Bob Carver 180 Mono-blocks perform superbly

Keep the volume pot and upgrade it to a better one. It is useful to have as a feature. Lets you experiment with DAC directly too.

Dracule1 - I have a pair of Bob's Cherry 180's. I elected to run my Sunfire Signature amp over the past year because the Cherries did not provide me the extra wattage/headroom I desired; I like to listen LOUD a lot of times. Over the past couple of days I cleaned up the Cherries, they just were collecting dust, literally, so after getting them all cleaned-up I reinserted them back into my system to see if I could live with the lower power output. I reinserted them because I was reading different threads on Audiogon about folks recently expressing their love for the Cherries, namely you sir.

After plugging them in...mmmmm, to hell with the extra head room for now, I think I may leave them in for a while. If I can get by the heat these beautiful tubes put off, but I don't remember them putting out as much heat as they are. When my money gets right, I plan on getting the two upgrades you spoke about 1) the GP attenuator 2) the V-cap .22 caps. I was thinking to do the copper instead of the tin caps. I'm not sure if the copper caps really sound better, but if anybody has any feedback one way or another I'd appreciate it.
Are there any other new upgrades for the Cherries?

...oh, and did you get matched pairs/quads of the .22 V-caps? Lastly, what tolerance (5%, 1%, 0.5%) should I get?

The 12ax7 & 12at7 Psvane tubes I installed 3 years ago have been the best of the few tubes I tried when I was doing the tube rolling thing. That was my 1st time with tube equipment.
I tried and ranked them this way:

1st Psvane - Well balanced and sounded just right. Not too this or too that.

2nd Mullard CV4004 & CV4024 NOS - Best Mids by far, but got tired of the effect after a while. Too too much of a good thing can wear on you.

3rd Gold Lion reissued - Brightest sounding of the bunch. Not waaay too bright, but my speakers can be finicky in the highs area to begin with.

4th Tung Sol reissued - Not a bad tube at all for the price; I think $20 each. I even might rank them above the Gold Lions depending on my mood that day. FWIW this tube had the highest gain of the few tubes I've tried.

All in all, I think I'm biased (lol) for a tube that is currently in production i.e. can be bought without having to hunt a set down here and there at some extremely marked-up price.
...oh, and I'm running Tung Sol KT-120's for my power tubes, even though the amps are set-up for the KT-88's. Back when I purchased them from Mr. Carver, he said it was cool to do and the KT-120's wouldn't harm the amps one bit. Now I'm curious if the cherries can handle the new KT-150's :-O

Heynow,

Was there a drastic improvement when you went to the kt-120's from the kt-88? From what I read it takes the power up to 260 watts. I know somebody that went to the 150's in the cherries but he had to have bob carver himself modify the power supply up the what is in the black beauty's. Carver charged him $1000 for the mod and $1100 for the tubes. From what I saw it didn't change the power ratings much.