Post by CAJames on 10/15/22 at 15:37:35
I know Sarah is hung up in the supply chain, but I figured this might be a good place to centralize a discussion about 300B tubes. Tubes you've heard, heard about or if you are just #tubecurious. I'll start with my experience with my Space-Tech 300B amp.
I've heard 3 pairs of 300B tubes: Electro-Harmonix (aka EH, made in Russia), "Billington Gold" (aka BG, Chinese) and Takatsuki, made in Japan.
I don't have much to say about the EH tubes. They were used and came with the amp (which was also used), and one of them was probably roughed up in shipping and had an annoying amount of hum. It was the first tube I tried when I got the amp and I didn't listen to them very long. Even beyond the hum the sound was thin and unengaging and I quickly moved on to the BG tubes.
Billington is one of my favorite places to buy tubes. They aren't especially easy to deal with because they don't have a web store, and to get the best price you need to order GBP 240 worth of stuff. But the GBP is cheap these days, Martin the owner is great and they have a ton of high quality stock.
https://web211.secure-secure.co.uk/tube-and-valve-electronics.co.uk/default2.asp
The Billington Gold tubes were just south of 200 bucks, and figured that was a good enough to see what this 300B thing was about. The tubes sounded pretty good out of the box, quiet and much better than the EH tubes in every way. It took maybe 50 hours to really settle down. The sound is pretty much what I would expect from a 300B tube, lush, warm midrange, and definitely tipped towards the low frequencies. If anyone is looking for a high quality (relatively) inexpensive 300B tube I would recommend these. Billington has even less expensive 300B, for as little is 120 GBP for a pair of generic Shuguang (if you make the minimum order).
Compared to my UFOs they had more bass and a "juicier" midrange but were lacking high end air and sparkle, didn't have the details or the same sense of space. I rolled a bunch of 6SN7 equivalent tubes for the input and driver stages and the amp sounded really good taken on its own. I should have just stopped there...
But I couldn't stop thinking I've gone this far, shouldn't I get top of line 300B tube? Of course the answer is yes, which means I needed to pick which one, cuz this has already gone far enough and no way am I going to be rolling kilobuck 300B tubes. Based on discussions on another message board with guys who do roll kilobuck 300B tubes
it seemed like there were 3 choices. I posted this in another thread but I'll repeat it here:WE: The classic 300B sound. Gorgeous midrange liquidity, but slightly rolled off highs and lows relative to the other tubes.
Takatsuki: A little less classic than WE. Less emphasis on the mids, more uniform top to bottom. A little more transparent.
Elrog: (the current favorite) More dynamic and transparent, less warm. Not the classic 300B sound.
Maybe the best comparison I saw was in terms of female vocalists.
WE = Etta James
Takatsuki = Ella Fitzgerald
Elrog = Whitney Houston
So I got Takatsuki and have no regrets. After about 100 hours they really sound fabulous. And my 300B amp actually sounds a lot like my UFOs. Now it has plenty of air, transparency and detail, a really nice midrange and tight, fast well defined bass. I think Steve said rolling input tubes has a bigger effect than 300B tubes but that isn't my experience (my amp, my system yada, yada). I've tried a bunch of input tubes and they tweaked the sound but going from the BG tube to the Takatsuki was going from really good to WOW!
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