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In the Forum: Analog Playback
In the Thread: The LCR RIAA correctors
Post Subject: Dinosaurs?Posted by twogoodears on: 11/10/2009
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 Romy the Cat wrote:

How difficult is it to find 437As good enough for a phonostage? For commercial applications is it a dead tube. WE might produce it again when they stated to redo the tubes but the existence of the Russian 6C45P pretty much killed the idea. For none-commercial applications it is a fine tube and if somebody has some stash of them then why do not use them?  And hard to get them new, they are expensive and mostly those 437A that let go are the noisy one, why would anyone sell good 437A?

It would be interesting to learn how much the 437A is better then 6C45P. The 6C45P are OK if they drive a lot of current. If do not use the stupid pulse version that everyone look like use and find them from 60s than the 6C45P might work out. I afraid that to find the 6C45P from 50s would be as hard as to find the 437A.  I do not know anyone who used 437A in phono. I think in Stefano case the 437A in input stage and output stage would behave differently.  Give him a few months and I am sure he will experiment with 437A, 417A, 6C45P, 3A/167M in different configuration and will decide what to use. Output tube in Thomas Mayer phono might be pretty much anything.

The Cat



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.

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

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.
 
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!"

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

A final consideration: it's a long, long way I feel me a dinosaur: open-reel recorders, tapes, vinyl, vintage in musical instruments, down to breweing my own beer, smoking pipe and cigars and being still able to wear (and make a knot at ) a bow-tie;-)... old tubes using and collecting it's only a cherry on the cake: I guess I stood for worst during my path;-)   

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