My KR RK now has around 30 hours on it. I powered the unit down at 25 hours, for a few hours. Then powered it back up for 25-30 and listened. All the nastiness that I previously reported is gone. I feel that the tube still needs more time but now the phonostage sounds as you would expect, very good. The KR RK is still very different than the Tung Sol. I can tell now that the Tung-Sol's bass is exaggerated and sloppy compared the the RK. The RK has the upper hand in every department. I still have the RCA coming but in no rush to compare. I have a feeling at hour 50 the KR RK will reign supreme. I happened to come across dcc's system thread on audio nirvana and he mentioned he prefers the Tele e810f. Ill have to source a set of those as I'm interested in how good this phono can be. Right now, I am extremely happy with it.
What is the best 5U4G ?
- Thread starter Tango
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And If you want to further improve the Allnic H3000, I suggest to bypass the internal SUT with an external one from Consolidated Audio. I am getting one custom made after I had the chance to test several units that Ana Mighty Sound brought me for a home audition.
Since this post I acquired a1950's NOS GEC U52 5U4G and found it to be slightly superior to the Sophia blue 274B. It is the best rectifier tube I have ever heard.
I've settled on Svetlana Winged C 5?3C from the St Petersburg era, identified by the black plates. One issue with them is that they tend to spark on switching on after around six months, and while they still work OK after that little light show, I replace them out of caution. There is a month and year of manufacture on the tube; my last set were from 1961 and have just been replaced with 1963 versions. The grey plate modern copies made by New Sensor or JSC just don't sound as good, no better than EH 5U4Gs. There is an eBay seller in Ukraine (g_titov), but having bought another couple from him for when the 1963 tubes go, he only has three left. There are other sellers on eBay, but they charge more.
My current black plate 5?3Cs both started sparking, so I decided to try the Sophia Electric 5U4G as I have been so pleased with the KT88s I got from them. I've had them in for four days now and I think they sound at least as good as the Winged Cs did. Maybe a bit more lively bass. Who knows, they may save me money if they last as long as the other Sophia tubes have!
I use either Marconi (Italy) from 1950s or Sylvania 5u4gb from 1960s. I also have Winged Cs but they aren’t as good.
Wash, rinse repeat...FWIW
Post #53
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post #879
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YMMV and all that stuff, of course.
Post #53
My Tube Collection, Welcome to share yours
Great sounding tube the 6c33c with super low impedance. My experience was that they had a tendency to ‘run away’, glowing cherry red and extremely hot but are cheap enough to just replace periodically on a precautionary basis.
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post #879
LampizatOr Horizon - Tube Rolling Paradise
well its been over a year since I received my Horizon and for most of that time my preferred tube set has been TS KT170, TungSol 6SN7GT VT231 with round plate and black glass along with the fabled Takatsuki 274B rectifier. These three tubes in my room and with my 32 wpm Class A SET gear have...
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YMMV and all that stuff, of course.
https://verdantaudio.com/collections/kr-audio-vacuum-tubes. It doesn't look like they are producing 5U4G's anymore, let alone the RK (Richard Kron) models, but you can ask. Speaking from experience, one thing to know about the 5U4G RK is that it's very good in a lot of ways but tonally it's very "neutral," no sense of warmth at all, in case you prefer the latter.
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Thank you for the information. I actually prefer warm to neutral. Should I get Takatsuki 274B instead? I’m using KR PX25.
I have a Lampi Golden Gate 2/3 and didn't find that the Tak solved it for me with current WE 300B tubes. I got a Sophia Electric 274B instead and that is a very decent recti to get going. Since then I've been playing with much older and way more $$ tubes. You might take a look at the Lampi Horizon, Lampi Valve Rolling and Lampi TRP threads for ideas. There has been lots of discussion there about tubes, including rectis.
Just another vote of confidence for the Sophia Electric 274B. I use one in the power supply for my Modwright PH 9.0XT phono stage, and I was shocked at how much of a positive difference it made, particularly in un-muddying the upper-mids (compared to the stock Russian 5AR4). Very nice indeed.
I mainly used the the first version. In the process of looking at other rectis, I did get offered an audition of the II, and it was an improvement over the I, but I decided to stick with something else at the time.
