Supratek Owners Thread

@rms456 excellent to hear about your new arrival🤣. Once it breaks in and if you have an interest in upgrading your tubes I have several suggestions that made a definite improvement. I have rolled many 6sn7’s, 6f8g’s , 6l6’s as well as 5V rectifiers. Also, highly recommend upgrading your fuse to a Swiss Fuse Box. All nice SQ enhancements. Cheers!

@tksteingraber   You will hear a little crackling when the remote is used due to the motor interacting with the high gain circuit.  You should only hear it while the motor is turning the vol up or down (remote) though.  Should stop once you take your finger off that remote button.    Sometimes if you have a cell phone near (~3') of the pre,  the pre will pickup some rf from the phone and you could hear some cadenced ticking and or a little static in the background.    IF you hear/get the crackling from the volume when manually engaging the control at the unit, I would suspect a dirty pot,  but these are sealed so not much you could do about it other than replace.   If it's silent other than when turning up/down manually,  I would worry with it. Won't harm anything.

@jslateiv many thanks for the excellent explanation.  All good…the Cab only makes noise using the remote.

@jslateiv , there is a difference now on the burning in process, now 48 hours in. An FM Tuner (Yamaha TD-500) is feeding the input and monitoring with SPL headphone amp, HD820. Power is raw house AC power, no special cabling on AC lines at all. Interconnects are Accuphase ASL-10B, AL-10 well used.

If the source is ordinary and it sounds 'better' as time goes on, that roughness out of the box is slowly disappearing.

What I mean by rough, is dropping sound stage height and missing the stage between centre and left and right, falls in a hole there as encountered in the main system. The effect on an equivalent digital only level, is closely the same as the change in USB cables. Guessing that common mode noise is an issue there. Bass is lost in the early hours, but is coming back. 

The manual that came with the Cabernet advised the GZ345 was good only for 2000 hours. Could you recommend another tube with longer life and an SQ boost.as a bonus?

I have found that a good 50hrs seems to open up the OPT's,..  I always hear a difference in the first hour as the unit gets hot and temps stabilize.   Tubes can be hit or miss with their own break in,..   some don't require much time and some do,..  doesn't really matter the brand, age, etc..  this is more specifically to the output tubes,  not rectifier or regulator tubes..   If you hear the center or imaging shifting back and forth some,  thats the tubes..   They generally always settle in at some point.  I have had some that were stable for the first few hundred hours and then shift only to restabilize and lock into place.  Kinda crazy but nature of the beast if you will..   GZ34 (5AR4) should last many thousands of hours,..  5k at least if not 10,..   the power supply on your unit is pretty easy on them,.  The dht cabs pull a bit more current but a straight SN7 cabernet is a pretty light load.