kt77 vrs kt120 in Rogue M180s


I recently was a able to compare gold lion kt 77s verses tung sol kt120s in my Rogue audio M180 mono-blocks, and wanted to share my experiences with you. I did these comparisons over a period of weeks, so I think I now have a pretty good understanding of their sound in my amps. The kt77s have a little bit more air and extension in the treble, nice midrange, and very good depth, and slightly looser on the bass. The kt 120s, were clear and very open sounding, with better projection into the room with the sound stage, with less depth than the kt77, but have better width and separation. The kt120s also had better Bass extension and control over my Revel f32s woofers, They seemed to wake up the speaker, everything sounded dynamic and full. Besides the little bit of roll off in the highs, I much preferred the kt 120s in my system. Hope this helps some of you, Christopher
chrissain
I did buy my gl kt88s from Mark at Rogue, and blew 3 tubes within a year, one so bad it took out part of my board, which I was very unhappy with, but I also want the very best sound from my amps, do you think New censer has fixed the problems with this tube ?
Chris,

I really don't know if the longevity of my tubes are unusual or not. A buddy of mine has an Ayon Spirit 1 with GL KT 88s, and they have a few years on them too. I can ask the guys at the shop to see if what they have to say. I will post their comments. You also might ask Mark if he's been seeing any issues with the GLs.

I wonder how robust the Shuguang Black Bottle tubes are? I have no idea how they sound though.
Put some kt120s in my cayin a100T 2 weeks ago against the advice from the distributor. They said the amp probably would not be able to push them. So far I have had no issues keeping bias and the sound has drastically improved. Mid range is soooo much better and everything just sounds bigger more powerful and very well balanced. Amp gets hot but then it always got hot with the kt88 also. To be fair I replaced the stock tubes so with comparison to a better kt88 I cannot say. I was reading and could not find any instance where the tube had damaged an amplifier so I said screw it I'm trying it. Hopefully I don't regret it later.
My personal crusade to catalog KT120s destroying a transformer or damaging an amp continues...so far all of the transformers all over the world are surviving, including my Jolida 502p after thousands of hours over a year and a half. But I remain ever vigilant!