Gopher, you sound like ou and I are in a similar place on these. I will probably end up with four matched quads as backup inventory (remember that I am stocking the shelves for my kids ).

First, I would be very leery of any JJ octal tube. I had a pair of 6V6 die prematurely on me.

Second, the 0A3 that I have seen glow orange, not purple. From the picture on the DECWARE site, the 0B3 glows violet; the 0C3 glows lavender and the 0D3 glows purple.

Interesting, and thanks for your impressions. will here had a failure of a tube. My quad shipped to me today so I'll have some to try this weekend or early next week. Good listening ahead by all accounts.

my purple glowing tube is labeled JAN 38250 and looks like this:  



I do not think they are 0a3s.

Nice looking tube.

My OA3s are VR75 and glow orange.

OB3- VR90 and glow blue

OC3s VR105, glow more lavandar

OD3s VR150, glow lavandar

I'm way too impatient for these things.  They were sounding dead, lacking drive and excitment today--and, after the wife agreed things weren't sounding good, I plucked them again in favor of the BTs.  Really glad about the auto-biasing!  

I have about 80 hours on mine, most with the National 7DJ8s, and maybe 1/3 of that was the Esoteric break in CD.  

Lately I had been listening to the very linear, open and extended cryo'd Ruby fat bottle EL34s (Shuguang), and with them I was liking some relatively warm Mullard 6922 pulls from Partsconnexion.

With the Mullards, when I just stuck in the JJs, the open and textural warmth the Rubys allowed them to reveal turned to a thickish, veiled quality. Some macro detail remained, but micro detail got pretty much squashed and the low mids down became a thuddy.

I stuck in some new Ei/Philips 7DJ8s, changed from straight OA3s to straight OC3s, chilled down the gain on the Zstage a little, and beauty filled the room. Wetter, texture, body and warmth without veils, extension and what I think of as the really cool thing about this tube....that big tube sound...something about the dynamic tightness of the hits, be they cymbals, drums or a string bass, and then the easy transition from body to natural ambient information. It sounds really good!

So I think I will have no problem completing the break in on these tubes now. Trouble so far in my evaluation of the tube, they are very finicky as to who they play well with. But I think they are extremely promising.

Gopher, I think you should get good sound from them with your National 7DJ8s, it just may take longer than you or I like to get there. I wonder too. Does the breakin CD work on tubes at low volumes like it would on high volumes?

I think you are on it with the Isotek/Esoteric CD as is...better quiet all night than without and probably considerably better than music since it is designed specifically for fast burnin, covering a huge range of sounds and attacks to flex the system. When I come home after several hours of it playing, the sound seems more improved than several hours of music by quite a bit. Subjective I know, but my impression. I just assume that using it (or music) at various volumes would work the tubes and all else differently, and ultimately better with variety of power and push. But you do what you can.

Looks like the tube companies or vendors could come up with a good, efficient  burnin system and charge a premium for ready to go tubes for us freaks with very revealing systems.

An excellent point indeed. These are the only tube amps I have had since I was a kid, so I take the ease of rolling for granted. Especially with new tubes or a new piece of gear, I will roll every day at times, and sometimes several times in a day in looking for that just right synergy/signature. So easy!

My JJ's just arrived...

I quickly popped them in and I agree that they are very good indeed. Nice and "tubey".

Any consensus on time for break-in? They sound really tight (not open at all) on the top end, but everything else is wonderful.

Thanks Lon.

Hoping Steve will maybe step in here and answer that one.

My take is that that besides some minor differences in operating parameters, the big difference lies in that there's some beam forming plates that take the place of that 3rd grid on the El-34.

In my (tiny brain's) opinion, the mod should help in close to the same fashion.  

Also

Well, mine seemed to stop changing yesterday after running them about 15 hours a day since they arrived. But hey i'll be happy if they get more dynamic, but I still have my doubts.

I agree, I don't think Steve would send out tubes with this amp that didn't take advantage fo the mod.

I put the Winged Cs back in for comparison. I think the Winged Cs will stay in for a while. Ironically the Cs make the Torii sound less like a tube amp, but fantastic. The bass is better. The midrange is so open it's as if you can see way deeply into the music, less so with the JJs. And "faster" and a touch more dynamic than the JJs. Both are great choices, and I can see why given that Cs are harder to find these days Steve has gone with the JJs stock.

I'll use these Cs til they're gone and then go back to the JJs.

Winged Cs have gone up but here are some.

http://www.tubesandmore.com/
http://thetubestore.com/el341.html

Don't know why the Antique Electronic Supply (tubes and more) link is not associated with the page i got it from with the Winged Cs, but they have it for about 145/quad.

After making that comparison I haven't been completely happy with the JJs. Thanks to a sale of power cords to Greg and Greg (thanks guys, cords are packaged and about to go in the mail) I ordered a "burned in for stability" set from Antique Electronic Supply.

Though at times I have enjoyed the winged Cs, I have never completely warmed up to them. I think they are nice tubes, but in my system, though they have a great open midrange quality, they have a leanness in the mids-mids that seems off balance with the warmness from the very low mids down. To me, there is a bit of unevenness that I just can't get used to with most tube sets I like.

But what we put any tube with is such a huge part of the story, and since I like more open and dynamic input tubes, they tend to bring out this unevenness, where some warmish input tubes balance nicely with the Winged C. Then there is how the rectifiers and VR balance...too many variables to blame or praise one tube easily.

