Manly Steelhead - any downside??

I just received the brand spanking new steelhead from the distributor and finished playing three LP's. New Order's latest LP "waiting for the sirens call", New Order "Brotherhood" and 1st Dire Straits album.

WOW! It sounds great straight from the box (well 30 minutes after switch on:). Sometimes when you plug something in it just sounds right - well the steelhead is one of those piece's of equipment.

The steelhead has great bass weight and drive, that unmistakeable tube bloom/meat on the bones(or whatever one wants to call it) in the upper bass,lower mid's and it actaually does PRAT, like the best naim equipment.
If it continues to get better over the next few days - it ain't going back!.
After many years and quite a few phono stages either owned or at home for demo's - namely Naim prefix, fm acoustics 122, cj prem 15, CAT internal phono, Aesthetix IO & rhea, ayre P5x,herron phono and finally the very nice Pass Xono. the steelhead just on 3 records has quite easily bested these nice phono stages buy making the records like good music. I guess sometimes money does buy a better sounding product.

thanks to all you goner's that gave me your insights to how it sounded in your systems from this thread.

back to listening to the steelhead and music!

Downunder...I am so glad you like what you are hearing. It will smooth out somewhat with more hours. A bigger change will happen when you change the 6922 tubes. I have tried many tubes but not the Tele CCa's yet. I will take Brian's advice and try these too. I have, however, tried Tele EC88's and E88CC's as well as half a dozen other in the 6922 family. My experence with the Siemens CCa has not been anything but great. They are my favorite as of now. For a lot less money, a set of Amperex white lable PQ 6922's will sound smooth, not hamper the details and let the sound flow in a very musical way.

Another thing I have tried is placing a small amount of Stillpoints ERS material around the caps. Too much tends to kil the life of the music but a little bit ( a square inch on each side) attached to the case in the area of the caps adds to the clarity and articulation that I get when I listen.

Please keep us posted on what you experience...

Steve

Steve, Where would one get a set of Amperex white label PQ 6922's??.

R there any current production tubes that are better than the stk tubes?.

cheers Shane

PQ 6922 white labels?
www.tubeworld.com

A little pricey, but always top quality, Brendan's tubes are exactly as he describes them.

Vetterone,I owe it to you to keep this brief,yet,hopefully interesting.
My friend and myself have spent a good part of winter 2004/5 trying out the vast majority of phono tubes.This actually ended in June 2006.We tried the Amperex 6922 White labels PQ- which were fabulous.We tried Ediswan 6922 and 7308,also fabulous.All tubes were tested as ULTRA low noise.

We did try Teles,mega bucks,BTW--and were not real happy with these.A bit too lean for our taste.Also tried was Amperex 7308,very nice.A bit soft.In all honesty,and in similarity to your own findings,we got our hands on some KILLER low noise Siemens CCa's,which cost dearly,and these were definitely the best we've had in our phono sections.These tubes,to us,were so good that we may end our quest here,though I may still spring for a set of "Pinched Waisted Amperex".I don't think I can hold out, without at least trying these.ALL tubes had really distinctively different sounding signatures,as you must know.This is really a great way to voice a system to a specific taste,though many manufacturers won't let on to how effective NOS tubes can really be.

BTW-the guy "SAM" who sells on Audiogon,is very reliable,and seemingly honest.

Best regards!