Over the course of the past year I was very slowly experimenting to the sound of my headphone amp. I know much more about it sound then I knew last year and I learned a lot more how to get “different” sound from it. The more amps ages and the more I am familiarizing myself with its sound the more I hate this damn thing. I usually take a headphone amp at my work and listen though it during operation time but over the last year I find all imaginable justification not to do it. I made a number of changes with the amplifier trying to get out of it any more or less civilized sound but whatever I did made me more and more to hate this amp. Well, the smartest thing is to declare the entire project as a complete fiasco and to forget about it. So, I do…

Still, there are some afterthoughts that I feel are worth to share…

Now I know defiantly that the problem of this headphone amp was my selection of the 6C19P tube. The 6C19P is hell of a tube and it has a very good reputation in Russia. It is very linear, it has very low plate resistance and many Russians call it “baby 6C33C”, some even claim that 3 parallel 6C19P outperform one 6C33C. The Japanese love to use 6C19P for OTL,  of course it a very good regulator and have seen in US people use it in preamps… Wonderful tube, isn’t it?

http://www.tubes.ru/techinfo/GlassTubes/6c19pv.html

Well, the data looks very good, the audio on 6C19P measures OK but the reality of sound with this tube is a cleats and undeniable evidence that this tube should not be used for Sound under any circumstances. Probably in regulators it would be OK, I built a few regulators on it – was not impressed with their pound – but it was not the end d of the world. However, when you begin to drive actual sound via the tube then it acts as a nightmare. I never have head so harmonically stupid tube that juts push out a very high quality independent frequency without any understanding that those frequencies are part of Sound - no wonder that Russians love it. In other worlds the tube is sonic deserter and form what I have learned it should be avoided at all cost.