Rekindling an older thread as I recently had a lot of fun with a good ol' fashioned tube shootout with my Primaulna Dialogue Premium (which I'm just running as a power amp through the Home Theather bypass right now).
I had a lengthy shootout, with many different songs and types of music, with the stock EL-34s, a set of KT-120s, an NOS set of RSD (RFT) "Siemens" EL-34s, and a set of PSVane 6CA7-T tubes. I burned in the KT-120 and PSVanes for about 60 hours each before doing any serious listening.
Honestly, to my ears, it was easy to narrow it down to the RFT Siemens and PSVanes, and from there it was difficult to choose between them.
The stock tubes don't sound bad at all, but head to head with the other tubes, the bass was a little loose and flabby, and the midrange a little thinner. I also did not love the sound of the KT-120s. I know I'm in the minority on that, and the bass was nice and tight, but I thought there was a little something missing in the midrange and slightly tinny on the high end, in direct comparison to the NOS and PSVANE tubes.
I did a run-off shootout between the NOS RFTs and the PSVANES, and went back and forth about 20 times as to which ones I preferred. I ended up going with the RFT Siemens. Although the differences were very subtle, at the top end the RFTs were ever-so-slightly more forgiving of my less-then-stellar recordings. But I could have lived happily with either of those forever.
Overall it was a fun experiment and now my system is sounding even better! By the way, quads of the NOS RFT/RSDs can be found on ebay for about $160, so they are one of the better values for NOS EL-34s in my opinion, but you do need to look closely at the pictures and look at the feedback and make sure they're the real thing.
I had a lengthy shootout, with many different songs and types of music, with the stock EL-34s, a set of KT-120s, an NOS set of RSD (RFT) "Siemens" EL-34s, and a set of PSVane 6CA7-T tubes. I burned in the KT-120 and PSVanes for about 60 hours each before doing any serious listening.
Honestly, to my ears, it was easy to narrow it down to the RFT Siemens and PSVanes, and from there it was difficult to choose between them.
The stock tubes don't sound bad at all, but head to head with the other tubes, the bass was a little loose and flabby, and the midrange a little thinner. I also did not love the sound of the KT-120s. I know I'm in the minority on that, and the bass was nice and tight, but I thought there was a little something missing in the midrange and slightly tinny on the high end, in direct comparison to the NOS and PSVANE tubes.
I did a run-off shootout between the NOS RFTs and the PSVANES, and went back and forth about 20 times as to which ones I preferred. I ended up going with the RFT Siemens. Although the differences were very subtle, at the top end the RFTs were ever-so-slightly more forgiving of my less-then-stellar recordings. But I could have lived happily with either of those forever.
Overall it was a fun experiment and now my system is sounding even better! By the way, quads of the NOS RFT/RSDs can be found on ebay for about $160, so they are one of the better values for NOS EL-34s in my opinion, but you do need to look closely at the pictures and look at the feedback and make sure they're the real thing.