Primaluna - Rolling pre tubes question...

Hi - I have a Dialogue 2, and I had a 12au7 go out on me, so I bought a new pair, and they were not as good as the stock tubes were - the stock au7s in the PrimaLuna amps are pretty good. Next time, I will be buying them, as they were also less expensive than the ones I did try. I have not done a ton of tube rolling, but like many others here, I prefer the sound of EL34s to the KT88s in the Dialogue 2.

Learsfool, I had the same experience, after rolling all of the tubes in my monoblocks; I quickly put the 12au7's back in.

Dmhenley ;
I am sorry the Cifte's didn't work out for you .
If the price doesn't scare you... try some 7316's in the input section . Far & away the best that I have tried to date .
For less money you could try Amperex made by BEL in India which would give a good taste of the 7316's . Both of these offer a warm tone . The BEL's may be around the same price as the Cifte's .
Amperex 12AU7 D getter long plates were not to my liking in this position . I have not tried Mullards with this amp but did use them in my previous amp , a Prologue II which used 12AX7's for inputs .
I tried Amperex Valvo's for drivers and they didn't work out either . The Valvo's tended to take away what the 7316's brought in , as did others that I tried as drivers .
I have not been able to find other tubes for the driver section that don't detract from the various input offerings .

Learsfool & Orpheus10 ;
I have been thinking along those same lines concerning the PL 12AU7's , they seem to be rather neutral also . They allowed me to here a large difference between the KT-120's and the 6CA7's when used as inputs . The difference was less prevalent with other tubes rolled into the input section . So far they are the best drivers that I have tried , allowing me to hear all of the different tubes that I have rolled .

Saki70 -
I do like the Cifte's, but I did lose some presence in the mids and upper bass. Much like all of your experiences were, I found swapping the stock PLs back in brought me back where I want to be.

Eventually, I will continue to experiment - this is all good education for me.

I think I'll enjoy the music for a bit before I go down the rabbit hole again.

Thanks again

That's cool...you may find that what you have ain't so bad !

Happy Tunes