Amplifier Power tubes - important to sound?

@brownred6 -

        The Svetlana Winged 'C' tubes were a very nice tube and I hated to see the company shut down after the St Petersburg plant burned, with all it's equipment.

        If you do manage to find any remaining stock; there's a 99% chance, they'll be factory seconds, as all the first quality tubes went years ago.

@carlsbad2 ​​​& @dogearedaudio -

                                             +1 (each)

       As usual: the resident imitation of a fictitious Intelligence Operative, knows nothing.

     I went through a few octets of  Sylvania's 6550s, until Upscale ran out and I couldn't find any more.

      Uncle Kev recommended the Winged 'C' and those were a nice replacement, until the plant burned.

       The GE 6550 variants were my next stop and I loved 'em, until they got too salty for my wallet.

        I kept a good testing quad, that I've used for comparison against a few other brands and found the Russian Gold Lion KT88s to provide fairly close to the same presentation.

                                    Roll on and happy listening!

Just to be clear, I was certainly not recommending anything other than the correct tube type for the OP’s amplifier. I was simply pointing out that the quality of the output tubes can make a difference, in terms of both power output and the amount of distortion they produce.