hey fellow Canuck, go take a gander at www.CanuckAudioMart.com as there will be a plethora of options available there.
word of advice, don’t fall for the lure of using an adapter to run a tube not meant for your amp as it can / will cause damage due to the different power / operating requirements they have. there is a reason the maker chose the type of tubes they did. also, it’s a very good idea to get some socket savers so you don’t wear out / loosen the one’s soldered to the board with all the swapping you are looking to do.
report back your findings as you try different tubes!
Thanks @Marzipan. I am a CAM user, but right now it seems to be slim pickings for 6080 tubes so I was asking if anyone here has some spares they want to sell.
The stock 12au7 was very harsh, RCA clear top I think.
It is now slightly, slightly fatiguing with my ares 2 dac and Mullard CV4003. I’m curious if the slight harshness with the CV4003 is with the power tube, GE 6as7ga because installing the speed ball also seemed to reduce the harshness. All the other parts are also stock.
I’m using a Customs Cans modded hd6xx, i.e. mods to make it sound like a 600 but with extended treble and bass and less distortion check sbaf if you’d like to know more. I also have a stock hd6xx for reference.
So, is it the power tube, or should I be trying something else?
imo if you really want to add a choke just build a ca2 (crackatwo or something) its a crack but bigger and has already the chokes in its build if i remember correctly
CV4003 and Tung Sol 7236 is a good mid centric match that I was hoping for. Bass doesn’t slam and treble seems a touch unrefined, but I can live with the treble and limitations of the 6xx series. It would be nice if the bass hit harder with the new caps and stepped attenuator though. Bass hits softer than my Anandas off my main rig, and I wanted the dynamic slam that the elex I sold off would offer.
Installed the solen caps and a new DACT clone attenuator and the change is more subtle and less dramatic than I was expecting. A decent improvement nonetheless. The DACT clone was more extended on both ends , but without the Solen caps the treble sounded bad. Caps smoothed the treble and slightly added more sub bass.
@A_Jedi What were you experiencing that you needed to change the input wire with Mogami? I’m hearing the occasional very soft crackling. I’m not sure if it’s the power tube or not. It could be the wiring, but changing power tubes changes the behaviour too.
I’d used a couple of shunts in the PSU
and noise was getting radiated into the signal wires. Shielded wire plus a a few strips of copper tape cleared that right up.
I had other noise issues but they were always the power tube.
I bought one of these on US audio mart. It arrived yesterday… I think. I gave it a test listen, fed by a Blusound Vault into Sennheiser/Drop 8xx. Its pretty good. The Speedball mod was included but not installed. Id like to either learn to mod this or more likely have it done. So far this post is pretty informative. But is there a complete list of available mods? You know… a list, that isnt 470 plus pages long? In order of most affective to least by owner ranking. The same for all the different tubes from best to least. My new/used unit does have some issues. A crackling on the second day that wasn’t present on the first. The unit came with extra tubes so I’ll try a bit O’rolling. Switching to different over-ears. I’ll also try the cans on another tube amp. I have a Kinko KA101 pro thats super clean, a Willsenton R8 (unused as of its arrival) and another headphone amp arriving any day now.
I think my marbles have all rolled away. This was supposed to be a simple Schiit stack. Somewhere along the way I… between people wanting stupid prices for stuff to… anyway I decided to use what I already have. One Schiit Piety in the whole mess. My stack is kinda portable. I put it on a furniture dolly.
