Tube Rolling With Friends
Have you ever gone tube rolling?
Sounds a bit naughty, but it’s actually a lot of fun!
Recently we took delivery of a great sounding integrated amplifier from California, an Aesthetix Mimas. After running it in, we enjoyed playing it with various combinations of sources & speakers, gaining a greater appreciation of its capabilities. After some time, we decided to try some different combinations of tubes to see the effect they would have on the sound.
The preamplifier section of the Mimas utilises one 6DJ8 (6922) vacuum tube per channel in a fully differential, balanced configuration. We contacted our Almighty Tube Guru Neil Kovács and a few days later, a box of glass bottled goodies arrived.
One night, one of our audio friends visited the showroom as we wrapped up for the day. Some pizzas were ordered, a wonderful bottle of red was opened and the self-appointed expert listening panel selected three reference songs as we settled in for some ‘discerning’ listening.
We chose ‘Tall Trees in Georgia’ from Eva Cassidy Live at Blues Alley for the live sound cues and simple guitar and voice arrangements.
Anette Askvik is a Norwegian artist, composer and producer with a unique ability to grab people at their core. Annette’s debut album, Liberty, includes pianist Øystein Sevåg, as well as renowned musicians like Audun Erlien, Rune Arnesen and Petter Wettre. ‘Liberty’ has frequently been used to demonstrate good sound on hi-fi equipment all over Europe and USA. Liberty is one of the go to demo tracks that Michael Borresen of Borresen Acoustics uses.
The last track was Brendan Perry album Eye of the Hunter track ‘The Voyage of Bran’. This is for multilayered mix of natural and electronic instruments with Brendan’s distinctive vocals.
We started by listening to the Mimas with its stock Electro Harmonix tubes (the way it arrived from the factory) and then slowly & methodically worked through the other nine tube combinations that we had on hand.
Interestingly, by the end of the session, the stock tubes were our least favourite sounding version of the Mimas which goes to show the value of trying different combinations. As always happens with these types of exercises, it is quite shocking to experience just what a change a different set of tubes can make to the sound of an amplifier.
The best part of the evening was the conversation in between each of the songs. We were all mindful of different aspects of the sound and as we shared our thoughts, we expanded our concentration in different ways, inspired by each other’s opinions and perceptions. This sharing and comparing is one of the joys of this hobby.
What a wonderful evening!
Great music, conversation, wine and companionship.
Tube rolling with friends.
Have you had similar experiences? Shoot us an email and let us know.
By the way, here’s the notes we made from our Aesthetix Mimas tube rolling evening.
Thank you to Jim White and his team for building such an enjoyable amp and a huge shout out to Neil from The Valve Store who provided the tubes. We have concluded that it’s unlikely there is another living human being who knows more about tubes than Neil.
Enjoy!
Tube Rolling with the Aesthetix Mimas at Nirvana Sound
| Tubes | Amperex Bugleboys |
|---|---|
| Type | 6DJ8 |
| Country of origin | USA (We understand these were made by Phillips in Holland) |
| Our rank | 1st |
| Comments | Great spatial information (ambience), lots of detail, flow, great tone & energy, magic moments, highly enjoyable. |
| Tubes | Phillips |
| Type | 6DJ8 |
| Country of origin | Holland |
| Our rank | 2nd |
| Comments | Deeper bass, more detail, a slight bit etched at the top end, lots of leading edge definition, rendition of voices is amazing. |
| Tubes | Sylvania |
| Type | 6DJ8 |
| Country of origin | Holland |
| Our rank | 3rd |
| Comments | Deeper Bass, slightly burnished top end, no aggression, no fatigue, clarity, emotional message in the music is expressed well. |
| Tubes | JJ |
| Type | E88CC |
| Country of origin | Slovak Republic |
| Our rank | 4th |
| Comments | Enjoyable, open sound, airy, frequency extension a highlight, no fatigue. |
| Tubes | Tungsram |
| Type | E88CC |
| Country of origin | Hungary |
| Our rank | 5th |
| Comments | Enjoyable, harmonically rich, slightly compressed. |
| Tubes | Genalex Gold Lion |
| Type | 6922 |
| Country of origin | China |
| Our rank | 6th |
| Comments | More of a modern sound, a bit faster & dry, reminds us of KT88 sound, Good but missing tone & scale. |
| Tubes | AWA (Super Radiotron) |
| Type | 6DJ8 / EC88 |
| Country of origin | Australia |
| Our rank | 7th |
| Comments | Rebadged Mullard, slightly truncated sound, less focussed, a bit coloured, veiled but had some energy, fun but not accurate. |
| Tubes | Tungsram |
| Type | PCC189 |
| Country of origin | Hungary |
| Our rank | 8th |
| Comments | Clean, clear, lean, more controlled, a bit bright. |
| Tubes | Reflektor |
| Type | 6N23P-EV |
| Country of origin | Russia |
| Our rank | 9th |
| Comments | Voices not as focused, recessed soundstage, lost a bit of magic. |
| Tubes | Electro Harmonix (stock from the factory) |
| Type | 6922 |
| Country of origin | China |
| Our rank | 10th |
| Comments | Cloudy, some tension in the upper frequencies, a bit aggressive, loose low frequencies, bass a bit flabby & unfocussed. |
The story continues…
We have a good client who wanted a second system for another room in the house away from his main system. In this room he desired the simplicity of an integrated amplifier and wanted an onboard DAC card. We recommended the Mimas.
Before deciding, he wanted an audition under our Happiness Guarantee and needed to compare it to a well-reviewed famous Japanese amplifier which also came with DAC option. The price of the Japanese amplifier was equivalent to the Aesthetix Mimas so it was a fair comparison in economic terms.
The power amplification stage used bipolar transistors in double parallel push-pull configuration which are rated for 180 watts into 4 ohms and 120 watts into 8 ohms on the Japanese amplifier which again was similar to the Mimas.
We decided to provide the same tube rolling kit that we used to allow the customer to experience the different sonic palettes from each tube type. After careful comparisons the customer chose the Sylvania and JJ options as his favourites and he bought the Mimas.
Each system from source to speakers creates opportunity for synergy. By experiencing tube rolling you can transform the sound to suit your personal requirements. This is one of the joys of using tube preamps and phono stages and hybrid integrated amplifiers. The 6922 series tubes are relatively low cost and provide many thousands of hours of trouble-free use.
Plus you can join that esoteric, arcane, passionate club of tube lovers who communicate in secret handshakes and search for old tubes like Indiana Jones, finding NOS bottles in secret locations in abandoned Eastern European military bases and castles of hidden caches protected by cobwebs and locks that haven’t seen a key for 60 years. Nirvana Sound makes it easy by delivering these goodies in the mail all tested and checked.
A final note
Incidentally, we subsequently did a similar exercise with a couple of Aesthetix amplifiers further up the range and our observations were that the tubes they provide by default from the factory are very good. We couldn’t improve the sound much by tube rolling in those instances. I imagine that the folks at Aesthetix have spent many hours doing this exercise in the past…
