Maybe tube preamp

My Freya shipped today so I won't have to wait long to see what's what. If it doesn't sound great it simply gets sent back. My experience with 6SN7s is mainly from that last several months of owning a "Fire Bottle" single ended amp that came with an Amperex USA 6SN7GTB (and sounds great)…the amp has only 4 tubes including the rectifier so it begs for tube experimentation. I bought another Amperex as a backup since I like the original one so much, and have a pair of Tung Sols (recent version) ready for the Freya since I had one already and bought another identical one…same test scores (!). The Amperex sounds better than the Tung Sol in my amp but not by too much. Both are very quiet and non microphonic. I can’t really say what the differences between 12AX7s and the 6SN7s might be as I haven’t had an amp that could swap ’em out…I had a pile of 12AX7s for my previous amp, a Jolida 502P, and recent version Gold Lions sounded best to me for that amp. I’ve also used 12AX7s in guitar amps since the 60s so there’s that…but guitar amps may be more forgiving anyway. It is interesting that the Schiit dudes love that 6SN7 tube so much, and the "octal" base is way more confidence inspiring when taking the tubes in and out of an amp than the easily bendable wires of a 12AX7…points just for that. I’d like to get a pair of 5692 "red base" (that's supposedly important) tubes just to check ’em out either in the Freya or the Fire Bottle as they seem interesting…pricey but cool.

The Inspire preamps aren’t remote controlled, and cost about twice as much as a Freya…I have heard of a remote version somebody talked Had into building recently so maybe in the future I’ll get one, but one thing about Inspire stuff is the utter randomness of Had’s builds and the "contact over Ebay" thing. It’s sort of like a club you join, and that’s OK. The Freya’s balanced design (my DAC has balanced outs), a hip volume control (so they say), and 3 operating modes appeal to me also, although my amp is single ended. I may change my mind and bug Had if the Freya doesn’t deliver the mojo I seem to want it to…next week it arrives so we shall see.

The Freya is also in the Harmony Universal remote Database so that is very Handy for those that use them[me].

Wolf_Garcia: I run both 6SN7s and 6SL7s -- the 6SN7s are in my mono blocks and the 6SL7s are in my preamp. This decision was made to take advantage of the fact that the 6SL7s bring a little more gain than the SNs, which I wanted. With respect to the "Red Base" -- I believe that it is, in fact, important. I have rolled a lot of both the SNs and the SLs in order to be able to say that. New production, NOS/NIB, it doesn’t matter, nothing sounds like a red base 5691 which was RCA’s Premium version of the 6SL7 or a red base 5692 same for the 6SN7. Premium because both included extra support rods between the top and bottom mica spacers making the structure more rigid, and in doing so, eliminating microphonics; and long life cathodes rated by RCA at 10,000 hours.
                                                                                                                           RCA also made both in a Black base as well and I must say I find it very difficult to tell them apart. The Black base seems to be easier to find and they command less money.