I have found the JJ 6AC7 a bit dark and flat with warmer inputs, but with a couple different 7DJ8s, the RCA OA3-ST, and 40s RCA 5U4G-STs (more open than the 50/60s), they are sounding extremely good in this system....warm and textural, good body without a sense of excess density, smooth, dynamic and open.

For me, I think they are just particular as to what they work really well with. At the moment, with this set, my system has never sounded better. It is odd though. I have been playing around with different tubes to work with the JJs for a couple weeks, and this set did not quite occur to me while just thinking about the individual tube characters, so I came by it by the back door so to speak. That magical synergy is there though and it is really beautiful. I have no Treasures to compare.

Quote:


Lon, Are you referring the JJ's here? I would not have thought of "congestion" as a term to describe the Cs, though I could see it as a descriptor for the JJ 6AC7 with certain tube sets. And I agree about room...when I refer to system, I consider the room part of it since room is so much of our sound.

From my experiments with various tubes and tube types, I suspect Datman likes the tube so much because he had a synergistic combo that sings, as did I finally. I believe he uses National 7DJ8s with his, and maybe RCA 5U4G-STs, but I can't recall exactly, and then there is everything else in the system. Part of what finally brought mine out was a little cable/AC component "rolling" for me. I found them compelling in general, but being a bit dense and dark they did not easily fit my ultimate tastes until I put them with 7DJ8s which opened them up, makng them more spacious, and increasing the sense of dynamics. Then I found much more potential with the tube, but did not get there until I got that just right combo. I am actually using some Zaerix labeled 7DJ8s. So I think it is sort of a quirky tube, at least in terms of getting the ultimate sound I like. I mean, for my tastes, with the 60's sort of tubular sound of the JJs, I would never have thought to use my OA3-STs, them being warmer VRs....but they somehow contributed to the friendly spaciousness this particular tube set brought. Got me.....

This makes me wonder....since Steve changed over to them in the Torii, it would be interesting to try the bright/articulate Ruby 5U4Gs and see what those do with the JJs. I wonder if they might not act somewhat like the 7DJ8s, making the JJs more spacious???

Yes, I tried the Ruby 5U4G with my current set and after warm up, took it back out fairly rapidly. Seemed kind of empty by comparison with the 40s RCA 5U4Gs....at least with this set.

Glad you have the tube combo that just keeps on keeping on! I envy you with your straight RCA OA3s (I can't find any!) and those particular straight 5U4Gs. And the 6N1Ps I have tried are quite variable too....which to get???? What a labyrinth it can become....

Enjoy!

Datman, Thanks for the Svetlana Black plate clarification. Have you compared them to anything else? I heard some folks say they like them, but never heard just what makes their sound good.

I look forward to your O*3 exploration. I like having choices there and wish I could find more availability on the straight bottle tubes.

I noticed likewise with the JJs, that the impedance switch in particular can bring out some cool depth and clarification, but I always seem to end back at  4 ohm and neutral bias. I will have to be more diligent in leaving it set at 8 ohms for a while and adjust knobs around it. Thanks for the tip.

When I had my TORII, I was also confused about the switch positions since it's not covered in the manual.

On your amp with the impendance switches toward the front of the amp,
it should be 8 ohms.

And now the JJs are in my Torii Mk II amp in the second system and sounding really good. I had my gal pal helping me out evaluating the sound of the different amps in my second system. This time she told me she likes the sound of the Torii Mk II best, and this morning we both heard a fine example of why, listening to a Julio Iglesias cd there was a moment of holographic beauty that we both noticed. The Monoblocks have a certain sweetness and smoothness that I love in that system, but man, there's nothing like the accuracy and control of a Torii to really bring out imaging and positioning of instruments, even when the speakers are far from optimally placed.

So the JJs so impressed me again in that system that I took them out and put them in the Torii Mk III in the main system. And still, I prefer the Winged Cs immediately. There's just an openness to the Cs that makes the JJs sound as if they're compressing the imaging and instrument positioning. And at the same time there's a real vitality that is sparkling the music forward, which is not my favorite posiiton. And this holds up through the different tube complements at hand. So. . . darn. I'm stuck with using the expensive Winged Cs!  ;)

I'm with you Stone. Those were great runs of tubes, and they've been an integral part of the Decware experience for me.

Hey the JJs may be just the thing for you and your room(s). I'm convinced that the room and the interaction of the speaker is one of the hugest parts of the equation. I find tubes that I don't really love in a machine sound so lovely in the same machine in another room, with the same or different speakers. Wild, and makes all recommendations and reviews very problematic.

The JJs have really impressed me with their quiet and steady operation and in one amp they have given me three dimensional moments. So here's hoping you love them. They're a real bargain.

How much longer do you think Stone, a week til shipment?

So, what's everyone's final take on the JJs against the rest of the EL34/6CA7 types you've tried?

Hauoli Makahiki Hou!

PR,

Mahalo for the feedback, but since you haven't broken in the JJs,
you don't know if they can out performed the Treasures.

Have a great year.

PS- Installed the MK II upgrade in my PWD, more expense than changing tubes, but a nice improvement in resolution.

I am finding the JJ's continue to sound better and better. I have several hundred hours on mine and they contine to improve.

Long live juicy sound!