Thanks, Fireblade & Will for sharing your tube rolling and burning in comments. The first time I read about burning in cables I laughed out loud like "yeah right"...until I continued reading more and more about the merits and rewards of it all. So I tried it with my cartridge leads/phono IC's. Hooked them up to my CD player as the source and plugged the IC's into my amp and played the CD looped for about 3 days nonstop. It made a lot of sense to me that the extremely low voltages transmitted from the moving coil cartridge weren't high enough to burn in those cables and leads, so that was enough to get my interest. Well, it surely DID make a HUGE difference!! I quite frankly was stymied and very pleasantly surprised! I'm a believer now to say the least. Like you said, Will, burn in is indeed a funny thing.
Now, about my new Mini Torii...What a dream machine this thing is!!
I was listening to a Hazen modified Zkit1 mounted on a piece of wood previously(ok...I can hear you guys laughing from here) This little amp REALLY sounded good to me! I had the stock tubes in it..6n1p and the 6n15n-EB Russian made which were very impressive. Someday when I'm not busy listening to LP's I may stuff all of it together in a nice enclosure and use it as a front left & right for my home theatre system or something. Back to the Mini...I've been following threads here about the MT and it has all been very interesting reading. The tube rolling options are staggering, and for that reason alone I think I'll follow Fireblade's recommendation to just let the tubes burn in for awhile.
I have had a few other hobbies prior to my audio experience, one of which was growing roses. Roses are a funny thing, too! They're sensitive to their environment and the planting stage is critical to success, especially if you're exhibiting and competing at rose shows like I was. For example, you have a rosebush that's growing perfect, very hardy, produces show winning stems, and is your pride and joy. Let's say that I decide to move it to a "better" location in my rosebed so it gets more sun or something...uh oh..what's wrong here? It's not doing well at all now, grows slow, blooms look like shit, it's now a dog! A rose will thrive in it's perfect "microclimate"...and if you've got a rose that's doing very exceptional in it's spot, don't move it!! Also, it takes 3 years for the root system to get well established. So roses need to be "burned in" just like cables, tubes, capacitors, etc. If it isn't broke, don't fix it.
So even though at first I laughed at the whole burning in process, my past experience has helped to keep me open to suggestion on anything.
I've had the Mini running nonstop since Tuesday, and I just can't get enough of it!! I live in an apartment, so my "microclimate" isn't perfect. I suppose that sometime I may get into diffusers and other things to make my living room better for sound, but for now I'm happy.
I feel good that you guys responded , and feel like I broke the ice here in the group. I've been mostly reading and looking around up to now. Now that I have the MT, I've got bragging rights, right??