I didn't swap the 805s or 6SN7s yet. I threw the 300Bs in just to see. Quite frankly, it sounds great biased at just over 100ma. I'll reach out to China Hifi next week.
So I bought the Willsenton R-800i
After I bought the Klipsch Cornwall IVs recently it became apparent quite quickly that to make it really shine it needs a tube amp to drive it. (For me at least.) After doing some (=endless) research, considering the options (budget, shops nearby carrying models I´m interested in, etc.) and also asking around on this very forum I decided to go for the Willsenton R-800i. None of my friends here shares my excitement for audio stuff or even has a comparable system, so what´s now in my living room is the one tube amp I know. And I´m delighted. Together with the speakers it gives the music the presence and glow that I so desired.
Of course I can tell that there´s more potential in this amp and I already exchanged some of the stock tubes. There are more on the way and I can´t wait to test them. For now my financial means are a bit limited so I´m not ordering Western Electric and Takatsuki 300Bs just for the sake of comparing them. In fact I´m waiting with those a bit and go for the others first.
Searching online I find a lot of information on English language forums. Somehow tube rolling is not discussed as much on the German forums I checked though – and out of curiosity (and because they were pretty cheap) I went for both West- and East-German ECC83s and a fairly random mix of other tubes from the US and the Soviet Union. I´m waiting for them to arrive and not being able to read about some of them it raises my curiosity how they will sound. Maybe crappy, maybe not so bad, maybe even very good. I´ll see. Tube rolling will take some time and I don´t mind. The amp is there to stay for quite a while.
There´s an exhaustive thread on the Willsenton amps and fitting tubes here but since I found people´s comments on this forum so helpful I´m looking forward to hear from you. I´m open for tube recommendations and would like to hear anyone´s experience with the Willsenton R-800i. Or maybe someone has questions?
As for the tubes:
805 – stock replaced for Cossor
300B – stock
6SN7 – stock replaced for Sylvania GTBs, waiting for Fonon NOS (Soviet, 1979, a bargain for 10€)
12AX7 – stock replaced with current Mullard model, waiting for West German ones from AEG and Telefunken, East German ones from RSD and Funkwerk Erfurt (both used) and also Sylvania JAN 5751 NOS (a military model)
5U4G – stock, waiting for RCA NOS black plate and Svetlana NOS „Coke Bottle“
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@chmaiwald , Do you think the Cossor 805 is better than the factory 805 ? |
I must admit that I still have to find the time to put the stock tubes back in. I started rolling more or less right away when I got the amp so I can´t say for sure if the Cossor is better than the factory 805 (now I´m using PSVane Acme 805s). It´s really on my list to check again how the stock tubes and some others I used for a while hold up against the combination I´m using at the moment. It´s been giving me great pleasure for months now so anything that may be a step back takes time I prefer to spend otherwise. I´ll get to that at some point. But here´s two things I did do recently: Before I realized that the stock tubes are 6H8C too I bought two pairs of the same for cheap online and put them in. One was really good and I during the past couple of weeks I double checked: It´s difficult (for me) to tell them apart from the Sylvania GTBs I also own. Both very sweet. The other russian pair seemed bland in comparison. But that´s what I heard about old russian NOS: Sometimes the quality is really good, sometimes not so much. For $10-15 a pair it´s definitely woth taking a shot. Now I have to put the stock tubes back in to see how they hold up. Only today I received a JJ EC803S which I´ve been listening to for a while now. I´m curious because I heard praise for the ECC803S and that JJ is using the old Telefunken production machines. Sure it´s not broken in properly yet, but it sounds very nice already, less linear or analytical than the Telefunken it replaced. Let´s see how it will perform in the long run. As you can tell, I´ve been tube rolling rather impulsively. I should sit down and take notes like I did in the beginning when I tried the first few 6SN7s and 12AX7/ECC83s. Now that the 300Bs and 805s are properly broken in it´s high time to roll back and compare. I can be more helpful for the discussion then. |
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