Tube Rolling Woes

Have purchased new production and NOS tubes from most of the well known vendors.  Best results have been from Brent Jessee Recording.  While a bit more expensive than most/all other vendors, the testing and matching service he provides is, I believe, the most extensive available.  

Nos, you are not hunting the holy grail with them.
Hit and miss but at least you will get the experience. A good vendor will always be helpful whatever the outcome. 
Something i always say is that modern equipment are designed with modern production tubes in mind, so if you like what you are hearing then go with same tube and if you have the itch for nos then go with older production ones but from same manufacturer.

G

Hello Glen -
I own the first gen Freya so am speaking from that experience. Hope it is relevant.

-Have you confirmed a proper impedance match between pre and amp?

-My next thought is be patient. 75 hours might be enough for the tubes but maybe not for the Freya to settle and "burn-in" (as recently controversial as burn-in time has become). Regardless that, my listening enjoyment benefits from allowing new gear adequate burn-in and settling time.

- It’s not unusual for installation of a new piece of gear to require "re-tuning the system" entailing (at least) adjustments to speaker placement. Knowing the rest of your gear and cabling would be helpful to members here. Maybe the Freya is just letting you hear a wider frequency range. Can you move speakers closer to the wall behind them? With some speaker types this can improve lower mid range and bass.

-I’m not sure there’s a way to accurately predict what impact tube rolling is going to have on your system sound to your ears. You might get some helpful advice from the likes of Jim McShane, Brent Jessee or Upscale Audio. Some vendors will allow returns on noisy tubes or if you just don’t like the overall sound (e.g., Brent Jessee but you’ll pay up front for the right to return, as I recall).

- I’ve run probably half a dozen different tube brands (NOS and new production) in the Freya. Some VERY inexpensive ($10/tube) Russian 6N8S that used to be a stock offering from Schiit did seem bright and harsh at the start but eventually settled down and warmed up tone-wise. Still not my favorites but did get better than they were out of the box.  (Right now listening with NOS RCAs in gain and current production Tung-Sols in driver).

-A bright top end (one that makes strings tough on the ears) is a personal bug a boo and something I battled for a long time given metal dome tweeters on the Totem Forests I have. This had nothing to do with the Freya.  Thin mids and bass, however, were never a problem even with brand new el-cheapo tubes.  Now, issues with high frequencies are all things of the past having made adjustments to speaker position, changes to cabling (including choices between upper vs lower binding posts vs which diagonal connection pattern) and installing an Aquarius power conditioner.

Hope this will give you some ideas to explore in addition to tube rolling.

That is the trade off, sometimes. Tone control through valves is tough and it takes someone that knows what they are doing. Tone control circuits were eliminated because of cost AND the noise they can add to the signal.

It is best if you plan to keep the unit, speak, listen and spend. Don't spend, speak and NOT listen.. I do the latter all the time.. Not so much anymore.. I find my pockets stay a little fuller and personally I stay a little calmer.. :-)

Talk the Brent Jesse and tell him that you have and what you want to do. SEE what it cost... That is what an OLD Mechanic would do...

Yes the little Freya + is a neat little unit. It is pretty transparent too. You are getting more than what you pay for MOST of the time. They are a good deal. NOT GREAT, NOT Perfect. But good and better than any at that price range... IMHO I like the look and weight too.. Heavy...

Ghosthouse nailed it. Audiophiles love to talk about expectation bias. Which is largely fake, by the way. Hardly anyone ever talks about recency bias, which seems to be hard-wired into our brains. You made a change, its not perfect, you assume all the imperfections are due to the change. It is equally likely to have had imperfections there all along, only you had a combination of components and setup that had kept you in the dark, so to speak. The new component in this case is not creating them but merely revealing them. What ghosthouse said is correct. 

That's what I think. Give it time. Tube rolling is not for fine tuning magic, not patching over shortcomings.