Rolling tubes

It is time for tube rolling dear fellows! When the audio chain setup is complete and the key components have been chosen one should concentrate on the fine details. They are usually not bringing stunning but rather subtle improvements. My audio system recently reached such a state when all its key components were on place and I decided to finally tune it. Since the amplifier is the second most important component after the speakers that it drives it is vital to take the most out of it.

LM 211IA
LM-211IA connected to its 8 Ohm taps in triode mode delivers 2 X 13 Watts pure power

I am having a valve amplifier produced by the Chinese manufacturer Line Magnetic Audio. It is a push-pull architecture based on the EL34 tubes. Connected to its 8 Ohm output taps in triode mode my Fostex BK108 back-loaded horn speakers are really rocking. The step forward my system made with this amplifier compared to the former transistor one from Creek Audio is huge. All the aspects of the sound reproduction has been improved dramatically. Sonic characteristics like sound stage dimensions, placement definition of the performers on it, tonal characteristics like tone timbre and textures have become much more believable. Transparency, detail and dynamics had increased immensely and all that brought an elevated state of realism in the presentation.

I was aware that already with its stock tubes the LM-211IA performs rather good, but I was also told that good old NOS tubes in the preamplifier stage could bring even more out of it. So I decided to roll them off ECC82/12Au7 and ECC83/12AX7 tubes used in the preamp section for it was reported that they cause the biggest impact on the amplifier performance.

Basically there are two main groups of NOS tubes that one have to consider. On the warm, vintage and organic sounding side are Mullard and Phillips tubes. On the other side associated with neutral, modern and detailed sound are Telefunken and Siemens.

It was hard to decide which one to choose so I needed advice. Than I had a correspondence with Ralph Wege from Wege High Fidelity that was very useful for making a decision. He advised me to combine tubes from both groups in order to achieve balanced and natural sound that is neither too warm nor too analytic. Either I should pick warm sounding tube for the signal splitter (ECC82) and neutral for the amplification (ECC83) or the other way.

ECC83 Phillips Miniwatt
ECC83 Phillips Miniwatt

It just happened that I stumbled upon a very rare NOS pair of ECC83 Phillips Miniwatt long plates from 1958 so I bought them. ECC82 tubes are also very important, because they are taking care of the signal splitting in the preamp stage. Shortly after I decided for matched pair of NOS ECC82 Siemens silver plates.

Putting the Siemens ECC82 as phase splitter in preamp stage brought quite an obvious improvement. Articulation and detail have seized the place of the former haziness. The definition of each single tone has been quite noticeably improved. The transients — these  micro fragments of time in which a sound is born or dies — has gained resolution that lacked with the Chinese stock tubes.

With the Miniwatt it was not as easy. I have to say that initially they sounded quite rough and even harsh. The whole presentation have become  I would say retro. I was really disturbed by the fact that spending a small fortune on these tubes, they did not delivered what I expected. I contacted Herr Wege again. He explained me that the Miniwatts are really NOS tubes, that means they have not been working even an hour and need minimum 5 days of working before they reach their best. So I did, I leaved them working several hours a day  and already after 2 or 3 days the things have been improved a lot. After a week I was having the impression that these are another tubes. That was really important conclusion — one can’t judge the quality of a tube before giving it enough time to opens up.

NOS ECC82 Siemens silver plates
NOS ECC82 Siemens silver plates

The Miniwatt tubes sound somehow fuller and bolder, the music have more body and the bass is richer and deeper than before. And it reaches new depths that I didn’t think possible for the speakers I have. Despite all these positive sides, probably because of the smoother sound they produce I thought that they might lack a bit of a detail. After extensive listening swapping tubes back and forth and comparing the sound delivered by the speakers with the one from my reference headphones  I realised that what I took as a detail was actually sort of graininess that the cheep Chinese tubes were adding to the textures, or they just missed something that makes the textures organic. At the end I have to say that with the time these tubes have become even better. I am quite content with them and the improvement that this tube rolling experiment brought.

