Svetlana KT88 VS EH6550

How old were the Svetlanas? Many people have no problem with them in SF Power amps. I have used the EH6550 in a Power 2 and think they sounded pretty good. You might try the new EH KT88 tubes. Kinda halfway between the Svet. KT88 & the EH6550 in sonics with the best bass of all.

My Svetlana KT88's have about 1200 hours on them. The were original equipment with the PW3 se's. SF's tech department is though discouraging their use and suggesting 6550's but I am hesitant to change as I really like the sound of the KT88's.

This is a timely thread. Thanks for the posts as I am considering getting a SF Power 2-actually I am 90% there. I will be using it on Maggie 1.6's. What I heard was great.

I was wondering if any of you have any sage advice for someone coming into the arena? Are there any other improvements to be made to the Power 2 amps such as, different driver or input tubes, or any tweaks? And, if general living-with-them-type-of-advice is out there I will appreciate seeing it.

Cheers,

JW

Dmailer, did you send amp to SF to repair? If so, I guess they told you not to use KT88. Interesting that SF put them in their SE versions if they consider them unreliable. How do they explain that away?

I thought the SF amps were very reliable, but lately a salesperson who used to sell lots of them told me that they were not reliable. Wonder what others experience is?

Forgot to mention that it could have just been a bad tube. If the tube is bad it will blow the resistor. Doesn't mean the amp is bad design.