How to REALLY Get That Tube Sound! 

Sounds fun!

I have a amp that has tubes in the preamp and A and B in the amp and it sounds great

Precisely. I found that perfect (to me) balance using a tube-based phono preamp and a vintage Marantz receiver. Also contributing are vintage Infinity RS speakers.

Some of those Motorola were biamp with push pull el84 or6v6 on mono bass speaker and single end el84 for left and right.

@@johnstuchlik5828 The original 2.1 before the computer speakers.

Carver made incredible gear. Never heard anyone knock on it. That's news to me.

@@skylabsaudio I’m surprised you’ve never seen the Carver hate. It’s front & center on basically any audio forum on the internet.

I'll knock it then. "Sideshow Bob" was as much a carnival huckster as he was an audio designer. "Magnetic Field Power Amp". Sounds better than "Cheap unregulated SMPS in an tiny amp with lots of output devices & no heatsinks", doesn't it?😉 200 "paper" watts per channel. Maybe 20 REAL ones! I once met a guy who was driving original QUAD ESL's, which have no protection circuit built-in like the later QUAD's, happily & SAFELY running the GUTLESS WONDER into them! For several years!!!😳🤯 He was a small-ensemble/baroque classical music listener, so the utter & complete lack of bass the amp produced into them (the thinnest sound I've EVER heard from a pair of QUAD's!) didn't seem to faze him at all. "Sounds like tubes"? If you're deaf in both ears, sure. "t" for "transfer function". Hence, by duplicating the transfer function of a lousy funky high-power conrad-johnson Premier power amp, he claims that he can make his decidedly mediocre (in every way) power amps sound "exactly"🤨 like a Toob amp! Anybody here even know what a transfer function is???🤔 Just a fancy word for the phase shift/frequency response of a circuit; which even the biggest audio dummy knows has almost NOTHING to do with predicting the outcome of the sound of an analog circuit! All the Carver amps I've ever heard, including the CRAP he designed for Fuzz Linear (ok, "Phase Linear"...) sound like 💩. At least the early exploding Fuzz Linear stuff was built substantially & didn't sound tinny like his tinny Carver stuff does. If you like Carver, then there's a NAD or PS Audio Class D amp that's got your name all over it. Enjoy!😑

@@joerosen5464 LOL all that? Seek help

Yes,....It's about the music.

Ours is a Knight 333 (same exact model as your Allied and the Pioneer C300). Sorry we do not :(

Lots of really good info on the net that breaks those down.

ok

pleasing coloration . no distortion that you can hear and no smearing, i just switched from a class a ss preamp to a rogue rp 1 tube preamp(with a ss class a/b power amp) no drawbacks for me.

@@yaniv-nos-tubes I challenge you to listen to music with fast attacks and decays and compare honestly.

Thank you, JackT!

Appreciate it John. I will get your shirt sent out tomorrow. Thanks!

Many years ago I had a fisher Studio standard amp 4 - 7591 12ax7 & 12au7 tubes .and a set of 3 way electro voice 16 Ohm speakers .

Ahahahahahahaha! What a voice!

Thank you, Stan

Two choices that you can't go wrong with! I would recommend EXACTLY the same 2 components to a vintage valve audio newbie. Funny how at the end of the video, I was awaiting & expecting a vintage valve Preamp recommendation. And being VERY knowledgeable about vintage valve audio components & having owned or heard virtually everything ever made in the USA, I was also stumped for a preamp recommendation. Or at least, an "affordable" one. So I wasn't terribly surprised that Kevin "conveniently" didn't mention preamps because the seemingly obvious choice for a Stereo 70 is the matching Dynaco PAS-2/3/3x. They were also made in crazy numbers, likely 500,000 total for all versions. They're still plentiful, & not expensive in vintage Terms. But, THEY SUCK! I think even a PAT-4 in good condition SMOKES a PAS-3!🤯 The only really good vintage preamps were the likes of the Marantz 7 & McIntosh C-20 & C-22. My favourite is the Harman-Kardon Citation IV, NOT the Citation I with all its awful sounding 12AT7's! The Citation IV sounds gorgeous; extremely clean, detailed, & neutral. Yet very involving & zero listening fatigue at the same time. They may not be overly difficult to find, & they certainly ought not to cost more than $1000 & perhaps even half that. BUT! The Citation IV has one drawback, & for alot of prospective purchasers it could be a very big one: It has neither a low enough output impedance nor a high enough slew rate to drive anything lower than 100,000Ω. In plain English, that means about 90% of all soiled-scrape amprifryers out there!😬 But if you only plan to use a valve amplifier, & it has the requisite high input impedance (& many modern valve amps with 30-50kΩ impedances can be easily & affordably modified to 100-500kΩ input impedance w/o ANY deleterious effect to the amp's performance. Usually the complete contrary!👍), I'm nominating the Sanitation IV.😉

