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Fayne
2583
Sep 24, 2021
Nice choice on tube amp on the desk. Those PA1502A are by far some of the best performing and most compatible pure tube headamps under $200. Especially if you load it with some classic coke bottle style 6L6G (or 6BG6G with adapter). They also respond rather well to 6P1P and 6AQ5 tubes (via adapter).
This is using Tesla 6L31 on Novikov 6AQ5 to 6V6 adapters.
Fayne
2583
Sep 26, 2021
I wish. Ideally I'd be able to turn off the LED, but changing the color would be nice too. I'm likely going to go in with some high temperature black paint and put a small dollop on the LEDs. I'd remove them altogether, but to do that I'd need to trace the whole circuit and make sure they didn't use them in the biasing of the preamp tubes, and I'm bloody laaaaazy.
As with most all Chinese amps, the tubes it shipped with did need replacing, especially the 6P1. A lot of the brands tend to just randomly grab a handful of the right tubes, and use them if they glow. No matching. I ended up using my Amplitrex AT1000 to test and gain match a quad from a factory box of 50 Svetlana 6P1P-EV dated 1971. Even without a break-in, the Svetlana tubes sound much better. The stock Voskhod 6N2P-EV it shipped with were pretty good, so I didn't swap them. I could probably get a tighter match, but I'm much too lazy to do that this weekend. At ~3 minutes a tube, a factory box of 50 takes almost 3 hours to test, say nothing of a box of 200.
So far I've used HD6xx, HD820, HD8XX, HE4XX, HE-X4, T1.2, Elex, Teak, T60RP, and TR-70-250 on it with great success. My only real complaint is the blue laser of LEDs.
PrimeDefendr
44
Sep 28, 2021
FayneThanks, Fayne! Sounds like quite a journey to get matching tubes for this rig. Awesome work. Perhaps, on another day, you can have the internals changed to take out the LEDs altogether (I assume the tubes themselves have some faint glow?). Good luck!
jaxtrauma
2103
Sep 23, 2021
Yup, not bad for a rumpus room ;-) Makes me want to come and play. Love that stand. Can't believe how cool that turned out. Looks solid too, those FOCALs are heavy. I'm ashamed of how much I paid for the factory stand, but it does have a (synthetic) stone base lol. You have your own unique statement now, way to make your mark, bro.
(Edited)
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