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Sovtek KT 88's

S

Si74

pfm Member
Had a swatch on Ebay as the best sounding i.m.o. and longest lasting KT88s I've ever had in my Audiopax were a quad of Sovtek from Hotrox for £110 about 4 years ago. Last quad of Electro Harmonix ok..ish but two now replaced with the old Sovteks as the EH's were becoming 'dubious'. Tried JJs, EATs, a few quads of EH and the Holy Grail GECs. Let's say unimpressed. New quad of Sovteks (supposedly out of production)from a mob called Solsound. Rather dubious about the Red print but shell shocked at their asking price 600 quid???? Maybe just risk a quad of quads of the Red Lions,lol.
 
Might be worth taking a look at EH KT90s. Sovtek own EH and they are normally drop in replacements for KT88s providing you re-bias correctly. Watford Valves have them for £144 for a quad, plus VAT and delivery. I run a quad in my Audio Research Classic 30.
 
Genelex Gold Lion (Sovtek) seem about the best for these with normal Sovtek/EH second... I wouldn't touch Chinese ones such as Psvane or Shuguang with a barge pole!
 
Si74 said:
Had a swatch on Ebay as the best sounding i.m.o. and longest lasting KT88s I've ever had in my Audiopax were a quad of Sovtek from Hotrox for £110 about 4 years ago. Last quad of Electro Harmonix ok..ish but two now replaced with the old Sovteks as the EH's were becoming 'dubious'. Tried JJs, EATs, a few quads of EH and the Holy Grail GECs. Let's say unimpressed. New quad of Sovteks (supposedly out of production)from a mob called Solsound. Rather dubious about the Red print but shell shocked at their asking price 600 quid???? Maybe just risk a quad of quads of the Red Lions,lol.
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Interesting. I thought they were fairly poor in my Air Tight ATM2 years back.
 
Found the EH's passable but quality inconsistent, EAT's were vastly overpriced s--t, JJ's were nice enough till one went bang spectacularly. GEC's nos proved an expensive pile of crap when tested but did sound nice briefly. Woudn't touch Chinese tubes and think the Gold Lion 'remakes' are vastly overpriced for what they are.
Had I known they would discontinue them, I would just have bought enough quads of Sovteks to see me out. Saying that, they are still sounding fine but wary of running tubes for more than a couple of years in case they take out my amps.
 
I've used 2 quads of sovteks,the first was original to my amp,1 went bad and took out a few resistors,i bought gec's and then another un used quad of sovteks were bought to preserve the gec's, after a month the bias started wandering on one,here we go again i thought and put the gec's back in.

so what's the best alternative with new valves if one want to use them?
 
The EAT used to be the Tesla KT88 and I used to buy them from Finland for £80 each. Then Absolute sounds started selling them as EAT for stupid money.

IMHO they were the best sounding KT88 I ever heard and there's a lot of reviews to the effect that the EAT is great. I am sure it is the same tube.

The Air Tight loved them. The sound quality was so far ahead of anything else they literally made the amp. Nothing else came close. Sadly they had reliability problems with the filament and after getting a few warranty replacements I gave up. I was pretty upset about it I remember.

NOS Tung Sol 6550 I had came second but still a long way behind the Tesla.

I too had trouble with a JJ KT88 that went quickly. The bass was good on those but the overall SQ wasn't that great.

I never tried the GEC but suspect it is very good.

Sovteks sounded pretty poor in the Air Tight - just pretty rough TBH.

I also had some Chinese branded Art KT88s but they were rubbish. Glassy and edgy sounding.
 
Differences in sound quality are small. Reliability is the big thing. ALL modern KT88's are unreliable to one extent or another.
 
The differences in sound quality are not small. Though they might be if your hearing or critical analysis is not particularly good, or your system isn't revealing enough to hear them.

Russian valves are generally very reliable, though rarely the best sounding IMHO.
 
User211 said:
The differences in sound quality are not small. Though they might be if your hearing or critical analysis is not particularly good, or your system isn't revealing enough to hear them.

Russian valves are generally very reliable, though rarely the best sounding IMHO.
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They are small differences. No doubt you have no idea about how a valve amplifier works and which areas can influence sound and to what extent. It's usually the case....
The biggest differences are usually between worn ones or defective ones and good condition ones.
 
Stop talking pap Arkless.

I have been rolling valves for 35 years, am an engineer, and have a serious system that is probably much better than yours.

That's why I can easily hear changes between power amp valves.
 
Arkless Electronics said:
They are small differences. No doubt you have no idea about how a valve amplifier works and which areas can influence sound and to what extent. It's usually the case....
The biggest differences are usually between worn ones or defective ones and good condition ones.
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Since you are an engineer, set up a test mic and roll power valves in an amp.

If you have a decent set of full range speakers, you will easily see differences in the frequency response with the changes in valves.

I had this argument with Serge years ago on the Wam and provided evidence it was the case.

Try it.
 
User211 said:
Since you are an engineer, set up a test mic and roll power valves in an amp.

If you have a decent set of full range speakers, you will easily see differences in the frequency response with the changes in valves.

I had this argument with Serge years ago on the Wam and provided evidence it was the case.

Try it.
Click to expand...

You are talking complete bollox and if you were an engineer you would know that that frequency response will not be affected. You haven't the faintest idea what you are talking about.
 
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