Hi Everyone,

I am new to the world of tube amplifiers for home audio. I recently replaced the KT88 stock tubes on my Primaluna Prologue II with EHX EL34s and wow!!!!. Here is my first review. I hope this will help you if you are looking for guidance about buying tubes on line. Check my blog out at: http://analogrevolution.wordpress.com/

One of the first things you experience when you get into analog audio is that you need to buy things from human beings and that you can’t rely solely on the impersonal channels of the internet. But I still love the internet! Otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this blog. It is great when you can find the best of both worlds through an on-line store that gives you access to a nearly infinite inventory run by people that will answer your questions and help you make the right choices. If you need to buy vacuum tubes you will need the best of both two worlds and my first experience with Tube Depot tells me I found the right place.

This is the first time I order from Tube Depot. I usually get my tubes from ebay or my local audio shop. I live in New York City where stores cannot afford to own warehouses of space and stock a wide array of tubes. Ebay is a good place for affordable, preowned tubes, but it is hit and miss and hard to get any technical advice from other newbies like you that are selling their preowned tubes on-line and you have no warranty if your tubes explode after you used them for the first time.

I am new to hi-fi tube amplification and I have the Primaluna Prologue II with a Project Phono Box II as my phono preamp and a Project Debut III turn table (reviews coming soon). I owned another tube amp and, as with the Primaluna, I always had different levels of hum/hiss noise coming through the speakers, I own Totem Dreamcatchers, when I was on the phono stage. My audio dealer told me it was the nature of tubes. My audio dealer was wrong!!!! I ordered new tubes from Tube Depot to replace the stock tubes on the Primaluna with Electro Harmonix 12ax7 and 12AU7s for preamp and the EL34 power tubes. I ordered the preamp tubes with Tube Depot’s low noise + microphonics test. Wow! The noise is gone with these new tubes!!!! My phono stage is as quite as any SE amplifier and all I can hear is awesome music!!!!

I am a guitar player and in the past I have replaced the stock tubes in my amps and pedals with

Electro Harmonix tubes (reviews coming soon). They really improved the tone and warmth of my music. This is my first time “tube rolling” for music listening and I am very happy with what the EHX EL34s do with my Primaluna. The Primaluna Prologue II comes with Chinese KT88 tubes. I found the stock KT88s a bit “loud” and the bass was too heavy and pronounced for my taste. I listen to Lenard Cohen, Nick Drake, Sigur Ross, Anthony and Johnsons and what I want out my system is a warmer more human sound. The EHX EL34s do just that. It is amazing what they do with my Primaluna and for about $50 for a matched quad you can’t go wrong. Jut as a side note, the Primalunas have an auto-biasing feature and they tell you you don’t need matched pairs anymore and it is true. I have tried un-matched tubes and they work great on the amp, but I find that a matched quad of out put tubes does make a difference in my listening, I hear a more balanced sound out of this amp with matched tubes.

What’s next? Well next I am going to try the EHX KT99s and sometime in the future I will take it to the next level and try to get some NOS Mullard EL34s and I have no doubt I will be buying my tubes from Tube Depot.