Anyone prefer EL34 over 300B?

I would really appreciate any input. 

i missed that you had said below you have tekton electrons

sorry i should have seen that

what is the el34 amp you are using now?

I’[m using a Willsenton 35i. Same outfit that makes the R8 which was well reviewed. I believe that both are made by Zhuhai also DBA Spark. Seems to be very well made.

They also have a couple of 300B models which I thought I might like better than the EL34.

My hobby is to get the best sound I can for the money invested.  I have also built amps but I'm not in a situation where I can do that right now.

i don’t know those chinese willsenton amps but i think many of those new chinese brands sold direct are knock offs of primaluna designs... so they will perform pretty well, so long as they didn’t cheap out on the output transformers... i think you know with a tube amp you are hearing the output trannies as much as the power tubes driving - transformer quality is very very important

does the willsenton amp have a triode/ultra linear switch (like the primaluna’s do)? if so you will get a glimpse of what 300b’s will sound like -- more spatial cues, but less drive, a bit sweeter midrange, softer bass, more rolled off high treble if your amp can run in triode mode

your tektons are 4 ohm stated impedance even though they are quite high efficiency... that raises a red flag for me... can a 300b amp control the bass? they are less powerful for sure - so depends on your room and listening volume

other thing i would say is that chinese amps come with chinese el34’s (obviously)... they are the brightest (treble-centric) el34’s currently made imo (shuguangs)... so to alter the sound profile you might try a set of russian el34’s which will give you more body and less sizzle - the tektons are tuned to be very alive, so using the amp you have to ’round off’ the sound a bit through tube rolling the input and output tubes could well be more cost effective than going with a 300b amp...

my thoughts

I’ve never understood the Tekton formula of 4ohm speakers with higher than average sensitivity. I suppose it allows you to be reasonably compatible with a large number of amps but not gorgeously compatible with anything in the lower power SET/300B realm. Perhaps Tekton has some models that are 10ohm+ which would be a far better fit for an 8W 300B amp for example.