NOS tubes For my Rhea

To see if it’s the Calypso, why not turn on the system except the Rhea and unmute it. Any tube rush would be coming from the Calypso. I owned a Rhea and suspect that it’s the culprit since it’s fairly picky about tubes. The other thing to try is to flip the right and left channel tubes one at a time. The process is a bit tedious but you’ll find the bad one.

Getting V1 & V2 in the Rhea quiet enough is tough. I got tubes for those two positions for both my Rhea and IO from Andy at Vintage Tube Services. I can’t recommend him enough and he’s very familiar with Aesthetix products. My preference for tubes in the Rhea is vintage EI’s in V1 & V2 positions with Telefunken’s for V3-V5.

The key tube to get good sound out of the Rhea is the 6DJ8/6922 which if I remember correctly is V5. When I first got my Rhea, I rolled in Tele’s, Mullards and Bugle Boys in the 12AX7 positions with fairly poor results. I had left the stock Russian 6922 in place while I was doing this. On a whim, I put in a Tele 6DJ8 in place of the Sovtek 6922. Wow – what a difference that made. I was ready to sell the Rhea and write it off before I switched the 6DJ8 but ended up keeping it until I found an IO on the used market.

Boy.....Sbrown what a fabulous response. OK....You gave me some very good ideas regarding identifying the problem source and recommending tubes. BTW...what brand is EI???
And you recommend Tele's in V3-V4-V5??
Thanks again!!

What I’m referring to when I say EI are pre-war tubes made in Yugoslavia. The factory was founded in the 50’s using Telefunken equipment. I find that they have more body than Tele’s but are slightly less transparent. The combination of EI’s and Tele’s balances body with transparency nicely and should work well with your Lyra. The friend that I sold my Rhea to auditioned it using a Dynavector 17D2. That tube combination also worked well with my ZYX Airy3. The other added benefit of the EI’s that they are reasonably priced.

RWD, forgot to say in may last post that I love your speakers. I've only head them once but I've never forgot it. When I get a bigger room, a set of those are in my future.

Thank you for you response and compliment of my speakers. I know that they are quite old but I would have to spend 30K-60K to get a replacement (I think?).

Rick (RWD)