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Shuguang Treasure KT88s In McIntosh MC75s

Victor

Victor

Super Member
I took Rachel and Ian up on their offer for discounted Shuguang Treasure tubes, as promised I'm posting this thread to discuss my experience with the tubes.

I received 4 Shuguang Treasure KT88 Grade A tubes 3 days ago. The tubes came in a nice heavy cardboard box that (most importantly) is well padded with about an inch of foam surrounding the tubes.

For reference purpose here is a detailed rundown of my system:

Source: McIntosh MS750 music server, coax digital output used.
DAC: McIntosh MDA1000
Preamp: McIntosh C22 from the new 60th anniversary set.
Amps: 2-McIntosh MC75 also from the 60th set, they are about a year old.
Speakers: B&W Signature Diamond, 2 way floor stand speakers.
Power Conditioner: Shunyata Hydra 8
XLR Interconnects: Tara Labs The 0.8 ISM
Digital Interconnect: Guerrilla coax
Speaker Wires: MIT Oracle V2.1
Power Cables on amps: PS Audio Power Punch
Power Cables (all others): Shunyata Python

The amps are plugged directly into the wall and everything else is plugged in the Shunyata. My room is 19x26 and well treated with 20-2x4 GIK panels and 8-8 foot half round traps from Acoustics First.

Stay tuned for my initial impressions.
 

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:banana:WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can you take some more pics? We need to see all of that rig. I take it that the KT88's 4 are replacing the O/P originals on the MC75's. Please give us an update on the results.
 
Initial Impressions

I've had the tubes playing for about 90 hours now so it's time to post some initial impressions on the tubes.

I've had my MC75 amps for about a year and have only used the stock tubes in them until now. The stock tubes are McIntosh labeled SED Winged C KT88 tubes. The small tubes in the amps are 1-12AX7 and 2-12AT7 each amp. The small tubes are labeled McIntosh also and I have no idea who makes these tubes. As with most McIntosh amps my MC75s are a fixed bias design so don't expect any talk about bias from my posts here.

First there is the unusual look of these tubes with the black coating inside the Shuguang Treasure tubes. I prefer the look of the stock tubes but this is no big deal to me. You can see the stock tubes and the Treasure tubes in the pics in the first post and decide which you like the look of.

As for the fit and finish of the tubes, one of the tubes has less of a black coating on the inside of the tube. On this tube I can see that it has round holes in the plates inside the tubes, I can't see the holes in any of the other tubes. Other than this issue the tubes appear to be well crafted beautiful tubes.

Once I got the new tubes in my amps the first thing I noticed is they seem to be putting out much less heat than the stock tubes. This is a big deal for me because the heat from tube amps is one of my least favorite things about tube amps. The amps are on the bottom shelf of my rack with the top of the tubes 7 inches from the shelf above them. With a thermometer 5 inches above the tubes in the middle of the rack I'm getting a reading of 92 degrees. With the thermometer at the front of the rack I'm getting a reading of 76 degrees. Next time I put the stock tubes back in I'll see what this reading is with the stock tubes.
 
Sasquatch2 said:
:banana:WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can you take some more pics? We need to see all of that rig. I take it that the KT88's 4 are replacing the O/P originals on the MC75's. Please give us an update on the results.
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Thanks for the WOW. It is a great system and I feel VERY luck to have it to enjoy every day.

I'll take some more pic and get them posted in a day or 2 for you.

Yes the tubes are replacing the tubes that came with my MC75s, see previous post for details. Stay tuned for listening impressions, I'll post my early listening results Saturday or Sunday.
 
What a great looking system ! I bet you have many friends that pop by and don't leave until they have played all their music :)

Cheers and thanks for the great pics. Look forward to your thoughts on how they break-in and sound on your MC75 amps. Auto or manual bias?

Ian
 
iGrant said:
What a great looking system ! I bet you have many friends that pop by and don't leave until they have played all their music :)
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It's always fun when friends come over. I encourage everyone to bring their music over but with over 1900 CDs on my music server there is always plenty of great music to choose from.

iGrant said:
Auto or manual bias?
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Neither, it's fixed bias. McIntosh says tube matching is not vitally important with their amps but I like the idea of using matched tubes. The fixed bias circuit is nice from the no maintenance point of view. I do wish the amps were manual bias so I could keep them fine tuned.
 
Initial Listening Impressions

I now feel I have enough time on the new KT88 Shuguang Treasure tubes to give my initial listening impressions. The tubes have been on and playing 24/7 since I received them on Monday with the exception of turning them off Wednesday night. The tubes have about 110 hours playing time on them.

First Day: I put the new tubes in on Monday, after playing for an hour I gave the system a listen just to make sure everything was operating normally. With only an hour on the tubes the sound was very harsh. Stan Getz sax playing sounded brittle and distorted. This was no surprise, we all know tubes need break in time. I did not do any other serious listening the first day.

