the sonic signature. It's at the beginning and why would you not want to amplify a quality signal right away. If you have a crappy preamplifier tube it's going to get amplified and sound crappy no matter how good the rest of the tubes are .

Anyone ever see a good diagram showing the circuitry flow within an amplifier or a good walk-through of the incoming power and incoming signal and how they ultimately do stuff before they go through the Cable leading to the speaker? And of course showing all the various tubes in series etc.  

I don’t know why manufacturers of expensive tube amplifiers don’t provide better tubes in their equipment. Lots of people form opinions about amplifiers and if these amplifiers came with better tubes peoples impressions would be a lot better.

I think they are shooting themselves in the feet when they put JJ tubes, which consensus seems to say are lower quality, into their tube amplifiers. Hardly a way to provide a product to a customer especially when they’re so expensive.