What made you change to a 6SN7 preamp?


If you made an intentional shift toward a 6SN7-based tube preamp, what sonic characteristics motivated your move?

I have been doing some comparisons and think I have some reasons I like the 6SN7 better, but there are so many factors which could be at play, that I'm not sure what is responsible. 

Rather than list my details for others to analyze, I'd rather hear your answer to the basic question.

Tell me about your path toward a 6SN7 preamp?

What did you change from and why?

Even if, overall, the change was worth it, did you lose anything in the transition? What?

hilde45

Right, Andy lives for tubes. He tests all his tubes after he acquires them and adds them to his inventory. At the time of a purchase he measures  many different parameters of each tube as if they were to be used in his system. 

@immatthewj

 

Go to ebay and buy sylvania 6SN7 green letters and the yellowish letter tubes.  Probably between $30 & $50 for a pair each.  Start there and see how your preamp sounds.   

 

Thanks to everyone for posting. Just a couple of thoughts on what I've read so far.

First, clearly, people hear and can articulate a difference; I see patterns in the kinds of differences heard. This is helpful to me in anticipating *why* I might want to try a 6SN7 based preamp. 

Second, @decooney may throw some of the claims into some doubt with his statement:

another factor in responses so far may also relate to some people jumping up a level or two on design and improved parts quality with their next tube preamp purchase.

Strictly speaking, i.e bumping from something like a $1500 12Axx preamp up to a $3000+ 6SN7 based [a higher quality] tube preamp as a normal course of order.

Why? Because if some of you *simultaneously* purchased a better preamp AND a 6sN7 preamp, you could be mistakenly attributing the improvements in sound to the tube rather than the overall construction.

Thus, a question which controlled for this would ask whether your change in preamp was lateral in terms of construction quality and nevertheless there were improvements in sound which could safely be attributed to the tube?

I realize this is a very hard question to answer, for many reasons. But it is effectively the challenge implicit in decooney's observation.