[prepress]

I did move my speaker cables to the 4-ohm taps on my MC501s as threatened, and it has been great! It's as though I upgraded a component almost. I did replace one pair of my banana-terminated Kimber 12TC with one having spade terminations to accomplish this, however.

The lower frequency sound has filled in without affecting the highs in any discernible (to me) way. The sound is fuller, the bottom has good weight, and I'm pleased. I even hear more detail in the lower frequencies than before in some material. With that, the idea to revisit the other tubes I have here has arisen again. I've started going back to read what I said in previous posts about other tubes I tried before the Black Diamonds I use now, trying to gain some insight on whether to leave things alone or not. What this tube experimenting has been about is getting a sound I liked, not the most "accurate" one as such. I have six tube varieties here, but will not go though all six, that's unnecessary in my view.

Meantime, while I review previous comments, both mine and others', what is it about the Gold Lion 12AX7 tubes that make them so popular in particular? I did make comments about them having a more balanced sound frequency-wise in my previous setup, but welcome other opinions, since others will have different ears and systems. The main differences in my system now are the power cord changes, the pre/power interconnects, and running the speakers off the same 501 tap. It's possible a different result will come.