Coincident Linestage vs CJ CT5 or Allnic L-3000

I have just returned from leave to the sad news. Grant Fidelity have been able to supply some decent gear to Western countries that was so hard to source before.

BTW, a few guys have bought the new WE 101D replicas over here as well and I understand they may be currently sold out.

My report on the WE replica 101D's may have sounded enthusiastic but believe me I was toning it down to be a little conservative.

Dr David, just wait until you have a few hundred hours on these tubes- they just keep getting better. The tonality and timbre continues improve gradually up to around 300 - 400 hours. I have played mine 24/7 to get the hours up. I think they need around 80 to 100 hours to get a good idea on what they are capable of, even though they sound great out of the box.

Pap,
I ordered a pair due to your and Drdavid's strong endorsements and considering that we all have the same Coincident line stage . Brownsfan hasn't offered an opinion yet. I always appreciate his perspectives.
Charles,

Charles and everyone, I'm up to my elbows in new stuff (OK, my ModWright Sony HAPZ1 and Coincident Triumph Extreme IIs) and trying to get my house up for sale. Hence, the delay in getting a serious, or even casual, A/B/C with my 101D tube collection. It is clear to me that these are good sounding tubes, and they are certainly burned in now. I was a little put off by the build quality in the pair I received. I have found them to be pretty noisy until they have been on for 10-15 min. These probably should have been B stock tubes. I was just too busy to hassle with trying to send these back to China, plus, I couldn't have gotten a replacement pair, so I just kept my mouth shut.

I suspect the factory is having some trouble in early production runs making the tubes. I think they will ultimately get things worked out, and we will all be so much the better for having a reliable supplier of primo 101Ds. It is a superb tube, and I can imagine a robust source of great new production tubes will inspire more equipment designers to take notice.

Charles, I am eager to benefit from your assessment. Your system, life, and personality are a bit more stable than mine!

Hi Brownsfan,
I should receive my W.E. Replica 101D pair in about 2 weeks.You find them to sound superb, well that's good enough for me. Funny thing is that I'm really enjoying the lower level "hifi" series of the Psvane 101D.
Charles,

Charles, my point was that honestly, all of the 101Ds, the Shuguangs, the HiFIs, and the WE replicas have arguably been superb tubes. The 101D pretty much is a superb tube by design.

To my ears, the differential between the WE's and the HiFis was not orders of magnitude improvement. I would really need to do a more careful A/B to really say more than I have said.

Part of the problem is that while the WE's have been burning in, I've changed sources and speakers. I am thrilled with what I am hearing, but how much is due to the WE's will take that A/B with the HiFi.

As I recall, right out of the box, the HiFis were a noticeable but not spectacular improvement over the Shugauangs. It took some burn in for the HiFis to really differentiate themselves.
By now, I'm sure I've got a good 300-400 hours on the WE's, so an A/B on fully burned in HiFis vs WE's would be meaningful.