Comments on Profile Post by Changeling

Why? I'm curious

Channel imbalance indicates a dying tube, avoid them.

@Xecuter http://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/new-schiit-vali-2-discussion-thread.789/page-36#post-123681
@gurubhai Not necessarily. It also indicates unmatched sections/triodes. See discussion in link above.

Depends on the amp and how it is biasing. If you run something that is more than 15% out on most DHT you will hear an imbalance across the channels. I also once accidentally put a telefunken next to a valvo in my sfd-1.. embarrassingly it took me about a week to notice something was off. These difference are pretty subtle though.

@Xecuter Yeah, exactly. Is it reasonable to sell tubes at full price with a mismatch causing potential imbalance? I'm not sure I think customers should have to pay extra for matched triodes...
Upscale does it for free. Others charge extra.

The thing is to get a matched pair within 1% if you have a batch of 300 tubes. Would take a few hours. My friend has 10k 2a3 tubes. To get a tightly matched quad takes him a few hours at least of testing.
If it is a loose match, obviously no charge should be incurred, but if it is a super tight pair I think some vendors feel they should chage for their time.

@Xecuter Fair point.

I think selling tubes that are not matched as "pairs" on ebay, should incur some sort of punishment. Haha

@Xecuter exactly!

What I meant was that if the tube section are mismatched enough to cause obvious channel imbalance then its probably going to fail soon.