Tubes


I have recently come upon a tube amp a yaqin mc 13-s. I have been reading up a bit on tubes and different things to get better sound. I have asked some questions about speakers on here and received great feedback and its all very much appreciated, you guys who gave me your best input thank you. 

I paired my yaqin with a pro-ject tube box s2. Prior to purchasing the pro-ject preamp I came across a shiit lyr 2 and used it for a short period, unfortunately I'm not into headphones and it didn't pair well in my system the volume just want there because it's not really a preamp it's a headphone amp. Long story short it had ecc88 orange globe amperex tubes and that thing sounded smooooootthhh. 

So I have a few questions?
1. Should I change all the tubes in my main amp to matching tubes? It uses qty 4 (6ca7's or el34b's), qty 2 (12ax7's) and qty 2 (12au7's) for example if I were to use tungsol 12au7's should I use tungsol for the 12ax7's and 6ca7's or could I use gold lions for the 6ca7's? Does it really matter?

2. How big of a difference does it really make changing preamp tubes? like I said earlier the schiit really sounded great and I could only attribute it to those tubes but correct me if I'm wrong? I didn't have any other tubes to try.

Thoughts and opinions are all welcome and appreciated. Once again thank you all for the advice.
gguy767
Pre-amp tubes like 12au7 and 12ax7 can last 5000-10,000 hours.  You can get different sound from different brands or even models with a brand.  Orange Globe Amperex are very nice and expensive to replace.  Keep them.  You can pick up others if you want to compare.  Also, the 12 series tubes really should be used in "like" pairs since they are running right and left channels.
The output tubes can be expensive if you want 4 matched tubes.  You really should try to have 4 of the same output tubes that are electronically similar as well as same brand.
Like everything else-start reading and looking.  Good tube retailers are tubesandmore.com and thetubestore.  Tube world is pricey but will teach you a lot.  Personally I would say stay away from ebay.  Likewise, buying from craigslist can be a deal but without a tube tester you don't know what you are getting.

Nos tubes matched from long standing a Vintage tube services,land Brent Jesse recordings especially for the smaller tubes ,the nos vintage tubes were built 
night and day better  with far more rigorous inspections. For the larger tubes
upscale audio buys the higher selected bunch then cryo treats them ,which for sure makes a improvement in several ways , NASA started this , now all racing teams, gunsmiths anything precision for it brings all its molecules much tighter 
and they permanently stay thst way they sound better and lsdt linger solder joints 
it helps balance the most ,these tubes are then mstched and runin for 3 days  before you buy them ,for $10 more per tube we’ll worth it , to replace the el34 
the Gold lion kt77 is a noticable upgrade myself and 3 friends have been very happy with this choice ,and the small tubes with nos tubes you can Taylor the sound , Brent Jesse recordings gives a rundown of each brands sonic character 

@zkidd - Great post. Thank you. what have you found to be the best new production tubes? I agree on your comments on the small signal tubes. I have been fooling around with 12AX7's in the V1 in my phono preamp and my fav so far is the RCA Command 5751.
Hello @gguy767
I've had the same amp and it was very nice for the price.
I even heard a Primaluna EL34 based tube integrated (about 5 times more expensive) and I believe it wasnt better. 
As it has 2x35W it can drive many speakers, but if you like rock o similar music, I would suggest 93 Db or more efficient speakers with a tube-friendly impedance curve. 
The tubes I liked the most on it were 12AX7 Psvane TII and new production 12AU7 Tungsol. 
@plga 

Yeah I have heard many people like this amp. Prior to coming upon it I had been searching for vintage amp's but didn't really find anything worth buying, so I started doing my research and found this model in high regard. I honestly didn't think I'd find one in my price range because even used ebay they are more than I wanted to pay. Some how some way I got really lucky with some guy on craigslist who had a brand new one. He said he bought a crate of random stuff on an auction and it was in there. He didn't know what it was but I got him down to about 350$ for it and it works perfect, it's flawless the only thing wrong was a crack in one of the cheap plastic tube protectors.

I still have some things I need to do to optimize my sound but otherwise it's the best sounding system I've ever heard or owned but then I'm still a newbie. Everyone says that I'll get addicted and want better this and that but I think I'm a tad more of a music lover than an audiophile. I know the sound I want and I know I can attain it with this setup minus my speakers the speakers are okay but I want better ones. I plane on doing speakers, tubes and stylus. I've heard a major deal more clarity from better styluses so that's a must I think mine is a flat sounding and could be brighter. Tubes is a whole new world for me so it will be my first time experimenting with tube rolling. I am convinced I can improve the sound because I had another preamp with some tubes that many people rave about and it sounded really good, I attribute it to the tubes so i want to start with my preamp tubes and move slowly from there. I'll follow @zkidd s advice and get myself some new tubes he makes a good point. I was thinking the tungsol would be my first try, I found a place that has them nearby so I'll probably pick up a pair to try out in the preamp first. Then in my power amp second I wanna experiment with it a bit.