Replacement EF86 - quiet / low microphonic

[DesignTaylor]

I cleaned all the contacts on my tubes tonight (the Winged “C” set and the Holland Westinghouse set) to see if that made a difference. ALso cleaned the terminals (lightly). I might have picked up a little performance on both but the stock tubes (which do sound robust) still have just as much background noise as ever.

The Westinghouse are starting to sound better to me. Maybe they are breaking in or maybe they get along better with the Nagaoka MP-110 cart I just swapped back in (with a new AT-HS10SV headshell).

Too many variables to isolate. I have some more EF86s NOS tubes on the way that I bought in a lot for fun. We'll see.

In my ongoing quest for low background noise, I had already been considering a AT VM540ML cart which I may be getting closer to pulling the trigger on. It's only money, right?

 

[DesignTaylor]

I picked up a few more tubes to try out. So far my favorites are the Mullards (branded Eico) mad in Great Britain. They have a lot of detail but still sport a strong sound and very low background noise. I think to summarize my experience, the right set of tubes made all the difference in terms of sound quality and noise. Very happy with the whole package right now.