Stephe, Thank you for another very good video. Given the low availability of the now out of production Shuguang Treasure 300B-Z, and also the high pricing of the current production version of the Western Electric 300B, another good tube to consider would be the Czech KR 300B.
I appreciate a comparison of tubes in a specific circuit/operating conditions with some measurement to augment listening impressions. As opposed to the many internet opinions that have way to many variables to be of practical value. Kudos.
Stephe, this one is going to ruffle some feathers! I love it. The Hi-Fi world needs honesty and integrity right now. You are pulling no punches!!! I have so much faith in your ideas, engineering, findings. Keep up the good work! Keep knocking down those ivory towers! 😂
In some areas you definitely get what you paid for. I found in the audio world it almost seems like that is seldom the case. There's an absolute diminishing returns. I enjoy the fact that you offer subjective opinion as well as objective testing. I especially like that you perform the subjective test before the objective test. Thank you for that. They may not be the same as what you have but I did find the 300B-Z on Amazon amazingly. As well as parts connection like you said
Thanks for another great video review combing subjective and objective testing... Merry Christmas, you now have an extra $1,500 to spend on presents instead of WE tubes!
So interesting :) I humbly suggest you try some Monteverdi Madrigals in addition to your usual testing fair. Very clean and pure with rich dissonances and varied resolution. You'll find them in vinyl or stream, 9 famous "books" made over a lifetime, something in there you will love.
I had watched this a while back, but it was on a mobile device. I waited to respond until I had a keyboard in front of me, but anyway, THIS comparison just put an ear to ear smile on my face and to reiterate as another pointed out below, you don't always get what you pair for in the audiophile realm. This is a great example of that. Here you pay through the nose for, what supposedly are the best, 300b tubes out there. Yet, the Chinese ones beat them out by a long shot and are no where near the price. This was something I knew all along with speakers as I had always felt that the higher you go in price, the more seldom it is that you get what you pay for. I am also a believer in diminishing returns and I really don't think you are going to get dramatic increases in performance with esoteric speakers that cost 10's of thousands of dollars or even more. Heck, I have seen some speakers cost more than $100,000! But one has to think how much better is that over a speaker that costs $10,000 or even $1000? It is very subjective too. Yes, I have heard speakers in the over $1000 to $3000 range, and I was hard pressed to say they were much better than speakers I heard in the $300 to $500 range. But getting back to the tubes here. This is one reason why Skunkie's channel has become one of my favorite places to come to when it comes to learning more about tube audio. She really gets into the details and measuring. She tests both the old analog way and then using the computer. The proof is right there. As it is, I am very much interested in building her EL34 amplifier design, but with perhaps having the capability to also run KT-88's. This was a GREAT comparison! Even though it is doubtful I would ever build a 300b amp, at least I know now which tubes to use. Or rather which ones to avoid.
Been waiting for this. Thank you! I noticed the WE datasheet recommends ac powered heaters, which I found interesting. That said I doubt I’ll run out and buy a pair. 14:46
Yeah, maybe AC heaters change things a lot? Or maybe they need a different operating point? I know a lot of 300B amps use some sort of DC heaters and AC heaters can create other problems. I just wanted to report on these tubes that were lent to me to try.
Thanks to this review I ordered a pair of the Shuguang NOS Treasure 300B-Zs, which should arrive some time next week. I have an OldChen 845A Class A Standard Version, fitted with a pair each 6SN7s, 300Bs and 845s, all entry-level Psvanes. Earlier I replaced the stock 6SN7s with a pair of Shuguang CV181-Z black bottles. Sound improvement was instantaneous: deeper bass, fruitier mids and smoother highs with no loss of details. I guess the 300Bs in my OldChen serve as an intermediate amplification stage. Thus I wonder whether upgrading those would bring improvements as obvious as replacing the pre-stage ones. Your expert comment would be appreciated.
@@SkunkieDesignsElectronics I'm really looking forward to plugging in those SG 300Bs to listen. Stephy, thanks for introducing affordable products to enhance audio enjoyment for the average guy. Clearly the $1,500 pair of genuine WE tubes are beyond my means.
Thanks Stephe.. Charles from WE should see this.. I just upgraded to those 300B Black Glass Shuggies a couple of months ago (from very old standard Shuggies..)
