Hi Inna,
Tubes are not for everyone, I refused to use them for decades. I had worked on some tube equipment cameras and early vidio tape recorders, 3 inch tape on reels much like old reel to reel tape recorders. Video pickup was all done with tubes until CCD came along in the late 1980s, and various red, green, and blue video pickup tubes didn't seem to last that long, so I wasn't a tube lover. I did some mods for a friend, he had LS15, and LS16 Audio Research preamps. I installed soft recovery diodes in them, replaced some power supply capacitors and bypassed the capacitors in the tube stage, I was hooked after listening to them, and bought an LS15 for myself. Schitt Audio came along, and I bought their Yggdrasil DAC. I was so impressed that I went on to buy a Freya. Well, one of the guys who bought a Freya went on to buy a preamp made by Roy Mottram, and blown up by long time Citation and McIntosh tube refurbisher/modifier Don Sachs. Not being a tube guy, I figured that if I bought the SP14 kit from Roy, by the time I had mine tweaked out, which would be a learning process, I'd have more into it than if I just bought Don Sachs' version, so I bought a preamp from Don. Roy was in the middle of a move anyway, so it's also true that I was impatient and just wanted to be done. Well, the DS2, as Don calls it, so blew away the Freya, that I was hooked. Don's amp costs over 3K, and Upscale Audio was selling PrimaLuna Prologue Fives for 1100, so I bought one. It sounded better to me than any of my SS amps, especially once I got a set of Gold Lion KT88s, with Amperex 9 pins for drivers. I still lacked the deep soundstage that I was looking for and experience told me that octal drivers would sound better, so I went back to Roy Mottram. He, as luck would have it, was selling his personal amp, he didn't need the wattage and was down sizing. Well, I bought it, and it sounds awesome. I do intend to do a few things to it, but at this point I suppose I should have just purchased Don's amp and skipped the PrimaLuna, but then I wouldn't have learned as much as I have about tube amplifiers. Frankly either of Roy's kits, the ST70 or the ST120 with octal drivers is an awesome deal, as is his SP14 preamp. Unfortunately I always want to squeeze that last 10 percent out of audio equipment....
Tubes are not for everyone, I refused to use them for decades. I had worked on some tube equipment cameras and early vidio tape recorders, 3 inch tape on reels much like old reel to reel tape recorders. Video pickup was all done with tubes until CCD came along in the late 1980s, and various red, green, and blue video pickup tubes didn't seem to last that long, so I wasn't a tube lover. I did some mods for a friend, he had LS15, and LS16 Audio Research preamps. I installed soft recovery diodes in them, replaced some power supply capacitors and bypassed the capacitors in the tube stage, I was hooked after listening to them, and bought an LS15 for myself. Schitt Audio came along, and I bought their Yggdrasil DAC. I was so impressed that I went on to buy a Freya. Well, one of the guys who bought a Freya went on to buy a preamp made by Roy Mottram, and blown up by long time Citation and McIntosh tube refurbisher/modifier Don Sachs. Not being a tube guy, I figured that if I bought the SP14 kit from Roy, by the time I had mine tweaked out, which would be a learning process, I'd have more into it than if I just bought Don Sachs' version, so I bought a preamp from Don. Roy was in the middle of a move anyway, so it's also true that I was impatient and just wanted to be done. Well, the DS2, as Don calls it, so blew away the Freya, that I was hooked. Don's amp costs over 3K, and Upscale Audio was selling PrimaLuna Prologue Fives for 1100, so I bought one. It sounded better to me than any of my SS amps, especially once I got a set of Gold Lion KT88s, with Amperex 9 pins for drivers. I still lacked the deep soundstage that I was looking for and experience told me that octal drivers would sound better, so I went back to Roy Mottram. He, as luck would have it, was selling his personal amp, he didn't need the wattage and was down sizing. Well, I bought it, and it sounds awesome. I do intend to do a few things to it, but at this point I suppose I should have just purchased Don's amp and skipped the PrimaLuna, but then I wouldn't have learned as much as I have about tube amplifiers. Frankly either of Roy's kits, the ST70 or the ST120 with octal drivers is an awesome deal, as is his SP14 preamp. Unfortunately I always want to squeeze that last 10 percent out of audio equipment....