2. amps-preamps
  3. 195565-200780

Can I get my Prima Luna to sound more like a SET/300B?

 

Dear Audiogon community, 

 

I am ruminating on my current state of mind with this alchemy… 

 

I have spent the past year upgrading my main system to a relatively glorious state… details below and in my profile. 

 

I am at times in the sublime musical hallucination I seek. However I admittedly may be coming to the realization that the sound I yearn for in my heart may be ultimately obtained through a SET or 300B type of solution. And to get there I may need a 5-9K indulgence, in order to match the Nagra Streamer, Holo Audio DAC, and Pure Audio Project Duet Horn’s. 

 

This is something that may take a while for me to enact… 

 

SOOOO…. In the meantime…. What if anything can I do with the amp that I currently have, a Prima Luna Dialogue Premium HP, to obtain a completely enveloping, immediate, effortless, sublime, vivid, and delicious delivery of acoustic, jazz, classical, vocals, horns, strings, cymbals…. Sublime enveloping sensual euphoria…?? 

 

Can I get my Prima Luna to sound like a proper SET or 300B amp? Even close? 

 

Some thoughts: 

-Cap upgrade… Jupiter or Jensen or Duelund or…. 

 

-Main tubes to…. Ray? Mullard E34’s? Psvane PH or UK? Sophia Electric? 

 

(Currently I run Gold Lion KT77’s, which are very nice when they work, but their unreliability is frustrating… in 9 months two go out and one has a high frequency distortion)

 

Or should I bite the bullet and jump in to a serious amp upgrade? 

 

THANK YOU SO MUCH for your brilliant insight… 

 

Cheers to musical alchemy. 

R. 

 

 

 

 

 

Details of my system: (brief)

    • SPEAKERS: Pure Audio Project Duet 15 Horn (Mundorf Silver Gold Oil Cap upgrade and high pass filter, Anticable 4.2 Flex Internal wire)
    • STREAMER: Nagra Streamer (Cardas Clear Coaxial)
    • DAC: HoloAudio Spring 2 Level 3 Kitsune edition (Silversmith Fidelium RCA Interconnects)
    • AMP: PrimaLuna Dialogue Premium HP Integrated (Gold Lion KT77 power tubes, Mullard NOS gain tubes)
    • PHONO: Music Hall MMF-9 and McIntosh MP 100 Preamp (Goldring Eroica lx cartridge)
whyrichard
blisshifi's avatar
blisshifi
1,260 posts
 

In short, no you cannot, but you can tailor it in that direction. Something about the circuitry and transformers in the amp prohibit it from getting that smooth, and it’s hard to even get conventional tube sound out of your amp as it is very linear aka solid state sounding as a tube amp. I’ve owned the amp multiple times over the course of ten years and have plenty of experience with it. 

That said, a few things to potentially try before you invest serious money into a new amp. 

  • Get the Psvane EL34PH for output tubes. They are the most 300B-like EL34 I’ve ever tried. Just really wonderful… golden, rich and harmonic, a bit rounded and refined on the frequency extremes, especially compared to the others you listed. 
  • Brimar CV4003 on the first two (center) tubes. These are also a bit more refined and softer sounding than the hashy stock tubes.
  • Quality power (cables and conditioners) can also do a great job of enabling an amp  to perform its best.

 

jasonbourne71's avatar
jasonbourne71
1,486 posts
 

Why would you want to do that? Ralph Karsten of Atmosphere has posted here on another thread about why a well-designed PP tube amp is inherently superior to SET amps. Single end amps are distortion-generating devices. Past the first 25% of wattage distortion rises rapidly to 10% or more. That can hardly be called "high fidelity!" The 300B tube has a usable 2 watts available! At 8 watts it's distortion is 10% and rising! Forget SET's! Stick to PP 6L6/5881/EL34/6550/KT88 types.

jasonbourne71's avatar
jasonbourne71
1,486 posts
 

The OP should ditch the Gold Lion KT77's and buy a set of NOS RCA 6L6 Black Plates. I have a quad set to use in my Heath W5 monos.

lynn_olson's avatar
lynn_olson
408 posts
 

Rather than hack your power amps (which will destroy their resale value), time to start shopping around for different power amps. Your speakers are pretty efficient, so 15 to 20 watts should be plenty. There are some push-pull 300B amps out there (Don Sachs and I make some, but out of your price range) that are very good. There are some pretty decent SET 300B amps in your price range as well, but they are quite variable in sound, depending on design details like driver design, power supply isolation, and more subtle details like point-to-point wiring vs circuit boards.

I should mention designers of Class D amps sometimes (not always) use an analog front end to deliberately "tune" the sound of the Class D power section. As a result, there is no one Class D sound ... each Class D brand needs to be auditioned to determine their house sound, which you may or may not like.

So ... you can choose PP 300B, SET 300B, or a "tuned" Class D amp. I am a little hesitant to recommend any push-pull pentode amp, because it’s very difficult to get the distinctive 300B sound with that topology and tube choice. There are definite limits to what you can do with cap swaps and power supply tuning.

P.S. Single-ended pentode amps live in a world of their own, quite separate from PP 300B, SET 300B, or PP pentode.

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