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New KT150 tubes?

Has anyone any experience with these pretty new tubes. There are already one or 2 amps I know of, that use them. The review of one of these amps in a UK magazine suggested they were a little warmer and more natural sounding than the nearly new KT120's

The article also suggested they were a straight swap for KT120 based amps, with no adjustment necessary. They are more than twice the cost of KT120's, but still not too costly compared with NOS tubes. I know changing from KT88's or 90's to 120's. did require some amp modification. I have an ARC reference 75 and might want to try the new tubes at some point, ARC don't seem to have a customer E-mail service, to ask the question
david12
booboobaer's avatar
booboobaer
57 posts
 
I have the new GT200 Monos by TRL and have put the KT150 in place of the KT120 tubes. They blow them away. Being that the tubes have such large plates it takes a lot of hours to get them to open up. They are becoming the best tubes I have ever heard. The GT200 monos take complete advantage of the tubes. With the large power supplies and massive caps the tubes really shine. I had a few friends over and the two women actually cried on a piece I played for them. One comment that they made was " I want to stand up and applause". One mistake that some people make is they don't give them time to break in and they don't bias them high enough in order to run a signal through fully.Human voices are a dead give away. Give them time
xti16
1,495 posts
 
Booboobaer - How many hrs are you talking about? I found with the KT120's they took at least 200 hrs to settle down.
david12 OP
1,398 posts
 
I had a word with the UK importer at a small show over the weekend. He has tried the 150's in his amp and was'nt impressed. Good for a guitar amp, was his response, too rich, too much midrange bloom.

He said the 150's would be ok in the Ref 75, which I have. He thought the Ref 150 would'nt be ok. There would'nt be a high enough plate voltage to drive more tubes than the 4 in the ref 75. Just what he said, I have'nt heard the KT150's myself. I too would welcome feedback from ARC, I could'nt find an E-mail address to contact them, on the website.
btselect
24 posts
 
Xti16

The tubes were right out of the box, it could be the input tubes you were using may not be a good match for the KT-120. I just heard the V110 today with the KT-150 tube, again the results were spectacular. We used the Gold Lion 12AT-7, but preferred the Gold Lion 12AU-7 with the Gold Lion 12AX-7. I never cared for the Tele or Mullards or any of the NOS tubes in the Octave components, I prefer the wider bandwidth of the current Gold Lions.

Btselect
wolf_garcia
4,650 posts
 
KT 150s are likely to never appear in a guitar amp, unless somebody thinks they need a very clean unusually high powered guitar amp, which most guitar players don't. I don't think anybody makes a KT120 powered guitar amp, although a tube bass amp might be a good idea for those.

I found that the new-ish version Psvane 12AX7-T II is a great match with 120s...in my Jolida 502 anyway.
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