Home Tube DIY Asylum

Do It Yourself (DIY) paradise for tube and SET project builders.

  Register / Login

Metal Tubes / Tube Sources

Yeah, I don't remember if the 6A6s I got came from eBay or if I found them locally.

I'm less than 30 minutes from Radio Electric Supply (vacuumtubes.net) which is probably the biggest tube dealer in the world. They have warehouses full of tubes, many millions of them, though not all audio related, of course. They ship worldwide and have reasonable prices.

They're generally much cheaper than the "boutique" sellers who give flowery descriptions of how a particular tube allegedly sounds. As if a particular tube sounds the same regardless of which circuit it's used in or any other differences in the rest of the system. Of course, the "holy grail" tube$ are always what they just happen to have in $tock at any particular time.

The guys at RES (brothers, Roy and Dale) are not audiophiles, they just sell tubes. Hence the total lack of BS.

Another very large dealer is about 100 miles south of me in Orlando. That's vacuumtubesinc.com which also ships worldwide.

The only metal tube I've experimented with is the 6AG7. It caught my interest because it's incredibly easy to drive. I have a breadboarded PSE design that uses them with each channel driven by half of a 3A5, which is a dual DHT with a mu of 15.

It's another "inverted SET" (iSET) design which is a term coined by Andy Evans. I built another iSET amp which I call the Nuance. Details are in a thread on Audio Karma.

The "inverted" aspect refers to fact that instead of using DH output tubes driven either by higher mu indirectly heated tubes or multiple stages of somewhat lower mu tubes, the amp is only two stages with input tubes that are DH. The outputs are indirectly heated and to easy to drive, unlike the output tubes that are commonly used in SET amps.

The PSE 6AG7 is on the sidelines for now, though. I'm back to playing with low mu (10 or less) preamp tubes at the moment which is why your thread caught my eye.


This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  McShane Design  


Follow Ups Full Thread
Follow Ups
  • Metal Tubes / Tube Sources - FlaCharlie 10:43:52 02/28/25 (0)


FAQ

Post a Message!

Forgot Password?
Moniker (Username):
Password (Optional):
  Remember my Moniker & Password  (What's this?)    Eat Me
E-Mail (Optional):
Subject:
Message:   (Posts are subject to Content Rules)
Optional Link URL:
Optional Link Title:
Optional Image URL:
Upload Image:
E-mail Replies:  Automagically notify you when someone responds.