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blackraven
03-01-2010, 10:57 AM
I have a question for any tube guru's out there. I'm rolling some tubes in my preamp and DAC. I'm switching over to the 6CG7 tubes per Frank Van Alstine's recommendation. I purchased a pair of the very hard to come by NOS Mazda/Brimar's and I am now looking at the NOS RCA's.

My question is, is it worth the extra money to go with these Black Sable cryo treated, matched and balanced tubes

http://www.tubedepot.com/bsct-6cg7-rca-ct.html

or the standard matched and balanced RCA's.

http://tubedepot.com/nos-6cg7-rca.html

Cryo treating sounds like snake oil to me.

Thanks,

Larry

blackraven
03-01-2010, 03:17 PM
I just replaced the 6N1P tubes in my preamp with the Mazda/Brimar 6CG7 tubes and all I can say is WOW! The music has more depth, warmth and resolution. Over all there is more clarity and tightness. Bass is deeper, tighter and more refined. The mid range is slightly pushed back which is a good thing since the new Burr Brown Op amp mod in my DAC made the midrange too forward for my Maggies (I'm thinking about putting the original op amps back in, while they don't have as much resolution as the BB's, they do have more air and transparency which I prefer). Treble resolution is improved, cymbals sound more realistic. The tubes make this hybrid preamp more tubey in sound.

The only negative I have found is that there may be a little more background noise which is kind of surprising since these tubes are supposed to lower noise. I guess I need to give them time to break in. I also noticed there is a decrease in gain. I have to turn the volume up a bit more to get the same level of loudness as before the switch.

I now need to get a pair to replace the 6N1P tubes in my DAC.