Tube Rolling on BAT Preamplifiers

I believe you will find that BAT uses the best 6H30's available in their premier equipment, the VK52SE being one of them!

Yes, Victor has a special stash, which alledgedly are the best of the best, but will set you back $300/tube, if you act quickly. That price has gone up three fold in the last 5 years, so they won't be getting any cheaper as the supply dwindles.
Also, Adam, the VK-52SE uses (8) 6H30 tubes, not (6), so it would cost $2400 to re-tube the VK-52SE with Victor's special stash.

Cheers,
John

Hi Canadiandog - I would assume that BAT would use the best tubes for the 52SE but I'm just re-iterating what I read in a post from my "6H30" thread. See below:

01-22-08: Airshop
Victor is currently using the NOS tubes only in the REX, all other preamps are using the new production tubes.
Airshop (Answers)

Check out the thread - 'NOS 6H30Tube?' - started 2/07/08.
Dgarretson compared some DR tubes with only 2500 hours on them with some new EH 6H30Pi tubes. Given what he found, he does not think the DR tubes are worth the money, whether $300 or even $100/ each.

Keep in mind though, that Dgarretson did that comparison on an amplifier, not in a preamp. Others have had different opinions about the 6H30Pi vs. DR in preamplifiers. Some, such as Guidocorona suggest in his "ARC Ref 3: Tung-Sol 6550 in power supply?" thread that the 6H30 tubes start degrading sonically around 2000 hours too. So it's also possible that tubes with "only 2500 hours" may have left their optimum performance in the past. Remember, that the 10,000 hour projection is for 6H30 tube life, that's when one would expect it to die. One would expect the tubes sonics to be on a long, gradual decline until death, though I do find 2000 hour mark to sound a bit short. I only have about 500 hours on my 6H30's, so I cannot confirm this number.

There are many threads out there regarding the 6H30 tube, probably the best thing for Frontier1 to do would be to search the archives.

Cheers,
John