Telefunken 12at7 smooth plates

Telefunken 12at7 smooth plates

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“Regardless of what the Telefunken 12AT7s went into, they sounded consistent. The first thing people notice is that treble instruments are placed far back in the soundstage. In several rooms and systems, the hi hat on Peter Gabriel’s “Red Rain” and cymbals from Megadeth’s “Disconnect” were placed behind the plane of the speakers.” Read

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3 thoughts on “Telefunken 12at7 smooth plates

  1. I used this tube in McIntosh 275. It does improve things a bit, but it’s such a slight change that it might not worth the trouble for the majority of people. I’ve noticed that tubes in driver stage or cathode follower stage do not change sound that much at all. Did blind testing of these tubes with Raytheon 6414 and nobody could hear a difference. These are in the current amplification stage of the amp, so it’s as expected. From my experience, voltage amplification stages play the major role in SQ. Hard to explain.

  2. Well, all this talk about current vs voltage. I’ve been rolling a few 12at7s in McIntosh. Based on the schematics, on of them in each channel is for driver stage and the other one is for cathode follower. These tubes should not affect sound, but they do o_O. They don’t affect it significantly, not like the preamp tubes, but as soon as I remove Telefunken 12at7 and replace them with RCA 12at7 black plates or Raytheon 6414 black plates, I feel that I loose transparency. The music is as bright and happy, but it’s not as transparent. Now, I use warm sounding tubes in preamp (Sylvania GB 5751 & 2 Sylvania 12ax7) and replacing 12at7 with warmer sounding tubes just makes the whole thing even warmer. That’s possible, but I don’t feel that I loose warmth when I have Telefunkens in, but I do definitely feel that I loose transparency. Overall a fantastic tube with incredible details. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

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