TUBE BIAS, socket to me!

sokogear

Tubes can be a lot of fuss, IF you are a very fussy person, which I am not. Therefore, for 43 years they have been easy, and I have heard and prefer tubes over SS. Easy.

As I mentioned in the original post, I simply spray the controls, swish em around put em in the middle, listen. Never bothered with bias.

Make it easier on yourself. To avoid a lot of unknows, I bought, and advise buying a simple tube tester, which you might think fussy, but I like knowing rather than guessing the condition of existing and newly purchased tubes. I always do an annual pre-holiday tube check prior to Thanksgiving. Over the years, a few developed shorts, a few have died, a few have gotten weak. Easy to find and replace with a simple tester.

Over the years I have gotten away with original or substitute tubes 'of the same performance', probably why I have gotten away with plug and play.

This time, I changed types, 6550's to KT88's. It is recommended to change the bias when you change those in my amp.

I didn't bother, the difference is easy to hear, I prefer the KT88's.

Sooo, I asked: how important is bias really? If they sounded better, might they sound even better?

If I was buying a tube amp, I would prefer external bias, safer than needing to go inside mine, yet I am limited in choice by wanting 16 ohm taps on the transformer.

Elliot, I see no reason why you should be surprised that there are no products currently for sale that mimic your Macintosh MX 110, with an FM tuner built into a preamplifier essentially. FM radio is on the rocks. Not many audiophiles even try listening to FM radio for musical pleasure these days. Except maybe in their cars. Back in the heyday of the MX110, every major city had FM stations that actually competed with each other for the quality of their signal and prided themselves on their classical and jazz music content. That’s all gone, pretty much. So that accounts for the absence of a built-in tuner. As for the tone controls, those fell out of fashion in the 90s, except for some notable made in Japan preamplifiers from Accuphase and Luxman. Privately, I think they fell out of fashion because not incorporating tone controls saves a bit of cost on build and development. Audiophile publications often carried articles suggesting that tone controls add distortion, which of course they do. But it’s a question of trade-offs. As far as I am concerned, I would not consider a preamplifier with tone controls, unless they were switchable in and out of the circuit. Apparently you do enjoy FM radio broadcasts, in which case the MX 110 was made for your needs. It’s great that you like it so much. Now I think of it, Accuphase and maybe Luxman too may have made preamplifiers with built in tuners of more recent vintage than that of your Macintosh. Those would be all solid state, most likely.  Very  high quality.

lewm,

I don't recall indicating surprise modern preamps do not have FM. Few have them now, and anyone can stream FM online. I don't stream digital in my music system, and don't listen to FM in the home theater.

Many/most young people never heard excellent FM quality, including many of my audiophile friends. I'm old enough to remember when FM first appeared in cars, gradually replacing those AM radios.

I used to use Carver FM (another used find at Harvey's, amazing reception capability), and now only listen to 1 station, WBGO Jazz, my designated FM antenna in the attic pointed at their broadcast antenna. This FM is every bit as good as they say. Much more involving sound than the Carver (on a shelf, resale value about $15).

I used tone controls when in college, Fisher 200T receiver, and a pair of AR2x's. Also knew how to properly use Loudness Control, low volume while pulling many all-nighter's listening to Allison Steele, the Nightbird,  or Cousin Brucie while the wife and baby slept.

Now I have my L-pads on my speakers, I have never used tone controls since, however I would want them just in case.

I adjust balance, and benefit when a track needs it, prior to Chase Remote Balance it was a walk up, back, up, back, start the track over, PITA, in any case I always want balance. Using Mono Blocks, with individual manual volume pots on lower shelf was not fun. I used to run Onkyo CD with 2 sets outputs, 1 with volume control, direct to amp to speakers

I have had 'skip the controls' preamp and the current Cayin has 'preamp bypass', skipping it's volume control. I never hear a difference, always go for convenience.

Tone controls, filters, ... can get noisy, I am very good at getting to them and properly cleaning them to their original noise free state.

Yes, OK.

@elliottbnewcombjr - aren't all audiophiles by definition fussy? If you don't care about high SQ I doubt you would categorize yourself as an audiophile. You didn't say why you prefer tubes, if you ever had them in your system, when that was, etc.

Your description (testing tubes, spraying tubes, replacing tubes, etc.) sounds like more to do than I currently do with my amp, which is nothing other than leave it on all the time (after 15 years I hope I am not jinxing myself) except to turn it off when the cleaning lady visits, just out of paranoia, even though she knows not to touch anything in the stereo. I am scared she or one of her girls might bump into something by accident.