Time for POT? previously owned tubes
For several decades now, audiophiles have wondered whether or not, China and Russia will be able to produce new tubes that equal or exceed the quality of the NOS tubes, before we run out of NOS tubes.
After sampling some of the current production tubes, the answer is clearly no.
A better alternative to current production tubes, are POT tubes.
The supply of POT tubes is nearly unlimited. Many of our favorites are available at very reasonable prices
My system is completely custom. It is in the category of: If you have to ask;
How much? You probably can't afford it. Many of the NOS components are close to being extinct.
The question I get asked most often by people entering the high-end audio world for the first time is: What are the most critical components?
My answer is the speakers, because there is simply no way of correcting poorly designed speakers. I bought a pair of 15 year old speakers and completely gutted them. The first thing that had to go was the separate cross-over boxes. It was a fad that never made any sense. The terminators that connected the external cross-over boxes, were very poor. They dramatically decreased both the quality and quantity, of your signal.
I rolled in NOS drivers, moved the first order cross-overs to the bottom of the speaker cabinets, and hard wired them in place, after upgrading all the components. I had to add 3 inches to the bottom of the speakers to accommodate the cross-overs, which was a fairly simple task. Next I re-wired
using a four nines silver ribbon wire with a natural silk dielectric. I then reset the cross over points, to my taste. I grew up listening to the "Marshall" sound at live concerts, and tried to reproduce it.
Before entering the high-end world, I thought all good music started in the middle of 1964, when the Mustangs, first came out, and ended sometime in 1970. The music of that era contained a lot of distortion and special effects.
As manager of a high school band, I created a simple "fuzzbuster" by ripping a woofers cone until I got the sound, I was listening for.
Shortly after entering the high-end world, I realized that my favorite music was not suitable for reference recordings, too much distortion and other issues. I developed a good critical listening ability using CDs of female jazz singers. They were recorded with little, or no distortion. All the great female jazz singers needed was a couple of high quality mics, placed 20 feet apart.
I A/B'ed every single component using a knock-off rule. If a component sounded better than an existing component, it took it's place, in my reference system. I started with the speakers previously mentioned. I ended up with phase coherent four ways, using only first order cross-overs. They are 86db efficient. The rest of my system revolved around making the speakers sound as good as they could. To create a great high-end system, you have to learn not to lie to yourself, which is also a great way to live. My method of creating a great system is very simple to duplicate, I made every mistake possible.
I remember being able to laugh at myself, when an inexpensive Chinese integrated amplifier sounded like, it had more potential than my $40,000
worth of great looking gear. After listening to every type of output tube, I settled on a pair of 845s. I would agree that a 300B SET output system sounded better than my 845s, but they couldn't come close to driving my speakers. I then tried using four 300Bs, per channel in a push-pull circuit.
After tweaking it to the max and rolling in every NOS tube possible, I abandoned it, after I realized a did not like anything a push-pull amp could deliver.
My tube rolling addiction, led to a divorce, I then founded the first "Tube Rollers Anonymous" group.
To spare you our collective pain, I will tell you that no gray plated tube ever made into our reference systems. After talking to physicists and audio engineers, I understand it is completely absent logic that the color of the plates, make such a huge audible difference, but based on my not lying to myself rule, I will not buy another gray plated tube, which is why I am strongly recommending POT black plates, instead of current production gray plates.
I spoke with a guy who was about to go back into the production of audio vacuum tubes. After telling me that he could make purple plated tubes sound as good as black plates, I asked the obvious question. What color plates to you plan to produce? "Black plates", came the response. "There is too much consumer resistance to gray plated tubes"!
It is definitely time for POT!
