Velvety

There’s no dissension among audiophiles who have rediscovered vacuum tubes as a tool for audio amplification: Western Electric’s (WE) 300B is the finest ever made.

Its sonic is amazing, and my own ears confirmed this when a friend who went abroad for a brief vacation lent me an original NOS (new old stock) pair for use in my Cayin 9040D monoblock as drivers for the amplifiers’’ 845 output tubes. The WE 300Bs were claimed back as expected, and I regretted the day that I agreed to try them on. I felt their removal had left a cavernous hole in my system that my Full Music 300B just could not fill. I resorted to tweaking and fine-tuning my system to make up for whatever seemed sonically lost. The tweaks worked, and my system finally sounded closer to the quality that the WE 300B brought to it.

I thought that finally the difference was negligible and I had to be happy with it. Also, the WE 300B is something that I could not just have. The original costs more than $1,000 per piece, if you’re lucky to find one. The new production, which costs a little bit less, has not measured up to the sound quality of the original; but those who have fat wallets were nonetheless undeterred.

Gray & Barton, an electronics company before radio came onto the scene, introduced the 300B tubes in the 1800s to amplify telephone signals. In 1872 the company became Western Electric Manufacturing Company. Reorganized as the Western Electric Company in 1881, it was transformed a year later into a division of Bell Telephone.

From amplifying telephone signals, the 300B tubes found their way into other military equipment, amateur radio, movie theaters and power supplies as voltage regulators and more importantly for audio amplification where they became a cult. Alas, the last of the original WE 300B tube rolled off the assembly line in 1988.

The 300B tubes, when used in single-ended triode (SET) amplifiers, give high resolution audio an entirely different meaning especially when paired with loudspeakers with high sensitivity ratings. Durability — with an estimated life span of nearly 40,000 hours — and low distortion easily make WE 300B the most preferred. Such excellent sonic quality was what drove other tube makers to produce their own 300B versions; but many were found lacking.

The Shuguang Electronic Group Co. Ltd of China, formerly the First Ministry of Machinery Industry, has been producing different vacuum tubes for audio amplification since 1958. Its 300B tubes are one of the few brands that audiophiles seem to have a “crush” on. WE fanatics branded this preference as heresy. Despite this, Shuguang’s 300B manages to create its own disciples who profess that it is similar if not better than the WE 300B.  

In August last year, with fresh funds from UK’s venture capitalists and new tube designs from Shuguang engineers, a new series called “Psvane” (pronounced “Pavane”) was launched. The brand name was said to have drawn its inspiration from the 17th century classic music dance.

My first taste of Psvane 300B-T happened several weeks ago. Audio Amplified, the tubes’ local exclusive distributor, delivered them straight to my music room. From the tubes’ packaging, one can glean the progress China has made in its effort to conquer the audio world. The tube itself is uniquely colored in carbon black with a gold-plated base.

I installed them in my SET amplifiers and played low-volume music for an hour just to warm up my system. Tracks upon tracks of soulful, beautiful music came after. It felt like Jennifer Warnes was singing just a few meters away from where I was sitting. “Holographic” is how audiophiles describe such a musical phenomenon.

Remember how I had tuned my system to bring it closer to the excellent sonics introduced by my borrowed WE 300B? Psvane 300B-T raised my system several notches higher, not only filling a gaping hole, but making my cup runneth over. It made listening to Jennifer’s remarkable “The Well” vinyl album even more pleasurable. Psvane added more musical details, harmonics, lush mids, transients, dynamics and a well-defined soundstage.

Aside from “The Well,” I listened to more albums to test the Psvane’s dynamics: “James Newton Howard,” “Audio Symphony,” “Killer Bees” and “Dafos.” To test how it layered the instruments, I played: “Witches Brew,” “Royal Ballet” and “The Titans.” Yes, the $300 a pair made-in-China Psvane 300B-T tubes proved to be at par with the legendary WE 300B.

You may ask: Do I still miss the sonic quality of the WE 300B?

Let me answer it this way: Wool and velvet are both excellent fabrics that wrap you in coziness; but I love velvet more because of its soothing and comforting feel on my skin. Psvane 300B-T affords my system that velvety touch.

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For comments or questions, please e-mail me at audioglow@yahoo.comor at vphl@hotmail.com. You can also visit www.wiredstate.com or you can tweet audiofiler at www.twitter.com for quick answers to your audio concerns.