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I got a chance to try an EMT JPA66, such a beautiful piece. Just love the vintage look, the meters, everything. Sound wise, to my surprise, it doesn’t have an overwhelming “tube sound”. Instead, it is transparent, fast and creates good sound stage and details. It doesn’t produce too much lower octave tones but the sound is very very natural, music flows. I’m using MSL platinum into MSL 1030 to its Input 3/mm, Allnic Amber into its Input 2, with gain almost cranked up to the max, London Reference into Input 4/mm with capacitor value adjustment.
I have to turn up the volume between 5-10db higher compared to my Allnic H-8000, depending on the cart. The Input 4/mm gain seems to be low and I have to turn up to volume pretty big to give London Reference a proper amplification. With Amber into Input 2, the high gain MC input, JPA66 could really drive it very well.
I have a few questions, hoping that someone here can help. There’s not too much information and user experiences shared on the internet.
1. Can someone tell me how those tubes are functioned? There’re 6 12AX7, in 3 pairs (seemingly) and a pair of ECC99 which is quite rare model. I only use the phono part of the unit, does it mean some of those tubes are of no use to me, and which ones?
2. The 12AX7 is quite easy to find if tube rolling while ECC99 is very rare. I can only find the JJ ECC99. Is there any substitute model of ECC99?
3. The Input 1 is marked 1mv, 200ohm -50%/+100%. It should mean I can set the load impedance from 100ohm to 400ohm, isn’t it? However the gain is very low. Even if I use a cart such as MSL PL with 0.5mv, it still doesn’t have enough volume unless I turn up the knob of volume on my pre very very high.
4. If I use a STUP, can I also use it into Input 4/mm and how should I put the capacitor load, into “normal”?
5. To Input 3 and 4, there’re still knobs to adjust load but they should be fixed at 47k ohm?
6. From The appearance, how I can tell it is a MK1 or 2 or others?
Thanks in advance...