Kool stuff Stephe, I have a few different 300B's, Full Music, Psvane, KR, and EML's. I've been wanting to try the repo WE's but haven't yet. Maybe I'll skip em. Anyway my faves are the KR and EML's. I have 5 pairs of EML 300B and 2A3 tubes that I bought from George over the year. To me they always sound and perform the best. (the KR's are 20 years old and perform and sound like new) Giddy Up
Great test. How about an episode on testing the main 300B tubes available, at different price ranges. I have Shuguang (they made Golden Dragon I think) 300B tubes on my amp and they still work, though weaker but ok after more than 15 years of regular use.. I've just bought a pair of Psvane to replace them. I'm curious to see the difference. Great work Skunkie.
I already paid $1499 for a pair of Western Electric 300B production tube before I watch this video. Hopefully they work on my Decware Sarah. I wish I watched your video earier.
Maybe on your Decware there will be more of a difference? Love to hear your feedback. Maybe it's just that these suggie 300B-Z tubes are just this good?
I tried the WE300b as driver tubes in my Cayin CS845a. They are the worst performing 300b driver tubes I’ve ever tried. They yield about twice the distortion as the others I’ve tried. Others include stock cheap shugang, elrog 300b and linlai we300b. I kept the WE tubes thinking they might be good performers if I ever built an amp like yours where they are output instead of drivers tubes.
Bought some 2A-3 Shuguang (10) in 1993 from New Sensor if I recollect. Still have (8) of those functioning tubes.I think they were about 5 or 6 bucks apiece back then if you bought 10. Good value? They sound fine.
Hi Stephe! Shame about the the perdy blue Shugies! What's up with their consistency? Maybe they hand-picked this pair they sent you, based on the dreadful performance we all found out about the blue ones?
Hi Stephe. I own quite a few 300B tubes, including the Western Electric new production and the Takatsuki TA-300B, and it's the Takatsuki that's my go-to 300B tube. It would be fabulous if you could get hold of a pair of the Taks so you can try them. I'd be very interested as to what you think of them. BTW, here is Australia, it's definitely a case of sticker shock, as the Taks are even more expensive than the WEs.
Boy oh boy you’re going to tick off the Golden Ear crowd from Audiogon among other places. What you speak is Audio HERESY on par with the reviews from Audio Science Review. Thanks, and keep up the good work!
I wonder how the ShuGuang and WE tubes used in this comparison would compare emission wise in a valve tester. Maybe the WE tubes had a few more hours on them.
This is quite concerning! Maybe their filament design causes uneven heating on DC? I have a friend that built the Elekit TU-8900 and got WE 300B... I need to have him stop by and put it on the Analog Discovery!
There are a lot of variables here and no, I do not plan on building a special amp to try to figure out if and how these tubes need to be setup to work well.
I find it hard to be definitive about the quality of a brand of tubes from testing just one pair of each. There are quite wide variations in the characteristics of each tube so you'd need many samples to be confident your sample is representative of the population (ie all the 300B tubes produced and sold by the brand).
So as an end user, how many pairs should you be required to buy to find a good sounding pair if this is the case? I would hope a $1500 pair of tubes would have a high enough QC that there wouldn't be wildly different sample variation?
@@SkunkieDesignsElectronics - there really isn't an easy answer to that question (ie how many samples would it take?)! Paying $1,500 might mean they have such high quality control that there is little difference between pairs. But how safe is that assumption? And then there are the Shuggis... How lucky might you have been with your pair? How much variation might there be in sale stock of those tubes? If you got very lucky then many others might be worse than the WE tubes... I'm not trying to be difficult - just trying to remember what my statistics teacher taught me.
I dodged another bullet, as I was very close to buying WE300B tubes! Have you measured/listened to Gold Lion PX300B tubes? ($200). I think it sounds great.
The owner of these tubes have listened to them for months, this was not a fresh out of the box set of tubes. That said, I'm not sure if they have had 500 hours put on them. And like I said in the video, maybe they only work with AC heaters or need a different operating point to sing?
@@SkunkieDesignsElectronics cool. i just finished a 300B amp that I designed. I'm using AC heaters via 5V center-tapped power transformers and the hum is imperceptible. you have to put your ear to the speaker to hear just the slightest hum. so DC is not required to get hum-free SE 300B output.
I had a pair of matches 300B WE nos. Was paired with cary audio 300b sei integrated amp. I can honestly tell you that one of the worse sounding 300b I have ever used. Sold then just 1000$ then I bought a Sofia pair 300 B. Mine blowing performance. Pie cost was 450$. WE 300 I have tried with my friends Audio note amp as well but it was bad NOS. Matched pair , But waste of money. I wonder why people Pay for 4000$ plus for WE.
