300 B Shuguang Black Bottle tubes

>Ml89009

If I understood you correctly, you are asking about 300B models in Shugaung range... Black Bottles is their top model, and I (personally) think (reading from reviews) is much better than comparable TJ ones (I believe also that JJ, Svetlana, etc does not stand out at all in this competition).

If you go to grantfidelity.com you can find short review by the guy claiming that they are better than new WE. A friend of mine has new WE and he has heard Black Bottles. When I asked him to do A/B testing between those 2 he refused)))

The 300B tubes are similar to the TJ MESH at first in transparency. After 50 hours or so, imaging takes off. But, not until 300 hours do they enter spooky real, assuming your other equipment can deliver this. In my case this is the occasional "spooky real." And, I need to do more listening, but that is due to the system hitting its quiescent state after literally hours of play. In the end, at least in this case...they are better and it seems you get what you pay for...in ever increasing slivers....Remember the bit about imaging...lifting off the speakers...that was something I really noticed at first....I did not take notes...so take this for what it now is....a memory...

My BT 300B-Z do not sound good yet. In fact, my old EH Gold Pins deliver all of the things that I like about tube amplification. The BTs sound way too forward, brassy at anything above 'normal' volume, kind of SS overall. I put the EHs back and pleasure has returned. I am going to try the BTs again (and give them more time), of course, as I didn't buy a quad of these things to resell them. My surprise is that I have not read any other acccounts of these tubes sounding this bad right out of the box.

My amplifier came standard with the EH Golden Grid 300b. When I replaced them with the Shuguang BT they were far better(right out the box!)than the EH tubes. Sometimes I wonder how much of these different impressions are due to the amplifier used and or system.

Charles1dad,

Here's something I pasted from AA. The author is Chris O. It could explain a lot.

"You really have to watch out when you start swapping 300b or other big filament power tubes. The current draw on the heater for one tube brand or type or batch may be very different. Plugging several different brands of tubes (EH, TJ, KR) into a given amp showed each had very different voltage on the heater and bias points for the voltage and current supplied by the amp. In particular, the TJs sounded bad with 5.7 volts on the heater, much better at 5 volts exactly. Also, at the higher voltage they would have had a short life. The EH with the same supply were 5.2 volts.

Don't slam tubes (or anything else) if you don't know how you are using them. Most of the time, using the tube within the manufacturers specifications and optimizing a tubes operational points based on listening makes them a lot better."