Quicksilver Preamps?

Over the years I’ve owned many preamps and the Quicksilver has bested all of them!!

I bought it largely on Yogiboy’s posts. I have not compared it to anything other than the Schiit SYS it replaced. It was a small step up from the SYS but I’m starting to think my previous speakers didn’t translate upstream gear changes. So I think maybe that’s why I wasn’t as impressed as I wanted to be when I got it.

I can think of a few line stages I’d like to demo and compare but that’s not money I can part with these days. So I typically research what people perceive to be the best 12AT7 tubes and then see if I can get a pair and see.

I just put Mullard NOS 6201 in my Sonic Frontiers and it was a big improvement over the JJ 12at7 I had in there.  Good thing about this tube variety is there are several new production that are good and finding quality 12at7 NOS is much easier and cheaper than 12ax7 or 6922.  Both of which are getting scarce and pricey

I have only bought NOS from Upscale Audio and Brent Jessee 

That 6201 I got was from Upscale and it cost a little more but triodes were perfectly matched and it makes this piece sound much better than a $500 used pre should.   Unit was quiet before but dead quiet now and big sound , great bass , mids and high freq are clear and very detailed.  It had a Brimar 4024 that was dark    Seller said it was nos but I seriously doubt it.  Anyway I had 3 diff tubes in there and the 6201 was easily the best    

@oddiofyl fortunately some of the builders like mike at QS and a few others realized a while back the supply of good 12AX7s was drying up and others such as 12AT7, 12AU7 are more plentiful both NOS and new-manufacture too.

I popped out my 60s Blackburn Mullards and tried a pair of the new PSVANEs and they sound pretty good for new tubes, much better than than the stock EI Yugo and JJs that came in my QS amps stock. Fun to run the PSVANE for a while to mothball some of the more rare Mullards as a backup option. As you noted better tubes can make a nice difference.

@decooney Thanks to your suggestion, I'm running PSVANEs in my amp and really enjoy them. Great clarity, smooth, and very reasonable price. These are under the radar at the moment, but anyone with expensive tubes should consider them for swap in/out experiments.