New Sticks & New Tubes - Skiing & Desktop Audio Updates 19Feb17

I scored some new mid-fat skis - Liberty Origin 116s - 182 length, a little conservative. I found them used with 2015 graphics at Wilderness Sports for $250 and snapped them up. My Liberty Helixes (105) are goto but I needed something nice between there and the Liberty Genomes (145), which can only come out and play on double digit days. It's established that I appreciate the Liberty bamboo line from Eagle Co Colorado. The Origins are lightweight bamboo playful powder hounds with pretty deep sidecut and rockered tip and tail. These will be perfect I think in most powder and will have the quick turn capability for trees and moguls and such. I'll just repurpose some bindings from my rock skis to make the investment pretty cheap. Now I just need some snow to test these babies - they are not needed in the purely spring conditions we've encountered for the last 2 weeks.

Wilks was using my "rock skis," which are my original Liberty Helix boards with S12T bindings, and chose to buy them for the price of new STH bindings for me for my "new" Origins (rather than have me rip off the old bindings). Seems they did a new generation so I got these STH2 13s for the new pow' machines. The red-orange version will pop with the Origin graphics. It's cool to get excited for some new gear mid-season - we better get some dumpers after I'm back from the Virgin Islands!

I took the next couple of steps in tube rolling in my Vali 2 amp in Silverthorne. Prior I "settled" on the Tesla as my best alternative in the Vali 2; it was very good. Yet, as mentioned prior, buying "better" 6922/EC88/6DJ8 tubes would require bigger investments but might yield better audio - and it did. I found reasonable deals on some of the best rated pre-amp tubes - from the mid-60s Phillips Heeren (Holland) plant and from the mid-60s Siemens (Germany) plant. Perhaps the deals were in part due to the OEM labeling of Valvo on the Phillips Heeren tube and Westinghouse on the German Siemens tube. Whatever, these are the real deal as I checked the manufacturing codes, and still cost me ~$100 all in for both. I tested again with my normal tracks and rotated through the Tesla and the new tubes - and the new, more expensive, tubes were better to my ear. To reprise my criteria and explain these new tubes.

• Listening Fatigue - both tubes were excellent and long listening
• Low Noise - both were decent with the Siemens edging on quieter
• Dynamics - both were great on transitions and plenty quick throughout
• Power Over Range - Siemens was better but colder; Phillips was sufficeint
• Smooth v Harsh - both were exceptional; Phillips was smoother & warmer while Siemens was dynamic & cooler
• Midrange-Forward - both were great but the Phillips was exceptional in the mids without sacrificing anything in the bass; the Siemens was uncolored and audio-wise "flat" in a very good way

There's a new sheriff in town and he's from Holland. It was very close here but the nicer, smoother, rounder Coffin house sound was reproduced through the 1962 gold pin Phillips Heeren E88CC USED ~$65 labeled Valvo. It beat the steel pinned 1965 Siemens ECC88 NOS ~$35 and displaced the Tesla in the socket for most listening.