Just curious ...as although I appreciate 300b tubes are renowned for being sonically impressive, if not some of the best tubes out there...but often are also very expensive to replace or tube roll etc, etc Therefore subjectively - from your experience - what tubes configuration would you suggest...as being the best low cost " bang for the bucks" configurations and set up for say a small minimalistic 5watts integrated circuit?
![ว้าว!ลุงบีมแบกทองมารับขวัญหลานกันยกบ้าน [cc] แดนแพทตี้ SS2 | EP.49 |](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Osihq1OAs-4/mqdefault.jpg)
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 76 | คู่เอก "ผึ้งหลวง vs สมิงดำ"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/9SBshmGQOIM/mqdefault.jpg)
Stephe, Thank you for another very good video. Given the low availability of the now out of production Shuguang Treasure 300B-Z, and also the high pricing of the current production version of the Western Electric 300B, another good tube to consider would be the Czech KR 300B.
I'm about to do a video on a 300B tube shoot out!
I appreciate a comparison of tubes in a specific circuit/operating conditions with some measurement to augment listening impressions. As opposed to the many internet opinions that have way to many variables to be of practical value. Kudos.
Excited to get my Shuggies and get my 300b Amp going!
Stephe, this one is going to ruffle some feathers! I love it. The Hi-Fi world needs honesty and integrity right now. You are pulling no punches!!! I have so much faith in your ideas, engineering, findings. Keep up the good work! Keep knocking down those ivory towers! 😂
Wow, thank you!
In some areas you definitely get what you paid for. I found in the audio world it almost seems like that is seldom the case. There's an absolute diminishing returns. I enjoy the fact that you offer subjective opinion as well as objective testing. I especially like that you perform the subjective test before the objective test. Thank you for that.
They may not be the same as what you have but I did find the 300B-Z on Amazon amazingly. As well as parts connection like you said
Yeah those Amazon versions are what I use. I added a link, thanks!
Thanks for another great video review combing subjective and objective testing... Merry Christmas, you now have an extra $1,500 to spend on presents instead of WE tubes!
So interesting :) I humbly suggest you try some Monteverdi Madrigals in addition to your usual testing fair. Very clean and pure with rich dissonances and varied resolution. You'll find them in vinyl or stream, 9 famous "books" made over a lifetime, something in there you will love.
Great suggestion!
I had watched this a while back, but it was on a mobile device. I waited to respond until I had a keyboard in front of me, but anyway, THIS comparison just put an ear to ear smile on my face and to reiterate as another pointed out below, you don't always get what you pair for in the audiophile realm. This is a great example of that. Here you pay through the nose for, what supposedly are the best, 300b tubes out there. Yet, the Chinese ones beat them out by a long shot and are no where near the price. This was something I knew all along with speakers as I had always felt that the higher you go in price, the more seldom it is that you get what you pay for. I am also a believer in diminishing returns and I really don't think you are going to get dramatic increases in performance with esoteric speakers that cost 10's of thousands of dollars or even more. Heck, I have seen some speakers cost more than $100,000! But one has to think how much better is that over a speaker that costs $10,000 or even $1000? It is very subjective too. Yes, I have heard speakers in the over $1000 to $3000 range, and I was hard pressed to say they were much better than speakers I heard in the $300 to $500 range. But getting back to the tubes here. This is one reason why Skunkie's channel has become one of my favorite places to come to when it comes to learning more about tube audio. She really gets into the details and measuring. She tests both the old analog way and then using the computer. The proof is right there. As it is, I am very much interested in building her EL34 amplifier design, but with perhaps having the capability to also run KT-88's. This was a GREAT comparison! Even though it is doubtful I would ever build a 300b amp, at least I know now which tubes to use. Or rather which ones to avoid.
Been waiting for this. Thank you! I noticed the WE datasheet recommends ac powered heaters, which I found interesting. That said I doubt I’ll run out and buy a pair. 14:46
Yeah, maybe AC heaters change things a lot? Or maybe they need a different operating point? I know a lot of 300B amps use some sort of DC heaters and AC heaters can create other problems. I just wanted to report on these tubes that were lent to me to try.
