Falling in love with the KR 242 tubes on my Pacific again. A lot of folks have problems with the high gain of the 242 tubes, but if you use a cheap or even an expensive solid state preamplifier, that’s bound to overload because they use these 5 cent op amps— ditch the cheapie solid state gear and use a quality tube preamplifier. Or even better, step up to a SET 300B amplifier like my 20 watt JJ 322 amplifier with a built in ALPS potentiometer to control the gain. No issues with overloading and you get rid of the preamplifier’s sonic signature and get a purer output. My first set of 242s had a faulty tube, but this new set is holding up well. It combines the beautiful tone of the 300Bs with the slam and dynamics that the 300Bs lack. I’m waiting for the tube risers to arrive from China so I can try the KR T-100 tubes I got a while back, talk about a massive tube. These don’t fit as is into the Pacific since their base is so wide.