BAT vs. Quicksilver

I agree with Albertporter about the BATs. Great design, and great sound I might add, but you are stuck with 6C33C-B tubes (me too). And they run so darn hot in the BATs you may think your house is on fire. But you know that. What you may not know is that the 6C33C-B sockets may have to be replaced once in a while partly because of the heat.

On the positive side, the BAT sound is not such a bad thing to be stuck with. It's a bit dark but you can tweak it with the two 6SN7 input tubes. You can have lots of fun with Sylvania, Tung-Sol, RCA, CBS NOS for not too much money (except for the Mullards). Even the inexpensive Electro-Harmonix with gold pins don't sound bad either.

One huge advantage of the Russian 6SN7 and the 6C33C-B tubes is that they can be bought inexpensively (from Europe) if you do not care to match them--BAT says it's not necessary thanks to the auto-biasing circuitry. For three hundred dollars, you can have two new sets of 6C33C-B plus two new sets of 6SN7 Sovtek which should last you for quite a while. If you're afaraid the single source of 6C33C-B may dry up, you can buy 100 (!) of them at about $8-10 each. Your BAT will turn to dust first before you run out of tubes. If you insist on matching the 6C33C-B, they cost about $160 for a matched set of four or $300 from BAT.

Converting the BAT VK-60 from stereo to mono is a snap. There is a kit (4 wires and a jumper cable) that BAT sells for $50 which you should have had already if your amp was converted from mono to stereo before. You open the back of the amp (Torx wrench T10), stick the jumper in (there is only one place it can go) and solder the 4 wire across the LR outputs and you're done!

Check carefully. With a new tube amp comes new a sound--that's a good thing--and a new set of problems--not such a good thing. Get the whole story for each amp before buying, not just the pros but also the cons.

Good luck.

PS: Two BATs are better than one, or was it two heads?

I agree two BAT's are better than one but with my new home purchase I am a little short on funds. My new listening room is larger than my old, I haven't measured it yet but it is above my two car garage so it is of decent size. I am concerned about not having enough power, there are times when the BAT will strain if pushed. I need more power but really want to stick with tubes, if I was going back to solid state I would probably have a pair of mono DNA .5's or Mac's.

good thing that I hang out in this sub-forum regularly 'cuz I had a very poor image of Quicksilver. I always thought that this was wanna-be audio gear. I've learnt that I'm mistaken & if I chose correctly I can actually get pretty damn good sounding Quicksilver amps. Thanks you former & present Quicksilver users I leanrt something new about this outfit.

Has anybody heard the new Quicksilver speaker cables and interconnects? What do you think? Thanks

Bombaywalla,
No question, the Quicksilver products are outstanding. If you're anything like me, discovering such a reversal of impressions is pretty exciting.

Elb, I have used the Quicksilver IC's and speaker cables for coming up on two years. The speaker cables are simply absent in the chain, meaning they do not cloud or color the music. I've tried several other brands, all costing the same or more, and they were all less transparent/lively than the Quicksilver.

The IC's are very good as well, though I find them to sound most pure when used with the Quicksilver amps. I have found other IC's more to my liking with other brand amplifiers. Probably no big suprise there, as the cables are likely voiced with the Quicksilver products.

I have used both cables with their lowest priced amps (Mini Monos), as well as their highest priced amps (Triodes), and find them to be an excellent performer at a very reasonable price.
The IC's are $90/meter. For pure silver, that is cheap! The speaker cables are $340/4' pair, also quite reasonable IMO.
Hope that helps.

Howard