You're talking about the new tubes, not the expensive vintage NOS tubes
that are by far superior to the any new tube. 12at7 is what you use? The
very best of this type can be $50-150 each. Same with phono stages. The
NOS tubes are extremely expensive if they are good. New tubes are not
equal to the old tubes from the 50s,60s and even 70s. The owner of the
tube gear will spend a fortune on the tubes.
@chakster Yes- new tubes. We don't recommend NOS tubes for either the output tubes or the phono tubes. In the case of the latter, its just too hard to find NOS tubes that are actually in fact quiet- those were sold off the shelves decades ago and all that are left now are the dregs unless someone got extremely lucky. So we don't recommend NOS tubes for our phono sections- we encourage people to use new tubes if they want the best noise floor and lowest microphonics.
does Ralph have a stand alone phono pre ?
@tomic601 We don't- we feel that a stand alone can't sound as good due to the cable connection problems and further, we have what seem to be the best line stage circuits anywhere owing to their unique direct-coupled outputs- they play bass better than other preamps (tube or solid state) and are fast in the mids and highs like solid state but without the glare.
We've considered a phono section many times, the problem is that to get around the interconnect connection issues we have to put in the circuitry that is in the output buffer of our preamps. The problem there is that the buffer (which is used to prevent the interconnect cable from having any effect on the sound at all, regardless of length or cost) has a slight gain loss, so when we add that, then its the same circuit we're making in our full function preamps! So literally the difference would be a phono section that was all the same circuit as we make now, only missing the input selector switches and volume control.
I've always been into vinyl- our preamps were built to optimize phono playback.
