Steve Deckert
|
BTW, Offering Red-Tipped tubes for sale is on my list of things to do. To make it happen, I have to create a video showing the process and then update the web site with a way to order them for any Decware amp and of course figure out what the final prices would be.
The only tubes that get red-tipped are input tubes and in the case of the Zen Triode amps, also the output tubes. In amps like Torii's, or SE34I.5's where there is an input tube for each channel, the process is essential to getting the channel balance within a few percentage points and even more important to getting the lowest harmonic distortion and the same harmonic distortion from channel to channel.
It's interesting to see that a pair of matched input tubes can be have the same distortion %, the same gain, achieve perfect channel balance, but on one tube the 2nd and 3rd harmonics will be reversed, where one channel the 2nd is higher and the other channel the 3rd is higher.
Sadly no one has had the motivation to create a tube tester than can catch things like this, but if they did, it would be a computer and a scope, so you may as well just buy a computer and scope and do your own distortion analysis with your actual amplifier instead of buying a tube tester.
This is what makes red-tipped tubes desirable. You will let us know your amplifier, we will pull that exact amplifier from our archives and hand select tubes for in some cases over an hour with the computer and scope until we have a perfect pair. It is also prudent to mention that in the case of the push pull amps, input tubes matched using this process can increase the power of an amplifier by 20% or more. Just yesterday I sent a TORII JR out the door that was putting out well over 32 watts clean.
Steve
|