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Hands-on listening reviews of more than 500 vacuum tubes and pieces of audio gear, since 2005.
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Telefunken tubes from the classic Berlin and Ulm era carry a production date — you just have to know how to read it. Two different systems were used: a two-letter code on tubes made from 1930 through 1968, and a seven-character numeric code that replaced it at the end of the 1960s. This page explains both, lets you decode a tube in seconds, and includes a cleaned-up, cross-checked version of the full two-letter chart.
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The EIA code is usually followed by a four-digit date code in a year-year-week-week format. For example, 322 6104-1 means Tung-Sol (322), made in 1961 (61), week 4 (04). The trailing digit after the dash is a shift or line code and doesn’t affect the date. On a tube marked 274 5823, read it as RCA, 1958, week 23. From around 1960 on, some makers switched to coded letter dates (for example KE 188-5 on GE tubes). These are harder to decode, but the EIA number next to them still tells you the maker.
Continue readingWill your amp really drive your speakers? A few watts can fill a room on efficient horns, yet run out of breath on small bookshelf speakers. This calculator shows where your setup lands in about a minute.
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I’ll admit it: I was becoming a Linlai fan. Their big triodes looked like props from a Jules Verne novel. The sculpted glass and elaborate plates suggested a company that was actually innovating instead of cloning dead Western Electric designs. Yes, the prices made my wallet wince, but I figured innovation costs money. So when a gold-pinned pair of Linlai Aurora 12AX7s arrived, I expected more of the same. Then I did what any self-respecting tube paranoiac does and went digging to find out whose glass this really is.
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Holo Audio named this DAC “Spring,” which is a fine name for a season, a mattress, or a bottled water, but not exactly a name that strikes fear into the hearts of competitors costing three times as much. It should. The Spring 3 KTE arrived in an unassuming box, weighed more than I expected, and within a week had quietly elbowed a much pricier converter off my rack and into the closet, where it now sulks.
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There’s a certain kind of amplifier that walks into your listening room, shakes your hand, says all the right things and leaves no fingerprints. You listen for a week, you nod politely, you smile at it the way you’d smile at a stranger at a bar. Pleasant company, nice conversation, and gone from memory before the coffee finishes brewing the next morning. I’ve reviewed plenty of those. The Kenwood L-07M is not one of them.
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Let’s get the unpleasant part out of the way first: the New York Audio Labs Moscode 600 is not a pretty amplifier. It looks like something bolted into a 1980s broadcast truck, or standing guard in the boiler room of a Brooklyn walk-up. A perforated metal cage hides the tubes, a fan hums along whether you need it or not, and the whole thing has the industrial charm of a toaster oven designed by a committee of electricians. If you buy hi-fi to impress the neighbors, keep walking. If you buy it to be moved by music, pull up a chair, because that ugly cage is hiding something beautiful.
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Let me start with the thing that will confuse you the moment you unpack it: the Bedini Model 66 Mk II has no power button. None. Not on the front panel, not on the back, not tucked under the chassis where I spent an embarrassing few minutes poking around with a flashlight. Plug it in and it’s on. Pull the plug and it’s off. Maybe Bedini decided a preamp sounds best when it never cools down. Maybe the switch fell off the parts order. Either way, this is the houseguest who never goes to bed, so plug it into a switched outlet on your power amp or conditioner — or make peace with it living its entire life “on.”
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When an amplifier arrives on my bench with one channel’s fuses not blown but gone, I don’t reach for music. I reach for the variac, the dim-bulb tester and a strong cup of coffee. A missing fuse is the audio equivalent of a used car with black tape over the check-engine light. Somebody knew something and decided you didn’t need to. So before I tell you how the Bedini 150/150 Mk II sounds, let me tell you that it very nearly didn’t get the chance.
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When I reviewed the Moscode 150, I closed by advising owners of power-hungry speakers to look at the bigger Moscode 300. Then I went and bought one. That is the occupational hazard of giving advice: sooner or later you hear yourself.
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