Over Tubing it?

Hm, let's see--nine in the amp, seven in the linestage, six in the phono stage, and four in the headphone amp.  It is not the count that is scary, but the price of the individual tubes.  Ten of the tubes are in the $1,500-$2,000 each range, and the rest are not cheap either.  Fortunately, my tubes are run gently and do not need frequent replacement (haven't changed ANY in more than a dozen years).

Ten of the tubes are in the $1,500-$2,000 each range, and the rest are not cheap either. 

Sounds like you are running NOS western electric 300b tubes at that price.

I am running old, but testing good, Western Electric 348's (six of them) and Western Electric 349s.  I also run four Western Electric 310s.  In my phono stage, I run Telefunken ECC 803S.  The phono stage is particularly odd because it runs two 300b tubes as rectifiers.  The electrostatic headphone amp runs four EL34s (I use Telefunkens).

True NOS engraved base 300bs would be WAY above any price I can even imagine.  Who knows what 300a's go for these days?  A local dealer has an amp that runs meshplate Western Electric 252s; he was offered something like $20,000, plus replacement non-meshplate 252s and a trip to Korea for a pair of these tubes.  That is the most that I can think of for tubes.  

 The phono stage is particularly odd because it runs two 300b tubes as rectifiers.

I have a tube preamp with a separate power supply that can use 300b tubes as rectifiers, I haven't tried the 300b yet as I'm using 1616 rectifier tubes currently.

@ghdprentice said,

"In high end systems they don’t sound like tubes…they are used to enable incredibly natural musical high fidelity sound".

If there ever was a definitive statement, succinctly put, this summarizes the 'tube sound question' in one sentence.  Bravo!

I boil it down to one word - realism - when someone asks. :-)     

To the OP:

I have an all tube system, the DAC is a vintage solid state Theta, but my preamp has an interface board built in that is dedicated to its output into the pre. It is the RFC circuit* designed by Dennis Had of Cary Audio. In fact, my preamp is Cary as are my monoblocks. Sublime realism coming through the Maggies.

If I were to upgrade my DAC, the Jolida/Black Ice would be a top contender - a great sounding DAC 'specially with a tube chain and cost effective to boot. Frankly, with the Theta and the RFC circuit, the realism is astonishing.  Mike Moffit was on the cutting edge then (and still is) of digital to analog conversion.

The take-away: The right tubes when done right (good transformers are a must) = Realism (to me, anyway). No 'tubey' sound.  If so, something isn't quite right.  

*For those interested:  The RFC circuit was a Reverse Phase Cancelling circuit that stripped out the ultrasonic noise (above the Nyquist limit), which is produced by DAC chips, so the analog section does not amplify it. It was accomplished using two 12ax7 tubes. The circuit literally reversed the phase of this inaudible noise and cancelled it out. It wreaked havoc on the analog sections and made digital sound 'edgy'.  In the salad days of digital (to use Dick Olsher's phrase), this was ground-breaking. The Theta was used as the test bed for this circuit which I also bought. Going forward, this was accomplished in the digital domain and really helped tame digital. In point of fact, that patent proved very handsome...so now you know. 

On a personal note, Dennis is a very talented tube engineer.  I discovered in my first conversation he was a fellow Ham and the designer and builder of the Dentron line of tube R/F amps which he sold to start Cary, which is when I interacted with him. He custom-tweaked my Cary chain starting with the installation of his RFC circuit, which was the basis for a dedicated line preamp, and I have never looked back. 

The only other addition to the chain has been the Jolida Foz SS-X, a tube-based line level device, which I wrote about in a separate thread. I have my system in a very small room and the SS-X addressed the issue. So, adding tubes does not degrade the sound if done right~!    

Thanks...