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I figure the tube preferences might be similar as years ago, or pretty different. Everything effecting everything, including the sound of the current iteration of the SE84 amp, using different wires, caps, transformers, etc, likely this amp will be similar but different. Perhaps relative to this, 5Y3GTs used to get a lot more play on this forum, but I hear about them more rarely now... guessing in part because amps, speakers, DACs, cable preferences, etc, tend to evolve.
So I am thinking that if we get a sense of what we want, based on the characters of the tubes we have — to punch the amp/system/room up, tone it down, make it warmer or tighter..... more or less spacious....more or less bass weight, etc, going from a known tube set, it gets easier to figure out other tubes that might help go in the direction we want to go. Though all amps and systems make a rectifier sound differently, I find each rectifier has sonic characteristics that influence any system/room baseline...not the same, but similarly when comparing one tube's tendencies to another.
And one system, say like you are putting together.... Caintuck Lii Baffles and a current SE84UFO, compared to another system with exactly the same speakers and amp, will likely sound pretty different. All the variables of different rooms influencing the system/room frequency balance, basically EQing the system; impedance setting choices on the amp; some sources being more or less resolving or more or less warm; wires and cables from ICs, to speakers, to power cables all influencing the whole and therefore rectifier sound; system power; vibrations management.........any one of these can be pretty powerfully influential right? And all together.....!@#$%^&
As an example, I tried NOS WE 16 gauge wires your Duelunds were modeled after, and in my system and room I was amazed at how lean the bass became, changing the same system to a very different system. Just by going from a resolving bigger gauge speaker cable to good sounding, but light gauge WE speaker wires, the whole balance changed. Had I stayed with those wires, my choices in tubes would have been pretty different.
I liked things about the WE mids textures and complexity though, so I beefed them up adding gauge with a conglomerate of wires that complimented each other, creating sonic characteristics I was seeking. One objective was to musically find a way to carry the WE sound qualities, while making them better sounding to me, not with just more bass, but more resolution in general also. And part of this was coming up with a just-so gauge that was ideal for my system and room frequency balance. I ended up using the WE wire, some soft annealed pure silver in oversized teflon, and some soft annealed pure copper in oversized teflon, with a just-so twist patterns (by sound). Can't recall exactly, but I think I ended up with about 12 gauge.
Had I stayed with the 16 gauge wires, I might have liked late 50s fat base GZ34 over my preferred GZ32s at the time. But with my system/room balance, using "more normal sized" cables that I thought had more complete complexity and balance, the GZ34s were just overstated. And though I always like nice 5Y3GTs on first impressions, in my setup, they too always end up a little lean, a little dynamically flat. So here, I need something in between. And maybe similarly to you, in my setup I have not preferred the ruggedized Sylvania rectifiers because they are a little "too good," a little rigid and overly clarified for me. Yet Bendix ruggedized 5Y3 variants sound really good here, quite clarified across the spectrum, but richer, with more textures, more complete decays, more complexity..... Yet I can't keep them in here, 5Y3s just ending up too low powered for my setup and tastes. But these personal preferences, based on my system, do not influence how I try to help people find good tubes for their system/room. Any of these could be potentially right for another system depending on the baseline tubes and sonic changes wanted.
So, to me, when I hear people say tubes don't convey well across systems, I don't think it is as much the tube qualities and characteristics, but more system/room differences. Also the different ways we describe and interpret descriptions of others obviously varies. Alternately, it seems easy to make descriptions with the underlying feeling that if we like a tube a lot, others will....which can be part true, some tubes being exceptional for many people. But personal interpretations about a given tube are too often overly influenced by the assumption that if it works great "for me," it is a brilliant tube in every system....not taking into account that all systems are different in tone, resolution, room modes, bright or dark, some frequencies exaggerated by room, and others cancelled, etc, etc.
So though it is all pretty tricky, I feel like going from a baseline, and describing what we want different is a good start. Then, along with looking at overall popularity of a tube, by looking at the comparative differences in tubes toward our sonic goals, chances of getting tubes we will like might be better.
My take anyway.
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