Thanks, JackT!

Lucky kids! lol. Thanks for watching and commenting! Appreciate it

Damping Factor is a big deal, it's what makes some speaker designs incompatible or a poor match with tube power amps, solid state not so much.

Damping factor is an issue and solid stat amps can have a high damping factor which controls the bass better but there are tube amps that can control the bass pretty well. My old Audio Research D90 when it was working had good bass control.

Damping factor is a bit of a red herring, actually. What is "Damping Factor" anyway? Simply, it's the ratio of the loudspeaker's impedance to the "Source" impedance (Step right up! Pick a damping factor! Any damping factor! And watch as Joe The Magnificent accurately guesses the damping factor that you're achieving today! "Less than 20"!🤣🤣🤣). Note "Source Impedance". NOT "Amplifier output impedance"!🤨 Meaning, you HAVE to factor the impedance contribution of your SPEAKER CABLE as well as the amplifier's output impedance. With a typical speaker wire run (≈12ft.) & the added resistance of the mechanical connections at both ends, not to mention the runs of much thinner wire inside the amp & speakers, you're lucky if you can exceed say, 0.5Ω. Which means that with your 1,000,000W Swiss monoblocs with their "rated" damping factor of 10 zillion, you'll ACTUALLY only get a real-world damping factor into a typical 6Ω speaker of, wait for it...TWELVE! Now, since a Dynaco Scario 70 might have an output impedance, with that same length of our hypothetical speaker wires, of more like 0.75-1Ω, then MAYBE the fact that my damping factor would fall from a whopping 12 to just 9 or even 6, IS responsible for its looser bass. But as a Valve Amp Designer with 40yrs. experience who's worked on & extensively upgraded & modified at least 30 Stereo 70's over the years (as one example of the hundreds of amps I've fixed, designed, & built), I can confidently state that other things make a vastly greater contribution to the quality of bass you get from a reasonably well designed valve amp (as opposed to the plethora of Audio/Mystic/Screwup-"designed" zero-NFB SE abortions🤪, which are HOPELESS!). Things like: 1) Badly chosen bias values of the Output Stage, such as fool-on Class A operation which is absolutely necessary for Single-Ended Stupid operation as well as amps that don't use fixed bias. Which virtually EVERYBODY is guilty of, BTW.🤦 2) Lousy and/or tired passive parts; mostly lousy (failing and/or high dielectric absorption signal & PS capacitaters🪗🤧) And those screwy oil caps that some lost souls think sound better (???) are just as bad! 3) Power supply output impedance. A tube rectum-fryer is a sure way to get gloopy, dull, vague, lifeless, & opaque sound. NOT suitable for REAL High-Fidelity, IMHO. It amazes me how everyone I interact with can't understand the difference between "amplification" & "rectification" & therefore why in this application, silicon rules!🎼🎶 4) Insufficient amount of power supply capacitance & barely adequate power transformers. Increase either or both of these & hear the magic happen!🤗 5) Improper circuit design, and/or improperly chosen operating points for the voltage amplifier, phase inverter, & driver stages. This is HUUUUUGE! as well.😳 Further proof of the above is that it's not only Valve amplifiers that have issues with the archetypal "Toob Bass". Ever notice that 99% of Valve PREAMPS suffer the exact same ills?🤔😏

@@joerosen5464 Hi Joe. Very interesting comment! Thank you! 🙏 What would you recommend as the best (and most cost-effective) entry into tube amplification then? I'm not looking for specific model numbers, more like topology and perhaps brands.

