Tubes for the BAT VK5i

Well, you could upgrade the unit to 5se. The 6h30 tubes and better power supply (instead of 6922) will definately improve the bass, detail, resolution, soundstaging substantially. I recently upgraded my 50se to 51se and that's exactly what it did. It was a major improvment, not minor.

If you just want to retube your current 5i (cheaper 4 u) Maybe Amperex 7308's. I use these in my VKP10SE and your sound criteria matches my experience with these tubes.

Just make your you get each triode in each tube matched to itself and the other tubes. BAT uses these in a truly balance fashion.

Indeed time.. The bass on the 5i should be anything but light. One of the best attributes of the 5i was its bass. As a former owner, I found the combination of Seimens 7308 gold Pins in the 6( 3 per side) gain stage tubes and the AC shunt 6922(outer L & R tubes) with Amperex 6922PQ. Finally, for the Power supply gain 5881's. The absolute best was(by no small margin either) Tung Sol 5881 NOS. If you can find them by all means get them. They will absolutly kill the stock Sovteks and make the sound so smooth. In fact it was like a different pre amp with them! I also used JAN Philips 6L6 in them and they were better than stock, but not the Tung Sols. Much easier to find though.

The down side of all these upgrades is definately the price tag. New 6922 Sovteks will be better than what you are now hearing anyway. Good luck!-Ken

One more question I didn't get in the first message for some reason is who is a good supplier of older (or new, for that matter) tubes? Any suggestions?

Roland

I was able to get all my NOS tubes here on Agon from various buyers. The best tubes were from "fat_cat"..Mike should be able to help you. Also "sam1104" talk to Sam.
"Guidosmalibu" talk to Vassil. and "zkid" Bob sometimes has nice 6L6's avail. There are the tube stores such as tubeworld and the tube store you can check out.

I've bought tubes here and had great service. Even had 2 go bad 6 months later and he replaced them free. Wasn't his fault and he really took care of me. I have 2 friends and between the 3 of us I've bet we've bought 2-3k worth of tubes from BWS. We've all been happy...

http://www.bws-tube.com/