Tubes for Eastern Electric Minimax Tube DAC?


I was curious to know what is your favorite tube for the Eastern Electric Minimax DAC? How you would describe the sound and what is the best place to buy? Thank you.
Ag insider logo xs@2xaaronmadler
Hi. I just picked up an Eastern Electric Tube DAC Plus (aka Minimax DAC Plus, the no volume control version) on Audiogon and tried some 12au7 tube rolling. It came with a PSVane which was OK but I knew I could do better. Mullard NOS was disappointing, fuzzy with no low or high end extension. JAN Philips Blue NOS was very nice with solid bass and extended treble and very good tube dimensionality also. Best so far is NOS Toshiba short plate halo getter. All frequencies are there with lots of tube presence and great dimensionality.

After trying many different tubes, I keep going back to leaving the tube out and keeping the heater off. To me it sounds much better this way. Rolling the opamps was more rewarding than rolling the tubes. There is a thread somewhere on this. It has been a while since I did this. However, all in all, a very good DAC. As they say YMMV.
Enjoy and have fun.
Afternoon gents

I used to own the Eastern Electric MiniMax DAC Plus and I liked rolling in 12AT7 tubes in it. From other forums I found that you can roll 12AT7 tubes into this DAC with no problems at all. The 12AT7 tubes I liked to roll into it were Mullard 12AT7 and GE JAN 6201 12AT7 equivalents.