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Supratek Owners Thread

Greetings All - 
It appears that the 26-million-plus view, multi-decade "Preamp Deal of the Century" Supratek thread has been removed. I'm not sure why, but suppose there must be a reasonable explanation.
In any case, on that thread I recently asked whether there might be interest in a "Supratek owners thread" and received some interest. 
The purpose of this thread is for Supratek owners to share the details of their system, ask questions, share information about any tube-rolling they have done, and so forth.
I'll kick us off here with a few details about my system -
ancient Linn LP12 with Ittok arm, Dynavector 17D3 cartridge into Cortese LCR phono stage
Power amp is a fully serviced Innersound Electrostatic amplifier
Quad ESL63 speakers (not USA monitors) or JBL 4430 studio monitors
Digital sources are immature and evolving - ancient Fostex CR300 cd player/burner
DacMagic 100 DAC
Nordost Blue Heaven 75ohm interconnect
Due to the fairly long lengths of speaker wire required in the new listening room, speaker wire is Belden 12 gauge wire designed for low-voltage outdoor lighting systems. 
Next steps - dedicated circuit, new power cords, new interconnects, new wires.
128x128markusthenaimnut

Showing 3 responses by rms456

rms456
40 posts
 

@tksteingraber, took delivery of Cabernet mid Nov 2023.

The tubes that are fitted:

6SN7-SE (2)

6N3C (0384) (2)  the 'N" looks like a russian n

GZ345 Rectifier (1)

The sound is a bit rough out of the box, letting it burn in from today for a week, see how that works out. By then, that should be 250 hours, is that enough?

 

rms456
40 posts
 

@jslateiv , there is a difference now on the burning in process, now 48 hours in. An FM Tuner (Yamaha TD-500) is feeding the input and monitoring with SPL headphone amp, HD820. Power is raw house AC power, no special cabling on AC lines at all. Interconnects are Accuphase ASL-10B, AL-10 well used.

If the source is ordinary and it sounds 'better' as time goes on, that roughness out of the box is slowly disappearing.

What I mean by rough, is dropping sound stage height and missing the stage between centre and left and right, falls in a hole there as encountered in the main system. The effect on an equivalent digital only level, is closely the same as the change in USB cables. Guessing that common mode noise is an issue there. Bass is lost in the early hours, but is coming back. 

The manual that came with the Cabernet advised the GZ345 was good only for 2000 hours. Could you recommend another tube with longer life and an SQ boost.as a bonus?

 

rms456
40 posts
 

@tksteingraber , the shipped rectifier tube with the Cabernet 6SN7 is from JJ Electronic (Slovenia) JJ GZ34 5AR4 is their ID.

Many thanks for the list of choices...looks like the RCA are a good start.

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