Favorite 300B: Sophia vs KR

one of the things I always wonder about with 300b's is how wide the gulf is between various manufacturers. Prices vary wildly - is something like a Electro Harmonix to Svetlana to new Royal Princess a $700 gap in terms of value and sound. I know only my ears can tell me the answer to that questions so a bit rhetorical.

@Ladavid

Probably quality of material, process and control procedure, but also the quantity. For example, Shuguang, TJ and maybe EH manufacturing like 500 valves a day, maybe more, but KR, EML or EAT manufacturing like 500 in month, all hand made, from start to the end, that's the difference.

As for the sound, I never tried any cheap Chinese or Russians so far, so, nothing I can tell here.

"So maybe sacrilege but have a push pull 300b tube amp”

Ladavid,
The 300b is a great tube and no less so because it’s used in a push-pull amp.
Given the money I had just sunk into my amplifier when I acquired it, I decided to stay with the stock tubes for a while. Since then, in addition to adding the Sophia Royal Princesses, I upgraded the small tubes with the best that I could find. In my system, the improvement has been so great that I wish I hadn’t waited.

It might be somewhat more challenging to find 300b tubes for push-pull amps, like ours, because most 300b tube reviews are conducted with SET amps. I have been advised that the findings in those reviews might not coincide with ours, using push-pulls.

Phaelon,
You`re right , it`s a wonderful tube.SET or push pull, it does`nt matter. If it`s a well built/designed amplifier it will simply make music sound devine. Regarding your 2nd point it seems if anything running the 300b as a SET would be more demanding on the tube than splitting/sharing the signal as in a PP circuit. I don`t understand why a tube that functions well handling the full signal would be less good when asked to do less. It appears counter intuitive, at lease to me.
Best Regards,

Charles1dad, I actually feel sorry for my tech when he goes into detailed explanations with me. But he has worked with some very high end amp designers. What I did take away from our conversation is that it is enough that the demand the two designs place on the tube is different; regardless of which is more demanding.