kt77 vrs kt120 in Rogue M180s


I recently was a able to compare gold lion kt 77s verses tung sol kt120s in my Rogue audio M180 mono-blocks, and wanted to share my experiences with you. I did these comparisons over a period of weeks, so I think I now have a pretty good understanding of their sound in my amps. The kt77s have a little bit more air and extension in the treble, nice midrange, and very good depth, and slightly looser on the bass. The kt 120s, were clear and very open sounding, with better projection into the room with the sound stage, with less depth than the kt77, but have better width and separation. The kt120s also had better Bass extension and control over my Revel f32s woofers, They seemed to wake up the speaker, everything sounded dynamic and full. Besides the little bit of roll off in the highs, I much preferred the kt 120s in my system. Hope this helps some of you, Christopher
chrissain
Tube failure just seems inexcusable to me. I have had tubes in guitar and bass amps that suffer insane abuse relative to our pampered hifi stuff (tube "combo" guitar amps have the speaker and amp in the same exact acoustic space) with 1 tube explosion over 40 years of use. That was in my Magnatone combo in 1968. I sold it shortly thereafter for a 61 Bandmaster (my cousin's amp...he bought it new and I used it on and off until 1986). I suppose a few lazy people on the Volga New Sensor assembly line are to blame, and I assume they were shipped off to Siberia or Brockton.
Thanks to you all for explaining the situation with the EH KT88s. Good to know. I've been very happy with the New Sensor Tung Sol KT-120s. No issues yet. I've seen Rogue Integrateds using the KT-120 tubes. I don't remember the models though.
I did buy my gl kt88s from Mark at Rogue, and blew 3 tubes within a year, one so bad it took out part of my board, which I was very unhappy with, but I also want the very best sound from my amps, do you think New censer has fixed the problems with this tube ?
Chris,

I really don't know if the longevity of my tubes are unusual or not. A buddy of mine has an Ayon Spirit 1 with GL KT 88s, and they have a few years on them too. I can ask the guys at the shop to see if what they have to say. I will post their comments. You also might ask Mark if he's been seeing any issues with the GLs.

I wonder how robust the Shuguang Black Bottle tubes are? I have no idea how they sound though.
Put some kt120s in my cayin a100T 2 weeks ago against the advice from the distributor. They said the amp probably would not be able to push them. So far I have had no issues keeping bias and the sound has drastically improved. Mid range is soooo much better and everything just sounds bigger more powerful and very well balanced. Amp gets hot but then it always got hot with the kt88 also. To be fair I replaced the stock tubes so with comparison to a better kt88 I cannot say. I was reading and could not find any instance where the tube had damaged an amplifier so I said screw it I'm trying it. Hopefully I don't regret it later.