Tubes Asylum

Posted by RGA (R) on March 29, 2014 at 05:44:40

My 219IA uses 8 tubes. 2 X 845 -- 2 X 300B --- 2 X 310A --- 2 X 12AX7

All are Line Magnetic tubes but these are actually made by PSVANE (come shipped in their box). I like the sound. I changed out the 12AX& for Raytheon NOS Black Plates. The improvement was quite nice indeed. The US importer of the amp noted that the preamp tubes were the only nasty tubes and the others were all quite good. Still I'm going to need back-ups around anyway so why not.

There isn't much to be done with the 310A - Line Magnetic commissioned them to be brought back into production. NOS seems very difficult to find on that tube type.

The 300B and 310A serve as a dual driver stage for the 845.

I think I'm correct in thinking the 845 has more impact on the sound along with the 12AX7 and the 310 and 300B serve to power the 845. I should think then that more attention needs to be put to the 845 than the 300B.

Here is the grey bottle http://psvanetube.com/wordpress/store/products/300b-tii-pair/

And the 845-TII http://psvanetube.com/wordpress/store/products/845-tii-pair/

This will run around a grand for the 4 tubes. For those with more experience with the 300B/845 combination - I wonder if the above combination makes sense or whether keeping the 300B as is and putting more to the power tubes.

At some point I will be buying a dedicated preamp and using the 219IA as a dedicated power amp so I probably won't go beyond the Raytheons since fairly soon I will be bypassing the preamp anyway.

Cheers,

Edits: 03/29/14