Tube update: Think I'm done tube-rolling with this Quicksilver monoblock, because the current configuration sounds positively stunning. I think I said that the Telefunken 12AX7 tube was an instant improvement in the input slot, but it even got a boost when I rolled a matched pair of bottle-looking JJ/Tesla KT88s into the outputs.

JJ/Teslas in particular seem to make this amp sing…before I settled on the KT88s, the other pair that impressed me were JJ/Tesla 6L6GCs. In between, I rolled in some vintage Russian military tubes shipped from Moldova (6P3S-Es; dull-sounding) as well as a pair of extremely hard-to-find EI KT90 v.IIIs from Serbia, which were s'posed to blow everything else away, but sounded a bit shrill to me even though they had hefty bass. (I'll probably sell them soon.) With the KT88s, I suddenly got the same feeling I got when I blundered into mid-fi by bi-wiring my former Totem Mite loudspeaker. Sometimes you're just experimenting, and voila! it feels perfect.