Thanks to this review I ordered a pair of the Shuguang NOS Treasure 300B-Zs, which should arrive some time next week. I have an OldChen 845A Class A Standard Version, fitted with a pair each 6SN7s, 300Bs and 845s, all entry-level Psvanes. Earlier I replaced the stock 6SN7s with a pair of Shuguang CV181-Z black bottles. Sound improvement was instantaneous: deeper bass, fruitier mids and smoother highs with no loss of details. I guess the 300Bs in my OldChen serve as an intermediate amplification stage. Thus I wonder whether upgrading those would bring improvements as obvious as replacing the pre-stage ones. Your expert comment would be appreciated.
I would expect they will!
@@SkunkieDesignsElectronics I'm really looking forward to plugging in those SG 300Bs to listen. Stephy, thanks for introducing affordable products to enhance audio enjoyment for the average guy. Clearly the $1,500 pair of genuine WE tubes are beyond my means.
Thanks Stephe.. Charles from WE should see this.. I just upgraded to those 300B Black Glass Shuggies a couple of months ago (from very old standard Shuggies..)
I have a lot of extreme value audio equipment that I paid little or nothing for. the price of this stuff nowadays is amazing. great video. thanks
Thanks for your honest and useful info. It really helps me.
Kool stuff Stephe, I have a few different 300B's, Full Music, Psvane, KR, and EML's. I've been wanting to try the repo WE's but haven't yet. Maybe I'll skip em. Anyway my faves are the KR and EML's. I have 5 pairs of EML 300B and 2A3 tubes that I bought from George over the year. To me they always sound and perform the best. (the KR's are 20 years old and perform and sound like new) Giddy Up
Yeah, some EML 300B tubes are on my wish list!
Hello
Thank you very much - I was waiting for the information.
Kind regards
Henry
I use 45 tubes for 1.5 watts/channel and they work great.
Would like to see Western Electric make EL34 tubes.
I wish you have Takatsuki as well there. Will be very interesting review! Thanks for great content!
Great test. How about an episode on testing the main 300B tubes available, at different price ranges. I have Shuguang (they made Golden Dragon I think) 300B tubes on my amp and they still work, though weaker but ok after more than 15 years of regular use.. I've just bought a pair of Psvane to replace them. I'm curious to see the difference. Great work Skunkie.
Yeah IDK if I have enough money to do that :)
Thank you for a very worthwhile review
Glad you enjoyed it!
I already paid $1499 for a pair of Western Electric 300B production tube before I watch this video. Hopefully they work on my Decware Sarah. I wish I watched your video earier.
Maybe on your Decware there will be more of a difference? Love to hear your feedback. Maybe it's just that these suggie 300B-Z tubes are just this good?
Thanks for the video! Hoping someone lends you some Cryotones and we get a video from you about them
Might want to take a look at PSvane for 300B's.
You really ought to try the JJ 300B tubes. I've also used Emission Labs tubes (45's, not 300B's) and they are spectacular.
Yeah I am thinking about getting a pair of JJ to try and first of the year getting a pair of EMLs
Hi Steph. If you can get a hold of some Psvane Acme 300B tubes… they are great tubes not cheap… but not as much as the WE.
I tried the WE300b as driver tubes in my Cayin CS845a. They are the worst performing 300b driver tubes I’ve ever tried. They yield about twice the distortion as the others I’ve tried. Others include stock cheap shugang, elrog 300b and linlai we300b. I kept the WE tubes thinking they might be good performers if I ever built an amp like yours where they are output instead of drivers tubes.
Bought some 2A-3 Shuguang (10) in 1993 from New Sensor if I recollect. Still have (8) of those functioning tubes.I think they were about 5 or 6 bucks apiece back then if you bought 10. Good value? They sound fine.
I think Dynaco, in the past, was so great mostly due to great output transformers.
The higher grade components in the amp, the easier it is to hear the differences in tubes.
Hi Stephe! Shame about the the perdy blue Shugies! What's up with their consistency? Maybe they hand-picked this pair they sent you, based on the dreadful performance we all found out about the blue ones?
These "Treasure" tubes seem to be much more consistent.
Hi Stephe. I own quite a few 300B tubes, including the Western Electric new production and the Takatsuki TA-300B, and it's the Takatsuki that's my go-to 300B tube. It would be fabulous if you could get hold of a pair of the Taks so you can try them. I'd be very interested as to what you think of them. BTW, here is Australia, it's definitely a case of sticker shock, as the Taks are even more expensive than the WEs.
We have the same price difference here in the US. Takatsuki 300B pairs sell for $1700-1800 US vs. $1500 for the WE's.
Boy oh boy you’re going to tick off the Golden Ear crowd from Audiogon among other places. What you speak is Audio HERESY on par with the reviews from Audio Science Review. Thanks, and keep up the good work!
