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Who here is into tube audio?

I love tube gear.
Even have a hybrid tube amp in my car.
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I have this old tube amp from the early 60s in my basement. I use it occasionally but it's mono only. Works ok but I really can't tell the difference. Modern tube amps are prohibitively expensive for what they do. $500+ for a stereo amp that can barely drive a pare of headphones. Not worth it IMO.
 
I've got a Pioneer SX-2000 tube receiver that I'm in the process of "restoring". I just need to find time to work on it.

Hybrid tube amp? Meh, mostly marketing since there's still transistors involved😉😛
 
I love the smell of the dust burning off the tubes as the glow fills the cabinet 🙂
I don't have any tube amps now, but I do have a Class A amp which is about as close as you can get in sounding the same. Puts out about the same amount of heat too !
 
I built my first hifi from kits, all tube stuff. This was just as stereo was getting off the ground, ergo I built separate mono amps (Eico 35 watts!), a tube preamp, tube tuner and when multiplex stereo was approved, a multiplex adapter! I sold those amps to my roommate around 15 years ago, because they were just sitting in my closet. I doubted I could tell the difference, although I hadn't hooked them up for years and years. I figure solid state amps accomplish the same thing. He thought they sounded better. I sold them for $100.

Tube equipment is a hassle. How many times did I have to go shopping for replacement tubes? I think I still have a bag of old tubes! Solid state is a dream in terms of reliability compared to tube equipment. Rarely does anything go wrong is my experience. Something went wrong in one channel of one of my receivers and the mechanical tape transport in a cassette deck stopped working properly. That's probably fixable, but I haven't gotten after it.
 
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I have relatively inexpensive pair of 300b tube monoblocks. I think they may be too underpowered for my B&W 805s, but they do sound sweet on my horn loaded klipsch's.
 
brainhulk said:
I have relatively inexpensive pair of 300b tube monoblocks. I think they may be too underpowered for my B&W 805s, but they do sound sweet on my horn loaded klipsch's.
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Those Klipsch's are the holy grail. I've never even heard any, but used to be dieing to. I settled for some relatively cheap speakers. I am not sure I could appreciate the Klipsch these days. Maybe... :\
 
i have a 1950's Grundig (sp?) as my "TV Stand" in my living room -Mint Condition, still works, and has a separate center speaker (all original everything, sound quality is still amazing for how old it is) Record player and reel-to-reel still work also.

Im 23 yrs old, it was given to me by my grandfather, he was a b-17 pilot in WWII and the Korean war (couple others) and had picked this up in Germany back in the 50's. I had always appreciated audio electronics and music since a kid, so he passed this on to me instead of my older brother for this reason. I was also given some Fisher XP-10's (in use in my 2nd living room) and alot of other old equipment.

Sad to say i have a $1,500 plasma on top of the Grundig, which is worth almost triple that.

Will post some pics when i can get around to it, need to dig up the girlfriends digicam.
 
I still have my mono tube reel2reel deck from the late 60s. Still records and sounds better than any cd.
 
IMHO it's like the CRT vs LCD debates.

Most were just buying the cheapest CRT in the size they wanted at the time.

They graduate in income a bit and LCD's hit the scene, then they wanted greatness.

Tubes are nice, but I think about 99% of the time it's the Monster Cable debate.
 
bendixG15 said:
Can't buy replacement amp tubes ...............
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Huh? According to who?

And you're a bit offbase alkemyst.

Unlike Monster cable there are measurable performance differences between tubes and solid state. Hell, swapping a set of tubes in an amp will change the sound of the amp most of the time. Measuring the acoustic differences between tubes is non-trivial, but tubes are most definitely different beasts than transistors.
 
Most of those resurrecting tube gear are picking stuff off the bottom of the barrel though, a freaking K-Mart Pioneer would be better than anyone of those even with expensive tubes.
 
Disagree with you there. There's not much to tube stuff in the first place; transformer, some pots and few resistors/capacitors. The sonic quality is all in the layout/design and of course the speakers.
 
same can be said about solid state though...there was a lot of craptasic tube gear out there. Some think of it as the holy grail though once they find it.
 
There was a lot of crap yes. Some people collect for nostalgia and others for "the sound". I'd say there's a lot more variables with SS.

Its hard to say I suppose and its pretty much impossible to make an apples to apples comparison obviously.
 
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