Second Day: Tuesday with 24 hours playing time on the tubes things were starting to sound much better. The initial harshness was gone and they were just playing beautiful music. I knew the tubes would still be breaking in at this point so I did not do much listening on Tuesday.

Third Day: Now with 50 hours on the tubes I sat back for some serious listening. They are really starting to sound good at this point. The stock SED tubes that were in my amps are generally thought of as being pretty good tubes so I did not expect to hear a major improvement. I started listening to the new Audio Fidelity Yes 90125 CD and the first thing I noticed is the major amount of echo and reverb in Owner Of A Lonely Heart. The snare drum and vocals on this song had more decay time than I remembered hearing. This tells me that the Shuguang Treasure tubes have more detail than the SED tubes. I continued to hear echo and reverb in recordings where I never noticed this before. Added detail often comes with added harshness, not so in this case. The Treasure tubes had a smooth detailed sound with no harshness and did not give me any listener fatigue with a long listen. Everything sounds great with loads of detail, guitar strings and cymbals have a texture to them that makes it sound like they are in the room with you.

50-110 Hours: With more listening over the next few days I just heard more of the same without any other major changes in the sound. So far I'm very pleased with the new tubes, they sound better than I expected.

Keep in mind I have not heard the stock tubes for a week and I'm going by memory of the sound. I'm planning on doing some comparisons with the new Shuguang Treasure and the stock SED tubes tomorrow.
 
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Listening Impressions After A Day Of Comparisons

I put the stock SED KT88 tubes back in my amps today for a comparison. I put the tubes in and let them play for 2 hours before doing the comparisons.

First thing I compared was the heat the tubes put out. As I posted in the 3rd post in this thread, I initially thought the Shuguang Treasure tubes were putting out less heat than the stock SED tubes. After checking both sets of tubes with a thermometer the temp readings were about the same.

I took some db readings and found the Shuguang Treasure tubes play about 1-2db louder than the stock tubes.

Now for the listening impressions. To put it plain and simple, the Shuguang Treasure tubes had a smoother more detailed sound.

When playing Yes-Owner Of A Lonely Heart, the snare drum sounds like it is in a box with the stock tubes, with the Treasure tubes the snare drum sounds like you are standing right next to it. When playing Marianne Faithfull-Working Class Hero with the Treasure tubes, right at the beginning of the song there is a whirling sound in the left side that sounds like it is being played through a rotary speaker, with the stock tubes I can not hear this detail. On Led Zeppelin-Friends the guitar strings sound a little muted with the stock tubes but they are crystal clear with the Treasure tubes.

The most telling thing is my listening habits since I put the Treasure tubes in my amps. I have been up late every night listening since I put the tubes in having fun listening. I keep thinking "just one more song and then I'll go to bed". When I put the stock tubes back in for a test, I found myself turning the system down.

These Shuguang Treasure KT88 tubes are keepers, I highly recommend them for anyone using KT88 tubes.
 
I have a quad of the 6ca7's and have been enjoying them also. If you want some more fun try rolling out the 12ax7s with their TJ Full music tubes.
 
ruffian said:
I have a quad of the 6ca7's and have been enjoying them also. If you want some more fun try rolling out the 12ax7s with their TJ Full music tubes.
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I was going to order 4 of the TJ Full Music 12AX7 tubes for my preamp and amps when I ordered the Treasure tubes but they were out of stock.

Some people say the small tubes make more of a sonic improvement than the power tubes in McIntosh amps. Now that I heard some nice improvements with the Shuguang Treasure KT88 tubes I'm going to upgrade the other tubes for sure. I just have to decide if I should go with the TJ Full Music 12AX7s or the EAT tubes.
 
Dammit Victor, now I've got to have me some of them Treasure Tubes for my RITA!!!

So Ian, buddy, what kind of a discount am I looking at here? Gold Card member, RITA-880 owner, AK Member, and 2009 Grant Fidelity Customer of the Year (I just threw that last one in there, but it looked good), etc......

:D




Retro
 
Retro Stereo said:
Dammit Victor, now I've got to have me some of them Treasure Tubes for my RITA!!!

So Ian, buddy, what kind of a discount am I looking at here? Gold Card member, RITA-880 owner, AK Member, and 2009 Grant Fidelity Customer of the Year (I just threw that last one in there, but it looked good), etc......

:D




Retro
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check your PM please. thank you for your past support of our business :) Greatly appreciated and we will certainly take good care of our valued customer.
 
Okay, here's what I have on order, and I'll start a new thread for the RITA-880 when I get them.