Thanks for this video. Do you think I should have the output on my DAC on the high side and the input on my 300B amp lower or vice-versa?
I would try both and see which sounds better, there may be no difference.
Ebay has several Shuguang 300B pairs for $300. That should ease the pain of ownership.
I wonder how the ShuGuang and WE tubes used in this comparison would compare emission wise in a valve tester. Maybe the WE tubes had a few more hours on them.
Nah, they are fine and the suggies are a couple of years old used regularly,
This is quite concerning! Maybe their filament design causes uneven heating on DC? I have a friend that built the Elekit TU-8900 and got WE 300B... I need to have him stop by and put it on the Analog Discovery!
There are a lot of variables here and no, I do not plan on building a special amp to try to figure out if and how these tubes need to be setup to work well.
I find it hard to be definitive about the quality of a brand of tubes from testing just one pair of each. There are quite wide variations in the characteristics of each tube so you'd need many samples to be confident your sample is representative of the population (ie all the 300B tubes produced and sold by the brand).
I would think based on the price per pair, that there would be a higher level of expectation of consistency and quality for each pair purchased .
So as an end user, how many pairs should you be required to buy to find a good sounding pair if this is the case? I would hope a $1500 pair of tubes would have a high enough QC that there wouldn't be wildly different sample variation?
@@SkunkieDesignsElectronics - there really isn't an easy answer to that question (ie how many samples would it take?)!
Paying $1,500 might mean they have such high quality control that there is little difference between pairs. But how safe is that assumption?
And then there are the Shuggis... How lucky might you have been with your pair? How much variation might there be in sale stock of those tubes? If you got very lucky then many others might be worse than the WE tubes...
I'm not trying to be difficult - just trying to remember what my statistics teacher taught me.
I dodged another bullet, as I was very close to buying WE300B tubes! Have you measured/listened to Gold Lion PX300B tubes? ($200). I think it sounds great.
I've seen people saying they are good.
But the Shuggies don't come in a fancy, investment-grade, $1,200 wooden display box!
Thats a pretty amp
Thanks
WE states 500 hr burn-in. Was this taken into consideration?
The owner of these tubes have listened to them for months, this was not a fresh out of the box set of tubes. That said, I'm not sure if they have had 500 hours put on them. And like I said in the video, maybe they only work with AC heaters or need a different operating point to sing?
@@SkunkieDesignsElectronics cool. i just finished a 300B amp that I designed. I'm using AC heaters via 5V center-tapped power transformers and the hum is imperceptible. you have to put your ear to the speaker to hear just the slightest hum. so DC is not required to get hum-free SE 300B output.
I need to try this on my next 300B build.
@@SkunkieDesignsElectronics I'll share my schematic with you if you'd like to take a look.
I had a pair of matches 300B WE nos. Was paired with cary audio 300b sei integrated amp. I can honestly tell you that one of the worse sounding 300b I have ever used. Sold then just 1000$ then I bought a Sofia pair 300 B. Mine blowing performance. Pie cost was 450$.
WE 300 I have tried with my friends Audio note amp as well but it was bad
NOS. Matched pair , But waste of money. I wonder why people
Pay for 4000$ plus for WE.
Hi,
Have you changed anything else in the 300B amp except transformers?
At this point, no.
Saying it how it is. Even when China wins over USA products. Honest as always.
Right! And thanks for noticing it :) These shuggies are the bomb!
Try JJ 300b not too expensive,and sound good.
I do plan to try them! I know their EL34L tubes sound really good.
Do the valves measure similarly in a tester?
Yes and pull the same ma across the cathode resistor in this same amp.
Do you measure gm? Are the cathode resistors bypassed? Different power from the same input sounds like a mu issue@@SkunkieDesignsElectronics
Yeah cathode resistors are bypassed. The amp would make zero power if the output tube cathode resistors were unbypassed.
Don’t feel bad when marketing loses. 300Bs are some of the easiest tubes to make, the Chinese can make them just fine.
👍♥️🫂
Just curious ...as although I appreciate 300b tubes are renowned for being sonically impressive, if not some of the best tubes out there...but often are also very expensive to replace or tube roll etc, etc
Therefore subjectively - from your experience - what tubes configuration would you suggest...as being the best low cost " bang for the bucks" configurations and set up for say a small minimalistic 5watts integrated circuit?
This is why I am building a 12AX7/EL34 amp for production.