KT-120 - Consensus?

I think a lot of people jumped ship from their stock tubes when the KT120's came out. Many are now wondering why their amp sounds better with tubes that it was originally designed for. IME, the winged C 6550's that I use are hard to beat IF your amp was designed to use a 6550/KT88 in the first place. The ONLY 6550 tube that i think betters the winged C's is the original GE's... and these are getting very hard to source. I know several amp designer's that do NOT think too highly of the KT120 and prefer to use the 6550's. ( Usually the winged C's IF available).

Actually Davey, I ordered a set of 6550s from cj and Lew called me and recommended using the KT120s personally for both their sound and longer lifetime. So no it wasn't jumping ship. And they do sound better in the cj amps if nowhere else.

Next the reason that many switched is that the 6550C is no longer being made.

And BTW ask those people why they're bad mouthing the tubes. I know who they are too.

And personally have never heard a GE tube that sounded good 6550s included. They all have that GE sound, and good luck even finding GEs 6550s now. What's around are quadruple rejects eg tubes that were returned and Richardson just put them back on the shelf and resold, resold and resold them.
 
I for one am a fan of the KT-120 tube. They sounded great in the ARC VS-115 I used to own. If a tube amp is optimized to use EL-34s, it will not sound as good using any other output tube and comparisons between how your amp that was optimized to use EL-34 tubes sounds when using KT-120 tubes is neither fair nor valid.
 
Not to mention logically goes against the logic of tube rolling. If that was the case, no substitute tube could sound better than what the designer used.
 
Psvane 12AX7T-IIs are surprisingly great sounding tubes, and not too pricey. Nice alternative to NOS.
 
Myles, I am surprised you have never heard a good GE tube:weird: It was Kevin Deal who turned me on to the GE 12AX7 long plates that are VERY special in my preamp. Kevin thinks the GE's are KILLER and I have to agree.

No. Never.
 
The best GE tubes I ever heard were a quad of EL-34s. The reason they sounded so damn good was they were actually Mullard XF-2 EL-34s.
 
Back
Top