Replace stock Electro Harmonics KT88 with Shuguang Treasure black bottle KT88-Z (2 pairs)

Replace stock Electro Harmonics 6SN7 with Shuguang Treasure black bottle CV181-Z (1 pair)

Replace stock Russian 6SL7 with TJ Full Music 6SL7 Grade A (1 pair)



Retro
 
Retro Stereo said:
Okay, here's what I have on order, and I'll start a new thread for the RITA-880 when I get them.

Replace stock Electro Harmonics KT88 with Shuguang Treasure black bottle KT88-Z (2 pairs)

Replace stock Electro Harmonics 6SN7 with Shuguang Treasure black bottle CV181-Z (1 pair)

Replace stock Russian 6SL7 with TJ Full Music 6SL7 Grade A (1 pair)



Retro
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Yesterday I did the same basic roll on the RITA-340 and really liked the results, even with all brand new tubes, you could hear a big step up in quality of sound. I was surprised, I didn't think there could be anyway to dramatically improve the Ritas. Of course Rachel took my pair of TJ 6SL7's to send to you, they have 3 hours on them, so I'll be on hold again trying to get 300 hours on the Treasure tubes.

The TJ 6SL7's sound thin until about 40 hours, then they open up big time.

I look forward to what you have to say about any sonic improvements, the other Rita owners that have upgraded don't do forums and I never got more than 10 hours on the RITA-880 before the tubes got shipped off. So I don't really know what the results are !!

Hi Victor,

I think all tubes add to the sonic signature, all being kind of equal. The pre-amp tubes usually offer the most bang for the buck as they have a large gain stage. Like many things, garbage in garbage out, any so-so sounding tube is going to reduce the performance of the great tubes in your system.

The TJ and Treasure tubes do seem to compliment each other and result in great synergy.

Cheers,
Ian
 
Retro Stereo said:
Dammit Victor, now I've got to have me some of them Treasure Tubes for my RITA!!!
Click to expand...


Retro Stereo said:
Okay, here's what I have on order, and I'll start a new thread for the RITA-880 when I get them.

Replace stock Electro Harmonics KT88 with Shuguang Treasure black bottle KT88-Z (2 pairs)

Replace stock Electro Harmonics 6SN7 with Shuguang Treasure black bottle CV181-Z (1 pair)

Replace stock Russian 6SL7 with TJ Full Music 6SL7 Grade A (1 pair)
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I'm confident you will be thanking me once you hear your system with the new tubes in it.

I generally think of McIntosh equipment as not being greatly affected by what tube is used. I did not expect a huge difference in the sound with the Shuguang Treasure tubes in my MC75s. While the difference with the new tubes was not HUGE, it was a much bigger improvement than I expected. Now that I've heard the difference I'm sorry I waited so long to give new tubes a try.

When you get the new tubes I would recommend putting them in and letting your system play for 24 hours before doing any listening. Once the tubes have 24 hours on them they really started sounding good in my system.

I'm looking forward to hearing your results with all the new tubes.
 
iGrant said:
Hi Victor,

I think all tubes add to the sonic signature, all being kind of equal. The pre-amp tubes usually offer the most bang for the buck as they have a large gain stage. Like many things, garbage in garbage out, any so-so sounding tube is going to reduce the performance of the great tubes in your system.

The TJ and Treasure tubes do seem to compliment each other and result in great synergy.

Cheers,
Ian
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Thanks again Ian for the opportunity to try the Shuguang Treasure KT88 tubes in my system.

I did end up just getting 2 EAT 12AX7 tubes which I put in my preamp. I'm still interested in hearing the TJ Full Music tubes, are they back in stock yet?
 
Victor said:
I'm still interested in hearing the TJ Full Music tubes, are they back in stock yet?
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Not yet... TJ Full Music is moving their factory now after their long new year holidays - it will take a couple of weeks to have production back to normal.. Our order is in but still waiting...stock status will be updated on our website timely.
 
GrantFidelity said:
Not yet... TJ Full Music is moving their factory now after their long new year holidays - it will take a couple of weeks to have production back to normal.. Our order is in but still waiting...stock status will be updated on our website timely.
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Thanks for the update. Send me a PM when you get them in, I'll either take 2 or 4 (have not decided yet).
 
Victor, I'm using the Treasures (KT-88) in my A-88 GF amp, along with the TJ Full Music 12AX7's and some Sylvania NOS (early 50's) for the 6SN7's (the treasure equivalent will not fit the A-88 - tube width problem).

Ian had said it would be more of an upgrade than a tube roll and he was 100% on the money. It's like listening to a totally different amp ( I use a McIntosh MVP861 as my source and switch between Totem Hawks and Energy Veritas 2.2i's for my speakers).

The Treasures and TJ Full Music are great tubes and IMO are a no brainer to pick up.
 
Great info. I'm planning a KT88 amp build, and these will be high on my list of tubes to consider.
 
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