I just received my first ever tube amp ever, the Monolith Liquid Platinum (yes I’ve been living under a rock when it comes to audio). From what I understand, I can change the tubes to fine tune the sound signature.
I’ve been looking around and I don’t find like a good guide that can give it to me straight.
Here’s few of the questions:
What are the most common socket standards/types that comes with a headphone tube amp?
If it’s the correct socket then any tube will fit or is there other parameters you need to check?
How do you know what sound signature a tube will have before you buy it/where do you find your info on this?
What are the most common brands and how do they differ in sound, quality and where do you get most “bang for the buck”?
If I wanted to try a different tube for my Monolith Liquid Platinum:
Based on your own preferences, what tubes you’d get to switch out or compliment the stock ones?
Tubes that are less warm and “butterly”, more analytic then stock (not solid state type but somewhere inbetween)?
Tubes that are more warm and “betterly”, less analytic?
No they have to be electrically equivalent or close to and it get’s more complicated, lets say Amp A uses tube B at a lower voltage than it can take, that means that it may be able to use tube C which is similar but not the same.
BUT Amp D that also used tube B may not be able to use tube C.
The easiest way to do this is go read the big tube rolling thread at head-fi for what is known to work.
Just take the impressions with a sack of salt.
You don’t unless someone tells you, there are some generalizations that can be made.
In a lot of cases any decent NOS tube is likely to be better than at least Russian new production, some of the higher end Chinese produced tubes are pretty good though (but about the same cost or more than NOS).
To some extent you can generalize about Brands, and manufacturing locations, British made mullard tubes tend to be on the warmer side, but it’s not always true and the amp itself has a lot of impact on how a tube might sound in it.
@Hazi59 did some rolling with the LP, and can offer advice.
as I said your best bet is go read end user impressions, for the LP there is a huge tube rolling thread over on Head-fi.