OK. This was interesting, I guess not as interesting as eye opening! I’ve been a huge fan of Crack amp and have the best tubes you can get for it with Western Electric 421A and any 12au7 tube you can imagine. And then I decided to check out what all this talk is about 2A3 and type 45 tubes. How much better could it be – I thought to myself. Crack is already the most transparent amp that I’ve had a pleasure to listen to. So imagine my surprise when I finished building my type 45 tube amp with headphone out and was absolutely blown away by the sound the tubes can produce. It was not just a small difference, it was incredible – that says a lot when you consider the amount of various tubes that I went through. The softness of the sound, the transparency, the incredible mid-range…. wow! Absolute magic! It’s like drinking tap water and then finally tasting spring water, the sweetness, the freshness. It’s all there. Sound stage is another strength of type 45 – you can write about sound stage based on sound stage of 45!!! It’s that good. Bass is the only are where type 45 is not as good – the bass is just not that good – it’s very soft, the is no kick it in. There are two types of type 45 tubes, one is globe the other is ST shape. Globe is the earlier version, and yes it does sound different – more of the softness=the tubiness is in globe, and just a tiny bit less in ST. Both are fantastic. After listening to type 45 I moved back to JJ 300B and wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I couldn’t stand it any longer. JJ sounded razor sharp! And I thought that it sounded quite good before. To summarize, if you think you know how a sound should be and haven’t tried old type tubes like type 45, you are for a major eye opening experience. More reviews are to come, VT-25, VT-52, Type 71A, 2a3, etc. Stay tuned :)….
OK. This was interesting, I guess not as interesting as eye opening! I’ve been a huge fan of Crack amp and have the best tubes you can get for it with Western Electric 421A and any 12au7 tube you can imagine. And then I decided to check out what all this talk is about 2A3 and type 45 tubes. How much better could it be – I thought to myself. Crack is already the most transparent amp that I’ve had a pleasure to listen to. So imagine my surprise when I finished building my type 45 tube amp with headphone out and was absolutely blown away by the sound the tubes can produce. It was not just a small difference, it was incredible – that says a lot when you consider the amount of various tubes that I went through. The softness of the sound, the transparency, the incredible mid-range…. wow! Absolute magic! It’s like drinking tap water and then finally tasting spring water, the sweetness, the freshness. It’s all there. Sound stage is another strength of type 45 – you can write about sound stage based on sound stage of 45!!! It’s that good. Bass is the only are where type 45 is not as good – the bass is just not that good – it’s very soft, the is no kick it in. There are two types of type 45 tubes, one is globe the other is ST shape. Globe is the earlier version, and yes it does sound different – more of the softness=the tubiness is in globe, and just a tiny bit less in ST. Both are fantastic. After listening to type 45 I moved back to JJ 300B and wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I couldn’t stand it any longer. JJ sounded razor sharp! And I thought that it sounded quite good before. To summarize, if you think you know how a sound should be and haven’t tried old type tubes like type 45, you are for a major eye opening experience. More reviews are to come, VT-25, VT-52, Type 71A, 2a3, etc. Stay tuned :)….