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twogoodears wrote:

Yes Roman... I feel pretty like I entered a sort of "cul de sac", tube-wise... I contacted, few months ago, Western Electric USA and they told me that, at USD 750 ea. they have "plenty" of N.O.S. WE 437A... I've been able to find and purchase for a much lesser amount, 9 tubes of different batches but in matched Mu pairs... despite Thomas' testing and matching and myself at the wallet commands;-) the consistency in perceived balance between left and right channel proved to be quite tricky, worth careful settings and several tubes swappings and combinations.

Yes, I did the same. What in 2000 I got Lamm LP2 that used 417A I also did call to WE and asked them about the 417 tubes. They told that they have them and gave me some absolutely ridicules price, with a first price drop of a few dollars after 500 tubes. I do not remember exact price they gave me but it was way in the realm of fantasy. Then I went “to word” and sourced of 417A, learning the 95% of them not usable. BTW, the $8 Raytheon 5842 was a very good sounding alternative to 417A. It had less flashy name but I learned that 5842 were more stable in quality primary because you buy a party of new 5842 vs. you buy the 417A as new that somebody have tried and find them to noisy – so I felt that the whole pool of 417A was better and I would not necessarily say that WE417A sounded better then Raytheon 5842. Now the whole phonostage did not sound right, but it was a totally different story…. Anyhow, that gave me some trepidations when I think about the high Mu triodes… I have a friend in NY in whose system a perfectly operating 417A totally out of bleu when nuts and blew up tweeters in $90K speakers. The high Mu fast triodes are strange….

twogoodears wrote:

Thomas reports the Telefunken EC-8020 as much more selected at factory before reaching final users...

One of the advantage of passive EQ that you have in your phono that you can use any tubes you wish, them design is not very strict as it is my case. Let your Thomas to cook for you your phonostage with 7788 in the first stage. You Europeans know it as E810F. That tube has higher gain at lowers noise and it is stunningly stable. You can take any Telefunken E810F, replace it with another and your will be have insultingly exactly the same operational parameters. I have less success with Mulard and Philips E810F but German E810F are very-very good. It is 5W tube and it will be able to drive you 600R load.

twogoodears wrote:

The British 3A/167M still more sought after and expensive than EC-8020 and 437A and - truly - unavailable everywhere, is a much better tube than WE 437A: sure mechanically, with its metal ring socket, it is.

…and I do not know if 3A/167M is better than anything else and I do not see why the metal socket is necessarily better then plastic – the socket is not the part of the tube. It is the same 7W tube with 1K on late and Gm of 42. The 3A/167M for sue is much more expensive and much more difficult to get. I did not use it and I did not hear it is anybody installations. When you say that it is “much better” then you need to understand that audio people love to create a cult-like BS, which makes the things to be “sought after”. I do not think that it would be a huge actual different for you to use 3A/167M or 437A beside to make good pictures for your blog and let the Audio-Morons to envy. However, what I would like to point out is the fact that when you read/hear the exuberant comments from some 3A/167M users about the 3A/167M superiority then… then NEVER talk about Sound. At my time what I collected information about 3A/167M I never was able to suck of the 3A/167M users any thinking about sound that I find not even attractive to myself but even rudimentary-sensible. Sure, it does not say anything negative about 3A/167M but rather about the community of all those stupid DIYers but still I did not develope any encouragement to peruse into the 3A/167M direction.
 

twogoodears wrote:

The 6C45P was a serious alternative to WE 437A, even less consistent in performance in a tube-to-tube comparison, but I'm much more confident the next German/Italian task will be, always using a Tango EQ600 LCR, the WE 416B and 416C. It's still available for cheap and in quantity and an italian tube scholar and builder, Daniele Ansaloni http://twogoodears.blogspot.com/2009/09/western-electric-416-b-and-c-golden.html (who built and listened to such a phono stage with full Tango (old) irons) says - in perfect italian: "Wunderbar!"

I never heard the WE416B/416C, not about them but from what I just have seen in their sheets and in the description of their design they might be very interesting tubes. The only thing that you need to watch with them is my Vacuum Cap Syndrome. The Vacuum Capacitors are the best caps to use in my phonostage but there is one ugly factor. The Vacuum Caps are high voltage and the contact surfaces are very large. When you have you .25mV signal coming from your cartridge across the 38ga cable then suddenly you expose a plate of Vacuum capacitor with a contact of 30mm diameter than the rapid change of the conductive volume is affect sound very negatively (read my comments about the superior  posts:  http://www.RomyTheCat.com/TreeItem.aspx?PostID=11807)

twogoodears wrote:

Last but not least, another viable tube for phono-stages - still elusive, BUT not hideously priced, yet - would be Western Electric 436... worth investigating.  The WE 437A are very nicely sounding in my system

And what is wrong with your Sound of 435 that might encourage you to look into 436?  :-)

http://www.romythecat.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=432

twogoodears wrote:

...yet as Roman pointed out, I hope the search be not over... as it's a BIG part of passion.

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