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Tubes for Unison Research's Simply Italy?

F

fedocable

New Member
Hello there. I own a Unison Research Simply Italy, which I adore. It uses two EL34 and two ECC82 (12au7) as rectifiers. So recently I decided to upgrade the 12au7's. After doing a lot of research, I went with the Psvanes. Right out of the box the sound was clearly more open and detailed than with the Tung Sols I'd used before, but it was also a bit too bright, too harsh on the trebles. The top end was always on front. Listening to a violin going allegro was almost unbearable. I gave them a long chance, thinking they might need some extended break-in, but that didn't help much. Considering the high praise those tubes have, I started researching a bit and found out that this amp might not be -as I had thought- auto-biasing -and it's definitely not manual-biasing either! So it might require tubes between certain parameters. I'm guessing this could be the reason why the Psvanes sound a bit over the top in it.
So my question to -hopefully- other owners of this amp: what brand of tubes have you tried? and which one do you like most?
Note there's no official thread for this amp, so any feedback will be highly appreciated!
 
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12au7 is a small signal tube, not a rectifier. I have no idea where your located but look for some old Mullards or RCA or Sylvania or.............
A lot of the Chinese tubes are bright sounding or just bad sounding.
There is lots of info on tube rolling here and elsewhere.
The first thing a lot of folks do is to swap out the Chinese tubes for better tubes on any audio product coming from China.
As far as your particular amp, I never hear of it.

BillWojo
 
Thanks a lot Bill, I really appreciate it.
The Simply Italy is actually Italian. It was me who fed it with those Chinese tubes, replacing the Tung Sol that came with it.
Yes, maybe it's time to try some NOS tubes, in which case I think I would go with the Mullards. I see there are several models on sell in ebay. Do you know if there's some specific model / origin / year of production I should keep an eye on?
Cheers, Federico
 
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