As conclusion I have to say that rolling tubes with NOS selected ones made a subtle but vital difference by transforming the former bodiless mixture of sounds into an organic, richly textured and realistic presentation. As the old saying says the devil is in the details and this is the case when it comes to tube rolling. One should not start with it before the whole system is sorted out. I would advise to leave the rolling for the very end. Before this, one should first find out what cabling suits his system best in a given budget. Interconnect and speaker cables needs especially careful selection which ideally should be made before starting with tube rolling.

8 thoughts on “Rolling tubes”

  1. Hi Dimitar,

    I’ve also made the move with LM211ia in Nov 2016. Coming from an A/V Amp (Cambridge Audio 340R) i could feel a HUUUGE difference with details.
 I’ve also upgraded my speakers from B&W 686 to CM6 S2. The CM6 are now in a run in process.



    I’ve been screening the web on tubes rolling and i found really great infos on your post (thanks again for all this). My next move is to find (as you say) the right cables for my speaker and then i’ll start to search for different tubes. Heard of the 6CA7, i’ll need to « stabilize » my system first before making the big jump 🙂

    I have one question regarding the Bias. Did you made anything specific on your Amp, or did it work with your NOS as a « plug’n’play » ? Can’t find any infos for our LM211ia.

    Thank you for your answers.

    Best from Paris.

    Pierre

    1. Hi Pierre, nice to have you here!

      You are right LM-211IA is a hell of an amp that could frighten a lot of top-dog amplifiers. I am currently using it in Ultralinear mode, which outputs more drive and body through its 8 Ohm speaker taps.

      I don’t think it is a good idea to start with rolling the output tubes (EL34/6CA7) because their impact on the sound is rather minimal compared to the small tubes (ECC82/12AU7 and ECC83/12AX7) in the preamplifier stage. In my opinion the stock Line Magnetic EL34 output tubes are quite good and does not make much sense to replace them, at least my experience says so. If anyway you decide to replace the output tubes, the bias current needs to be adjusted, otherwise rolling the preamplifier tubes does not require bias adjustment.

      Regards,
      Dimitar

  2. Huh, I found swapping Mullards into the front end did very little, but the various power tube combos I swapped in each had a very pronounced effect. Tung-Sol el34b beat out tubestore preferred series, Svetlana el34, a set of JJ, and the stock units.

    1. Thank you for sharing your experience Patrick! I guess the amount of the audible effect caused by swapping tubes in different amplifying stages, except of the tubes themselves, depends on the general system voicing, amplifier circuit and parts selection as well as on subjective criteria.

  3. Great story about the LM211IA
    I tried several ecc83 and 82 and like you ended up with the Philips and silver plate Siemens although the Brimar cv3004 (ecc82) works also very nicely, bit smoother in the mids
    A big change was also replacing the stock tubes with the Groove Tubes EL 34m. Way more depth, smoother and a wider soundstage.
    My speakers are Monitor Audio gold 100 4g which are very dynamic and a bit bright so I guess that’s why the EL 34m works so nicely. All about synergy..

  4. Hello
    I have had an unpleasant experience with a complete switch to EH on the 211iA
    Replace the valves of the previous section with EH gold pins and also the output section with 6CA7 EH
    Tired listening, headache, a mess.
    I do not quite understand the reason, but for now I have returned to the original valves.
    I’m not entirely happy, I think it lacks 3D depth in orchestras.
    Now I am buying the Gold Lion pre-tubes.
    We’ll see if that works better.
    Anyone have experience with the GOLD LION at 211iA?
    Greetings

    1. Hi Ars,

      I am sorry to hear you have been disappointed while tube rolling. I don’t have experience with Electro-Harmonix tubes other then with the 6BM8 which I find pretty decent. You can give some NOS tubes in the preamp/driver stage a chance. They are expensive and hard to find, but often surpass the new production in terms of quality.

      Good luck,
      Dimitar

      1. Thanks Dimitar for your answer.
        At the moment I am still listening better with the original tubes.
        I have also tried the previous ones with Gold Lion, but they did not convince me, it is as if the magic disappeared.
        Maybe I should also put the Gold Lion KT77, to see if the whole set sounds better.

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