Love that damn receiver. Does everything I need it to.

Thank you, Jeff!

Thanks for the sub!

Thank you!

Glad you enjoyed it!

Why do McIntosh amps have tight bass when other valve amps don't? Because they have a brilliant design called "Unity Coupling" that not only coaxes more power out of the valves at a given (and safe!🤨) B+, but does so whilst operating in pure Class B(!!!😱😏) & with a "mere" 40db(!!!) of NFB(😱😱😱) to linearise the amp. By applying 20db (10x !) more NFB than all the other valve amps did (& today's RUBBISH from Audio Research, Octave, & the makers of KRUDE SET abortions use even less than 20db; IF they use feedback at all!🤦🙉). Today's MORONS whose designs are little more than napkin scribbles made after 8 beers 🍻 at the local pub don't have NFB in them not because NFB is "bad!"; but because they're too STUPID to know HOW to use it!🤪🤤🤤🤤 So in their cases, yes; NFB is bad because their stupidity means that the NFB reveals a BAD design if it can't tolerate NFB or actually sounds worse with it added...🤦 And the sonic results of no & insufficient NFB are all your typical Valve Sound ills: Mushy, slow, thick bass. Vague imaging. Rolled off highs. And to me, worst of all, a lack of low-level resolution of detail that valve circuits can & should absolutely clobber the tranny-trash at, but don't!🙄😮‍💨

Agree!

They sound great, but the compromises abound that hinder their desirability: the varying degrees of availability of the 7591's & especially 7868's that are ONLY made in Pootin's 💩 RuZzia, they run hotter than a Frito roasting in the skillet of hell, & in order to make room for all its features, because a tuner uses the bulk of the available real estate because it uses so many tubes, there's little room for a sophisticated phono, line, or amplifier stage. The genius of the Fisher 400/500/800 receivers is how well their designers managed to make those incredibly simple circuits sound. The phono has barely enough gain for anything other than the highest output MM's (High-Output MC's need not apply!), the tone circuit is non-defeatable & both stages save further space by having all their resistors & capacitors built into "PEC's" (Packaged Electronic Circuit) which are custom-made ceramic substrate (😝) passive IC's. Upgrading these is sonically worthwhile but an epic pain in the arse, since you need alot more room & there's not enough as it was! The sheer "busy-ness" of these receivers, the inability to lower the scorching bias on those rare & valuable output valves (& if you did, the very simple single 12AX7 front end won't be able to swing the additional voltage required & so the sound will go to 💩), not to mention the SHEER AWFULNESS of their large but incredibly crudely wound & very limited bandwidth OPT's, all mitigate against future exponential price increases that may yet continue to drive up Mc & Marantz prices. Love 'em for what they are, mediocre sensitivity tuner with a beautiful sound marred by the usual 💩y multiplex tube tuners ALL have (save the 6-Valve one in the Marantz 10B!), a really sweet but low gain MM phono that still manages to compete with the very best at ANY price, nicely designed & flexible tone controls that hardly detract from the sound of the unit, & a true Fisher-sounding power amp with its BIG bass, luscious mids, sweet clear upper mids & little to no treble to speak of...🤗 A Fisher Valve receiver never sets a sonic foot down in the wrong place; unlike the horrid stereo separates of the same vintage like the truly HORRIBLE SA-12/100, SA-300, & SA-1000 (in which every valve chosen for it is a weirdo long out of production & impossible to find at almost any price: 8417's, ELL800's, & ECC808's!!!😳🤯🤪🤤🤤🤤🤦).

Some of those console Magnavox amps are awesome.

Thank you, Clay!

