I’m a cookie monster - love ”swedish fika” all year around, and ”peppar-kaka” is always at my home.. -for the sake of hifi ofcourse, haha!
/ Jk
Ron’s New System
- Thread starter Ron Resnick
- Start date
/ Jk
There is allways room, and time, for swedish fika. And pepparkakor!
Sorry Ron, but this is important for swedes. Back to topic.
Come by any time for a coffee - and I make sure to have a ”smörgåsbord” of cookies for you, haha.
Quite likely manufactured at the Mullard factory Mitcham Surrey ergo MM !?!?
THE GREAT MULLARD MAGIC BLOG
MULLARD MAGIC MULLARD TUBES MULLARD VALVES VINTAGE RADIO MILITARY RADIO LEAK QUAD RADFORD U52 GZ34 KT66 PX4 WS19 MCR1 SPY SET R1155
mullard.org
A detailed but more robust sound, something I appreciate. BTW, Marty wrote excellent posts on the VTL 7.5 mk3 some years ago.
Quite likely manufactured at the Mullard factory Mitcham Surrey ergo MM !?!?
THE GREAT MULLARD MAGIC BLOG
MULLARD MAGIC MULLARD TUBES MULLARD VALVES VINTAGE RADIO MILITARY RADIO LEAK QUAD RADFORD U52 GZ34 KT66 PX4 WS19 MCR1 SPY SET R1155
I see that these tubes are printed with "6201." Isn't that a USA manufacturer designation?
I just installed Marty's generously donated matched pair of Telefunken 12AU7s in the VTL pre-amp!
I am a tube swapper now!
But now that there are Telefunkens in the pre-amp, maybe that is too much of a high-definition sound? Maybe I should swap out the Telefunken ECC 801Ss in the inputs of the amps for Mullard 12AT7s?
Tube swapping needs a lot of time - IMO tubes need at less fifty hours of play time to stabilize.
Last edited by a moderator:
Supposedly higher standard 12AT7 types. If the tubes 'flash' on startup, they are likely Mullards, but not all Mullards do this (the flash is harmless and a feature, not a defect).
There are also 'Japanese Mullards' that also flash. These are nice tubes, sometimes labeled as Mitsubishi. The Japanese received the exact machining for Mullards from England and in their usual meticulous way built nearly identical products.
Last edited:
Well, obviously the only answer is to compare in the amps the Mullards versus the Telefunkens that are there now, but I am not up for that right now.
If my Telefunkens are high definition without brightness or harshness, what would be the audio system equation in which people would use Mullards?
None, until your nervosa settles in again and your crave something different just to be different. I do that all the time. Telefunkens in spite of the elitist reputation do have a tendency to be a bit more on the possibly spare definition than the tonal volumetric side.
I don't mind figuring out what I want on day one, but I'm not going to develop nervosa down the road and engage in never ending tube swapping. So, in a situation like this, does it make sense to relatively randomly "split the baby" and to mix and match? Telefunkens in either the preamplifier or the amplifier, and Mullards in the other one?
Phil, 213cobra, reported hearing clipping from the amplifiers in triode mode playing Scheherazade at about 85dB. Even I would probably switch to tetrode mode to play big symphony orchestra classical music.
But this is another observation to suggest that my idea about high-powered SETs in the 120 to 140 watt range probably is not realistic l, and probably would go the way of MikeL's Lamm ML3s.
I listen to enough rock and classical that I'm not going want to be switching amplifiers every time I want to play Sarah McLachlan or Stevie Nicks or Jeff Buckley. I'm fine to just push a button and wait 150 seconds to switch between triode mode and tetrode mode on the VTLs.
Phil last night, like Don a week ago, hears with the Pendragons an SET-style sonic benefit of triode mode which neither of them heard on the Magnepans.
But this is another observation to suggest that my idea about high-powered SETs in the 120 to 140 watt range probably is not realistic l, and probably would go the way of MikeL's Lamm ML3s.
I listen to enough rock and classical that I'm not going want to be switching amplifiers every time I want to play Sarah McLachlan or Stevie Nicks or Jeff Buckley. I'm fine to just push a button and wait 150 seconds to switch between triode mode and tetrode mode on the VTLs.
Phil last night, like Don a week ago, hears with the Pendragons an SET-style sonic benefit of triode mode which neither of them heard on the Magnepans.
That's what I would try: Mullards in the preamp and leave the Tele's in the amp, but that depends on what you like better, of course, which nobody can predict. Ribbons will likely mellow out a bit more and might change your perceptions.
You could help resolve this issue by borrowing somebody's reasonably transportable SET amp, not even of highest quality. You could even try putting the push pull on one channel and the SET on the other and volume equalizing, and see how the imaging changes as you go side to side. SET's I would hazard will never sound exactly like push pull of any pedigree.
I think Lamm ML3 would probably put you somewhere in a heaven on the ribbons that would make you not care any more about the technical niggles. That would already be somewhere pushing 100 db on the ribbons alone by RMS, much less transient response. The wild card is how well they perform in your volumetric space.
Thank you, but I would never in a million years try 32 watts on 89dB sensitive speakers. I referred to the ML3s only as an analogy that 140 watt SETs to my speakers would be approximately like ML3s to Mike's speakers.
I do get that Ked, we see the value of videos representing the spirit and context of sound very differently to Al…