Genelex Gold Lion KT-88 reissued tubes

@ Flyfish, Newbee:

I am driving a paif or Martin logan Summit X's with two McIntosh 275's, and additional power would be welcome. Using a KT-120 sounds interesting, but here is my question:

If an amp is Class A, that means it's operating the tube in the middle between zil and maximum voltage (or current? IDK). If the upper boundary of voltage is raised due to a better tube, can a class A amp actually benefit from it? My logic says no, but I'm no expert.

Nils

Put a matched quad GL KT88 in my Yaqin 100b. Could not believe how good they sounded. Within 2 months, two could not register a bias, a third went alarmingly hot and orange and blew a channel (resister). My learned repair person was very anti this GL reissue. Replace them with JJ's. I'm back, but it's going to be hard being satisfied without that GL reissue sound, but they are just too expensive to keep replacing. What's better than these JJ's?

Pooty

Like so many others have posted here, I too had Genelex Gold Lion Tubes fry (with likely no more than 150 hrs on them) and take with it my amp. In any event, the shop made clear that the Genelex KT88's failure was the culprit. So... I guess I am numbered alongside a half dozen others here who have had the Red Lions go down.

This seems to be ample reason to stay clear of the Red Lions.

Typo on the last post --- they are Gold Lions --- not Red Lions... perhaps it was my anger over how readily the Gold Lions fry that I had the color red in view.

So... stay clear of the Gold Lions... unless you are OK with replacing them often.

Larryrup Perhaps you can try the Chinese tubes from Shugaung (spelling?). My tube guy says they sound glorious --- but are also thought to be unreliable (like the GL tubes... maybe worse).

It is frustrating, this tube thing ... like a high maintenance wife who is awesome --- and who you cannot live w/o who is, at the same time, really, really tough to live with. So it is with tubes... can't go back to SS after living with these babies... but the lack of reliability is horrible --- so... about all you can do is enjoy the tubes when they work and prepare for trouble when they fail.