Old tube gear is not easy to service IMO, the component leads are often wire- wrapped around/with various other things and they really believed in a solid mechanical connection back then. Sure, it's point to point, but when the thing you need to remove is the 3rd thing in a stack of other things that were all soldering in w/no intent to ever be removed it is not fun. Next, you have the fact that most of them used those multi-capacitor cans that you either get to pay a premium to replace, take your time to gut and re-stuff, or wire under the chassis when possible, and of course, the high voltage. It could be there's some trick to removing all those wire-wrapped leads without, for instance, melting the tube socket that I simply don't know, and maybe you're a pro at that, but I find it much easier to work on SS equipment and TBH I don't (at this point, anyway) prefer the warmth or airiness of tube gear to plenty of clean headroom in a SS amp.

If you have basic electronics knowledge (the ability to identify the components, read & measure their values, & be able to follow a schematic diagram) & have a good soldering iron, it should be a breeze. I highly recommend having access to a good tube tester if you can't find or justify the purchase for yourself. It boggles my mind how many "Toob Boobs" drop thousands of dollars on their amplification & then whine about spending a couple of hundred bucks every other year to keep the gear sounding like what they paid for!🤪🙄🤨 Guessing the condition of your tubes just adds unnecessary "tube anxiety" everytime their systems sound a bit "off" to them. Some of these 🤡s, too many IMHO, spend hundreds or thousands on precious vintage NOS Valves & then pitch 'em in the trash without testing them, because they didn't something stupid like spray too much De-Oxit on something or didn't realize that the real sonic problem came from their new kilobuck power line Shampoo & Conditioner which they never bothered to properly A/B, etc. etc. People! Please! Don't be one of them!😬

Let me get back to you on that. Thanks

Thank you, Charles! Appreciate it! Great sound does not need to cost very much, at all.

Hybred is the way

Awesome! Thank you! That sounds fun! Will get your order sent out tomorrow.

I get it! Thanks for the comment!

I bet it's his favorite shirt! Very dapper, indeed :)

​ @Skylabs Audio Ding, dang, doo! Elvis needs one in blue suede, dude. Set Elvis up, Kemosabe!

Send an email, I'll hook you up!

A tube buffer is just an added & unnecessary stage of bad amplification that no decent system either needs or benefits from. With valve phono & line stages as expensive as they often are, take the hint when you notice that all these dumb "buffers" are all cheap Chinese things. As far as mating a valve Preamp with soiled-scrape amplification, the only advantage is that the valves are smaller & cheaper, & there's usually less of them than in a power amp. This is the entry strategy for someone who's Tube Curious but Tube Anxious at the same time. Sonically, a trans-zipster pee-amp & a Valve Amplifier make an equally compelling choice from a sonic standpoint. But if it's Valve Sound you crave, the hybrid approach is less than the sum of its parts. So if you want the other 75% or so that you won't be getting from this hybrid combo, you have to dive in 100% in order to get the full-fat experience...😉

Love Ms Vaughn!

@@skylabsaudio The song LaBamba has a tapping sound that's pronounced with tubes. I'm like where did that come from??

Glad I could help!

A fine tube amp is about far more than just introduced second order distortion. Solid State amps cannot match the you-are-there 'palpability' and sound staging that fine tube amps reveal. That said, two paths to tube goodness: go the low power amp/high efficiency speaker route or spend serious money to get the power modern low efficiency speakers require. Check out what buyers say about Decware amps; bespoke US built, order que is a 2 yr wait and a LIFETIME warranty. If reselling, a modest reasonable charge to transfer warranty.

@@geoffreydebrito7934 I have a Decware Se-84 with every mod done to it. Soundstage is second to none. Lots of fun!

@@danmaclean1169 you lucky dog! ;-)

I find a tube amp acts like it has about twice solid state power.

That's true only for Push-pull circuit amps. As Kevin says, they hide their clipping very well. Single-Ended amps OTOH, don't! Treat them as the wimpy & screwed-up sounding distortion generators that they pretty much all are!😝

Agree

So what preamp do you use with your "favourite" VTL ST-150 Valve Amp then?😊

@@joerosen5464 Aesthetic Saturn with vintage tubes

One of the all time best, IMO

@Skylabs Audio thank you Sir.. what price range will be good to buy.. there is one in local but seller hasn't told me about pricing yet.. it needs a little work.. thanks