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What qualifies a "bad" tube amp, or what do you get from a more expensive tube amp

Astoneroad

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We need to understand the con man's bag of tricks, and know how to spot them and reject them.
Jim
1680093094160.png
 

Sokel

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And I bet every penny for advertising comes right out of the engineering budget.
What penny???
Advertising is a mouth-to-mouth thing for those,I'm telling you I never came across them in any site or publication,expect an old translated Japanese one.
I think they don't even have a site and if they do is something like REALLY basic.
 

Sokel

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I believe that @fpitas was making a sarcastic/humorous comment about audio con men in general, and not necessarily aiming at any one particular product .... including the one you had mentioned.

Jim
I got it but I thought I should emphasize it a little more.
And it's not only about the manufacturer,this situation shows that there are people that are obsessed about these things.

(to me only the looks was enough to detest it,I have seen DIY stuff light years far more nice looking,and that goes to ANY stuff,a 130db SINAD one would have the same detest by me,I'm superficial )
 

Mnyb

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There have been some mission creep .

Back in the day when tubes where the only thing that existed . Good engineers tried to built as good an amplifier as they possibly could . Using science and engineering .

Nowadays tube amps sells mostly by myths and fairytales about their "musicality" so the design brief can be different mostly using nostalgia and hearsay and fairytales . So beware the design can be anything . You must have good knowledge of tube design before buying anything you never know what you get.

Actually a really good tube amp may not be possible to distinguish from a solid state amp on all speakers on all music :) so what now , ofcourse design the sucker to be really different :( hence beware and read up on the particular amp you want .

Price has very little to do with it , except they cant be to cheap due to all the transformers needed and sturdy chassis .
The most expensive ones are real cult objects and horrible amplifiers at best and costs like a house or a car.
 
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OP
Mr. Haelscheir
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please try again...it's not that hard. listen to the highs on the clean one (upper range of background guitars) and the bass on the warm one

that's what the knob is for
Okay. I suppose the "Clean Tube" preset did add some treble sharpness, such accentuated when such was still heard amid my misinterpreted expectation that it should have been the bypassed sound that would have more treble when the narrator had rather vied for the tube sound's brightness. Maybe it did bring the guitar tones forward (or it was just playing slightly louder at that time), but it can still be rather subtle. And I do suppose I hadn't been focusing on the bass very much amid the "Warm Tube" preset, whereby particularly in the section where both presets were put in series, I guess the bass had a subtle warm buzz added to it.

Anyways, I am curious as to what you hear in that Z Reviews video I linked, ideally while switching between tracks using the timestamps in the comments.
 

MaxBuck

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Bad tube amplifiers , are amplifiers that contain vacuum tubes.
Word.

I'll allow that, if you listen to a lot of crap sources, some tube amps might make the crap listenable. I mean, Black Sabbath needs help.
 
OP
Mr. Haelscheir
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But why use a tube amp at all?
Vanity, and wanting something fooking gorgeous. (photo from https://www.head-fi.org/threads/hifiman-he1000-se.886228/post-17384670)
11977210.jpg

Indeed, "audio jewelry". www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/1ucguq/in_defense_of_tube_amps_an_objective_take/ notes some sources on how certain types of distortion could psychoacoustically still be "transparent", but still induce preferences in controlled listening. Anyways, even if I were to not notice a difference on sighted tests, I would still feel happy having saved up for and acquired the most beautiful 8 W headphone amp I can think of. Indeed, simply an object that makes you feel good even compared to a boxy similarly priced solid-state amp.
 

JiiPee

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From ASR ethos point of view, it's kind of funny with all the speak about the tube sound. It should be the other way around - A good tube amplifier has the "solid state sound" i.e. it sounds just like all the competently engineered SS amplifiers (which all sound the same for all practical purposes). It is possible to achieve that, but even a good tube amplifier still has the downsides of higher cost, bigger physical size, reduced convenience (warming up the tubes) and higher maintenance needs.
 

Mnyb

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I do understand DIY tube amps especially if you design them yourself , seems like a nice enough hobby and they are historical artefacts :)

For bying a product, no ! You possibly at least need some instruments and knowledge how to bias replacement tubes to maintain them ?

But many audiophiles caught in the endless upgrade cycle does not keep products for any significant time , on to the next great thing .
 

