RWA amp with DODD preamp both battery powered

mrjstark, I still only have about twenty hours on the Dodd so far, so my impressions are still developing, but I definitely share your enthusiasm for this pre. The synergy with my VAC Auricles is amazing. I listen to a lot of acoustic music and the combination of the Dodd and the VAC's reproduces acoustic instruments with amazing accuracy. I'm going to withhold any subjective impressions of the sound pending complete break-in and some tube rolling, but needless to say I'm thrilled with the Dodd so far.

As to the unit itself, I am very pleased with the build quality. All switches fell very solid and the batteries were easy to install, etc. Also, I love the remote, which allows very minute volume changes.

I have a pair of new
Phillips Miniwatt SQ E188CC gold pin tubes, that I may part with. I don't know if you remember me, but you sold me the Supratek preamp which I am enjoying. I received these tubes with a DK integrated amp that I bought (and sold) a while back.
I understand these are the best tubes you can buy that work for 6922 6dj8 position. I recently picked up a tube tester so I can confirm their condition. I was going to keep them just incase a Supratek preamp went up for sale with phono stage built in. But I gather now that Supratek is out of business, I won't be seeing many for sale. Let me know. I check tubeworld and they sell for $450. They look just like the Philips SQ 1966 on this page https://www.tubeworld.com/7308.htm

Thanks, Jeff

Cruz123,
Good news bad news.
Bad news first:
JJs suck and should be replace as soon as possible.
Good news:
Dodd is very responsive to tube rolling and it's the tube roller's delight.
I have visited another audiophile today and took my Dodd for a ride. Since he is obviously more experience in this and has small stash of variety of different nos tubes we decided to give it a shot. Amperex Bugle Boy Orange Label was a lot more relaxed and with better middle range and not as analytical and sorry to say this - SS sounding as JJ 6922 that came with Dodd.
Since there are only two tubes to worry about it will be easy and not to expensive to play around with some nice a
Amperex, Mullards or even Telefunkens ( which are not my favorite but if I come accross these , I might try them as well). I might get some 7308s soon but from what I am hearing from another Dodd owner is that his 7308s don't have that tubey sound if that is what you are looking for. With 7308s in , he claims Dodd sounds similar to Modwright ( I am guessing - analytical and transparent but no soul ).

I thought that you might find this interesting .

Mariusz

Mrjstark,

Thanks for the insight. As with all things audio, I'm sure the best tubes are system dependent. I'm pretty happy with the Amperex 6dj8's I'm using now and they're relatively affordble. I'll search out a couple of other pairs in the 6922/6dj8 family over time for comparison sake, but for now I'm just enjoying listening!

Shot-out coming up next weekend

Modwright vs Dodd

( only 50hrs on Dodd. Hope to get at least 100hrs by the time of the showdown )
( the downside....is that those Sonicaps need a couple hundreds hrs to fully break-in .....but who cares when it sounds quite good out of the box. Will try some 7308 white label PQ Amperex as well as SQ mini-watts and Bugle-Boy orange label. )

Stay tune for the results

Cheers