Where to find 'good sounding' resistors?

C'mon Dan, you know the answer to that!

There's no such thing as a resistor that sounds best in every applicaton. Not Vishays and not anything else. Nick uses Vishays to load our phono inputs but he uses other resistors in other places in the circuits of our preamp. That's part of what took him five years to finalize the design. The circuit was settled after a year or so, the rest was all fine tuning. He still has a whole room full of cast off components, some of them very costly but not best for the application he tried them in.

In my stepup transformer days I tried 6 or 7 brands of resistors in many dozens of combinations to fine-tune loading. They all sounded different and Vishays were not the best in our system. Riken ohms were notably less edgy, since they don't suffer from the skin effect that metal foil resistors are prone to.

The only way to know is to listen, in your system.

Subject to their power limitations, I've used TX2575 throughout Atma preamp, Merlin bass augmentation module & modded SCD-1-- replacing everything in signal path from generic carbon comp, Riken carbon film, top Caddock MK132 & TF020, and several types of SMD. They are extraordinarily detailed, transparent & musical, with no sterility whatsoever. They are the straightest line to a high-end component.

Hi Doug,

Glad to see the hangover from the RMAF weekend didn't keep you down long!

Yes, Nick has mentioned trying film resistors in crossovers. I can see where the signal coming in to the suts would be very susceptible to resistor make/style, not to mention value. But you're absolutely right. The only way to know is to try them out.

I agree with DGarretson on the nude Vishays. I've been buying mine from M Percy. However, if you need a greater than 0.5W power rating, then Mills non-inductive wire-wounds are favored by most. These come in 2W, 5W, and 12W power ratings. The Mills are first rank for plate resistors in tube gear. For >12W, all bets are off. I also agree with Doug that the Rikens have a certain charm, if you want to add a pleasing coloration. I would not use Rikens exclusively but rather mix them with Vishays et al. The second most transparent resistor I know of is the Caddock TF020, but alas these are only rated for 0.3W. Caddock MK132s and Caddock power resistors are also top drawer. Kiwame is in the mix, but be aware that you can buy Kiwames under another brand name for much less money; see the TubeDIY Asylum for info. I forgot about tantalum resistors as sold by Angela Instruments. They go up to 1W rating and are available in only a limited number of values, but they are also on par with the Vishays, yet I can hear a very tiny difference between the two types, which probably means that neither is totally transparent.

To add to Lewm's list, I found that 10W Duelund graphite resistors were an improvement over Caddock MP820/1 in the crossover of an Esotar tweeter. Clearer & more detailed with greater sense of relaxation underneath, and more development of instrument body in the low treble down toward the 2200Hz crossover point-- which makes for a smoother crossover into cone driver of Merlin. However these are physically large resistors, up to 5" long.