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To Tube or not to Tube......

For quite some time now I've been thinking about switching from a solid state to a tube power amp. My Threshold T-100 has been real good to me and I do like it, but it's really the only "high-end" amp I've ever owned, so it's all I know. I'm intrigued by the "warm" sound of tubes and do have a tubed phono amp and CD player, but I am by no means well-versed in the sound of tube power amps having never really auditioned one. I know that goes against the prevailing wisdom and I should listen before I buy, but I don't think I will have the luxury of doing that.

That being said, I've gone through about 20 pages of this forum reading about the benefits and detriments of tubed power amps but nothing I've read has swayed me either way. The posts I've read have been informative re: bias issues, reliability, blowing fuses or whatever else might blow up or go wrong with the tubs, etc. So, if I were to go the tube route, I would not want deal with too much of that hassle. At lease I know that the amp I have doesn't have any such issues. That's why I was leaning toward amps like BAT with their auto biasing (I also need balanced inputs), and would want at least 60-100 wpc. I would be willing to deal with adjusting bias so long as it was a relatively simple process.

I figured I would pose my main question to the exerts here (and this I did learn for this forum): given what I already have in my system, what tube amp would be a good match for me? My pre-amp is a SS Threshold, JM Lab speakers with a "minimum impedance of 4 Ohms," EAR 834P phono stage, & Unison tube cd player.
Much appreciated.
ebuzz
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islandmandan
1,260 posts
 
Ebuzz, I was in the same position as you, very curious about tube amps. That led me to change speakers, from Dynaudio Contour 5.4's, to 12" custom built Tannoys.

I briefly tried a Sophia Baby amp, which I liked, but I needed to go further. I purchased a VAC PA 35.35 EL 34 push-pull amp. That was a good match, at 35 Wpc.

I had always been wanting to try 300B tubes, but I didn't think there would be enough power. I took a chance on a very modestly priced SET 300B amp, from Assemblage Audio, which was owned by Sonic Frontiers. I had factory upgrades done on the amp, and settled in with it.

Turns out, it's the best amp I've had with my Tannoys. I just installed some fairly expensive EML 300B XLS tubes yesterday, and now I am hearing the closest thing to live music I've ever heard in my home.

You may not be willing to make similar changes, but for me, the results have satisfied, and rewarded, me with music listening in a way I most likely wouldn't have experienced otherwise.

For your speakers, something along the lines of the VAC PA 35.35 would do nicely. Thirty five watts per channel may not sound like much, but with the large transformers it has, it produces plenty of current for a good many speakers.

You will get many different opinions, and there are many, many, ways to get to the place you wish to be, musically speaking. What I've done has gotten me where I wanted to be, and searched for, for forty years. This is where I will remain.

Best of luck, have fun,
Dan
mechans
3,048 posts
 
Yes try a (or some mono blocs) tube power amp/s.
OK now-
Many are auto biased these days even big expensive jobs like may Jadis DA-60 which is an integrated but you get the idea. Not all will have the slow rich liquid rolled treble type sound people associate with tubes, in fact many(most) new tube amps sound quite precise and sparkle up top. Try them you might like them, I love them.
PS: they are much less of a hassle than people think they are.
sebrof's avatar
sebrof
837 posts
 
My opinion is that there are speakers that mate well with tubes and speakers that mate well with SS. It doesn't make sense to me to "Try a tube amp" as much as it makes sense to "Try a tube setup."
nsgarch's avatar
nsgarch
2,524 posts
 
Maybe this will help you to better understand the issues. It's part of my post from another thread, but applies here:

Even though it's a little off-topic here, I feel I should explain WHY (very genrally speaking ;~) tubes seem to be better than transistors at 'preserving' an audio signal: it is in fact because of a tube's SHORTCOMING as an 'electrical valve' - it is slow to turn on and off (like a light bulb.) And so there is some 'overlap' as one tube (of a pair) hands the signal off to the other tube. Transistors by contrast, are extremely high-speed devices which turn on and off instantaneously -- and if a pair of gain stage transistors are not PERFECTLY (and laboriously) matched, there will be a little time 'gap' as one hands off the signal to the other, where some subtle parts of the signal will be lost.

Unfortunately, many audiophiles believe that electrostatic speakers require gobs of current (NOT) and so drive them with huge solid state amplifiers. Thus missing out on the enormous pleasure their electrostatic speakers could provide! They need only stop and remember that the amazing Quad 57 was, from the very beginning, driven with a low-powered tube amps. Later on, no solid state amp has ever been able to improve their amazing ability to reproduce the human voice.

Thanks for your kind indulgence ;~)
ebuzz OP
104 posts
 
> Dan: thanks. I can't really make any other changes to my system other than the Amp. I'm happy with the rest of my gear (for now) and my speakers. The JM Labs are fine for me and at 4 ohms should be easy to drive with almost any tube amp. I do have my eye on a used Audio Research VS 115. The main things I don't want to have to be concerned about is having to send the unit in for repairs because something blew somewhere or have to spend $thousands to replace tubes over and over again.
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