Favorite 300B: Sophia vs KR

@Charles1dad

Thanks for your replay, no argue here, cos I know about KR issues in that regard, but also you have to be sure which tubes you are putting in your equipment, cos they may not sound that good as you may expect. Result of this is the necessary tube rolling, which means spending money, lots of it. When I bought my Cary CAD 300SEI it came with full house of Sophia's and I was really pleased until I tried KR's, AVVT's, but more important differ driver and input tubes, cos Cary benefits a lot from them, some say even more than 300B rolling, but I believe in a good total match instead. Now I use full house of ECC33 Mullards, which to me are everything you may need from tubes. But than again, depends on speakers or else you are using... Thats why research and lots of reading, before actually purchase, making more sense up here.
Chinese, in general, trying to produce that sound clone of WE's in many differ ways, while for example Svetlana from Sensor in St.Petersburg like 80% of the WE sound sig, but for like USD 260 - 320 a pair, which is known for a very long time. They did have some quality issues in the past, but seems that now its all over. They are also on my list, but first I want KR Balloon's.

About the service of KR's. TJ's US dealer stopped importing their top notch carbon, cos of the same problems, to many broken tubes and to many issues with replacement, so, its not just KR.

THX

Hello,
Maxmad, Srajan Ebaen(6 Moons.com) during his reviews of 300b tubes was surprised to discover that in the amps he used the driver tube changed the sound character more than swapping the various output tubes.
Grant Audio is the North American distributor for TJ Full Music, I was`nt aware they`re having any problems with the higher end SE 300b tubes.

Sakahara, I ordered the ceramic base version. I also found Sue very pleasant.

Charles1dad, I wish there was a way that I could have auditioned the Treasures to hear for myself, but as I stated on another thread, a manufacturer, who has an extensive history of using 300bs in his push-pull amps, told me that the Treasures were disappointing when used with his PP circuitry.

Well, there was nothing wrong with quality, but there were just to many that came broken, at least thats what Grant Audio stated on their website.
You know, I am in the tube hobby for some time now and strange thing about the tubes is, if you pack them well, they just dont broke, but if they are bad, they just bad:-)

Anyway, here is some nice article about Svetlana's
http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/1199/sv300b.htm

I don't have experience with KR 300B but I think there's enough customer complaints to support my little jab at them. I'm sure it's a good tube and I might even try it sometime given the experience so far with Sophia (I thought they made their own, or at least separate production at a factory). Maybe I should have bought KR, or EML as I'd originally planned, but the Sophia was based on my amps dealers personal experience with both EML and Sophia. He didn't care for Sophia years back but found the latter production to sound better then EML. The amp designer hates Chinese tubes, only recommending NOS WE, otherwise EML is used/supplied. Most customers buy NOS WE. I feel the same way with current Chinese tubes, also Russian made. But I have no other choice if I can't afford NOS WE. I seriously regret selling them. Now I'm considering returning the Sophia because of the issues and trying EML or KR. Maybe I should have just got the Shuguang Treasures. There's no way to know for certain what will work or be reliable until you try one no matter how many opinions are offered.

Is the Svetlana 300B still in production?