Where to go from here? upping the tube ante

Budrew, sorry to hit a sore spot with the turntable comment. The reason I looked at this thread was because of your amp & pre which I really admire. I just felt that the McIntosh stuff is so good that the most reasonable way to get more of what you asked about was with the front end, be it Lp's or maybe SACD's. Anyway good luck with your tube rolling and enjoy your great system.

Bid63, No sore spot at all : ) Please, all thoughts welcome. The Mcintosh is great and I doubt that I will do anything new in that department, at least for a long time. They seem to be sleepers; people are quick to shrug off Mcintosh. But, as I learn more about component designs I just get curious about how things compare.

I've actually begun to look into turntables since I'll have so many from my grandfather. Thought I might get a decent Rega as a simple answer for now. Someday anyway. My grandfather also had a Tandberg reel-to-reel with lots of tapes. Could be fun to explore.

Budrew, I use the same Mullard 12AX7's (CV4004) and the 12AT7's from Upscale in my Mac and they are leagues better than the original tubes. That said, this vintage (80's) Mullard isn't supposed to be the best available.

I plan to try to find something better.

Now.. for the real deal. GEC KT88's will make your amp much more natural sounding. I was blown away when I discovered that having a pair of GEC KT88's in there along side the rest of the Svetlana KT88's made a monumental improvement in tonality and listenability. I since purchaed 6 more GEC's but discovered that the amp sounds best with Two Svetlana's and six GEC's. Running with all eight GEC's was too much of a good thing... Having a single Svetlana on each channel opened up the midrange without losing the splendor of the GEC. Nice.

I'd suggest you give the GEC's a try. The MC2102 is softer sounding than the MC2000 and as a result, may require less GEC's to get the same result.

Recently a friend of mine took this advice and inserted two GEC KT88's in his Conrad Johnson P8 amps - (which hold 16 KT88's). The improvement made by having only two GEC's in his amp was even more substantial than what I had in the Mac.

Bwhite, I thought you had a Berning ZH 270?

Did you buy one and not like it? It has always been on my audition list.

Bwhite, Thanks for the info. Are there any concerns about matching different tube brands in the amp at the same time? I found a review of several KT88s and they found the Electro-Harmonix to be the clear winner, though they did not include any GEC tubes, of which I've heard there are many variations.