Chrispy

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Vanity, and wanting something fooking gorgeous. (photo from https://www.head-fi.org/threads/hifiman-he1000-se.886228/post-17384670)
11977210.jpg

Indeed, "audio jewelry". www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/1ucguq/in_defense_of_tube_amps_an_objective_take/ notes some sources on how certain types of distortion could psychoacoustically still be "transparent", but still induce preferences in controlled listening. Anyways, even if I were to not notice a difference on sighted tests, I would still feel happy having saved up for and acquired the most beautiful 8 W headphone amp I can think of. Indeed, simply an object that makes you feel good even compared to a boxy similarly priced solid-state amp.
To me that looks horrid.
 

fpitas

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To me that looks horrid.
If I owned it, I couldn't stop chuckling from that monstrosity being used to drive headphones. Definitely "Golden Age of Wireless" craziness.
 

fpitas

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I got it but I thought I should emphasize it a little more.
And it's not only about the manufacturer,this situation shows that there are people that are obsessed about these things.

(to me only the looks was enough to detest it,I have seen DIY stuff light years far more nice looking,and that goes to ANY stuff,a 130db SINAD one would have the same detest by me,I'm superficial )
Yes, indeed. A little casual reading on some forums is scary sometimes.
 
OP
Mr. Haelscheir
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I wonder where those fake Gold Lion tubes were made. Maybe in the same factory in Russia or China where the fake "Westrex" tubes are made.
Stealing old trademarks and recycling them is really moral terpitude. It IS legal.
Yes, it is known that these "Gold Lions" are Russian-made (apparently by Sovtek Corporation), whatever you may think of said quality. I wouldn't make any claims regarding the trademark ownership status without further research.
To me that looks horrid.
Indeed, all are to their own opinions. I personally find most solid-state amps "too boxy", or can't stand the silver ones. I collect typewriters, and one machine one find gorgeous could be hideous to another.
 

fpitas

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No dog in the race, but Genalex says they are made in Russia:

 

gene_stl

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But if you are old enough to remember real Gold Lion KT88mps you know that Genalex was General Electric of England and they were made in England. Anything else is fake. Even if they legally have registered the Gold Lion trademark because Genalex abandoned it in the eighties.
 
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fpitas

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But if you are old enough to remember real Gold Lion KT88mps you know that Genalex was General Electric of England and they were made in England. Anything else is fake. Even if they legally have registered the Gold Lion trademark because Genalex abandoned it in the eighties.

Tube stuff is for idiots. Only a moron would pay $70 for a russian made dual triode.
Well...I certainly don't get it, either. But people do spend lavishly on hobbies.
 
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Mr. Haelscheir
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But if you are old enough to remember real Gold Lion KT88mps you know that Genalex was General Electric of England and they were made in England. Anything else is fake. Even if they legally have registered the Gold Lion trademark because Genalex abandoned it in the eighties.

Tube stuff is for idiots. Only a moron would pay $70 for a russian made dual triode.
Of course, the remakes are "fake", regardless of what present-day quality or lack thereof was actually put into them. Maybe they are excellent and functionally equivalent replicas, maybe not, and prospective customers would likely know that. Anyways, looking on eBay, it seems a whole lot "smarter" to go with the Russian-made ones than attempt to acquire NOS Genalex Golden Lions, unless you believe that replicas should be substantially devalued. Anyways, though I haven't actually heard them yet, I remain of the stance that it is up to the listener whether they desire to partake of intentional colouration (whatever you think of how well DSP could reproduce it), so long as these tubes, topologies, or transformers are actually measurably producing these desired colourations. Considering whether entertaining the emotional appeals of tubes is "rational" or warranted could question why we should be affected by music itself (or liking one set of genres or disliking others) at all, at least knowing there are people who don't care for music.

Is the "reality" you are referring to that tube-o-philes are ultimately listening to distortion, audible or not, and that this of course isn't "hi-fi" by definition? Anyways, I would vie that tubes are quite a different matter from cables or any practically measurably identical gear.
 

robwpdx

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Indeed, all are to their own opinions. I personally find most solid-state amps "too boxy", or can't stand the silver ones. I collect typewriters, and one machine one find gorgeous could be hideous to another.
I always liked the aesthetics of overdone heat sinks and rack handles. There is less weight with toroidal transformers today, and less need for cooling with class-D. Meters were a thing for a while, but on power amps they mainly sit around zero. Putting a real time spectrum analyzer on a power amp would look good.
 
OP
Mr. Haelscheir
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Anyways, the point of this thread was on how one regardless of our perceived utility of such might evaluate the objective merits of a particular tube amp for which distortions and colourations are intentionally designed. Quality of build, components, or soldering. Long-term reliability of the platform through which folks will be periodically replacing tubes. I suppose that every tube amp owner wants as low of a noise floor or crosstalk as possible. Then the question of how one would evaluate the quality of a transformer or tube that intentionally introduces colourations.

Otherwise, all things considering, I would be of the stance that after the noise floor is made to be low enough, the main thing you are probably sonically getting between a $1,000, $4,000, or $8,000 "audiophile" tube amp and their respective colourations is simply something different and exclusive, even if barely so.
 
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