will
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Hey Lon,
So far I use the "British" bias on my MkIII. Plenty of warmth, speed and push. Mine took a good 7-9 days of 5 hour cycling to "bloom." But the bias thing...I much preferred the "warm" bias on the Integrated I had, but the MkIII pushes my MG944's pretty hard, and has to me, considerably more low mid and bass to its sound, so generally the warm bias is too much.
I like the power and many of the characteristics of the Torii sound, but, at least with my speakers and setup, I think I would prefer a just slightly less slam/push, low mids and bass. It is soooo fast and powerful it can sometimes seem just a little "amplified" sounding, though I probably have less than 70 hours on it. When there is a lot of bass material on the recording, I find the lows, though tight and clean at this point, they can mask the mids a bit too much for my taste. It can also get a little unnerving to have the low bass sending vibes through room and body on such a regular basis! This thing must go most of the way down, and the 944's apparently use a lot of the -30 Hz stuff with this amp.
I am hyper sensitive though because at first I was having a nasty thing going on with big bass stuff, and messing around to solve it I got cotton ear! Then, when I started looking at the speakers themselves, I was hearing the low mid/bass muddle with my ear right at the drivers! So I damped the plastic driver ring with some marigo dots and this helped. Then it occurred to me that the speakers were made in the humid NC mountains, and I live in the high desert, so checked out the driver screws....duh! all but one on the mid/bass drivers needed about a 1/5 turn to make them snug. This did a whole lot to solve my problems!!! but for a balance across my CD collection, I still would prefer just a bit less low end in the mix and am now playing a lot with tubes.
I don't seem to have any obvious room resonances, comb filtering or the like, no boom or buzz, no particularly hot or cool bass areas...the frequency response sounds pretty even in most parts of the room. So though I have a less than perfect room, and would likely benefit from more treatment I would prefer not having to go there! Also, I am inclined to think this is a lot to do with the amp's signature and my personal taste.
This is also obviously to do with synergy of gear, tubes, etc. my better CD player (Rega Apollo) reveals everything more than my modded Oppo, and Decware IC's likewise present everything more than less revealing IC's. And my favorite input tubes are the same. I was using 70's cryo'd 6N23P's from cryoset, as they are incredibly detailed bottom to top. Amazingly tight bass and high extension. So all this can be toned down with less revealing gear/tubes, but the sacrifice!
I have tried OB3 and OD3's for the voltage regulators, but in the end, though the bass is a bit stronger with the stock OA3, so is everything else, and I prefer how those regulators push the tubes. The stock 5U4G's I love for their sweet, open midrange, and the bottom goes way down, but can be a little inarticulate, so I tried cryo'd JJ 5AR4's. They tightened the whole sound...but I lost a bit of that sweet midrange. So now I have Valvo 274B's that are sort of in between, tighter on the bass and mids, but still having a decent liquidity. And I put in some NOS Haltron ECC88's in the input stage...This combination works pretty well, the Haltron 6692's sounding quite good but a little softer/less edgy than the 6N23P's.
Ah the quest! What I would love, is to get this thing toned down just enough to where on thinner recordings I could use the warm bias setting...and on most, use the British bias with liquid detail and tight, balanced low mid/bass (not even bordering on unnerving or fatiguing). I am close, but not there. I have some Styx ordered, and they presumably will help over my Cat-5 home-mades.
Long story short....what tubes are you liking? I seem to recall from your posts your using 6N2P's in your MkII and that you thought the tungsol El34's (are they 34B's) were pretty comparable to the stock Winged C EL34's with perhaps a bit less low-mids??? This could work for me at this point. Any thoughts?
Best to you,
Will
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