There was a point in time when I did not care for R2 all that much. But in my case think it was the preamp tubes (using Mesa 12AX7’s) . Last year I retubed and went with www.dougstubes.com for the preamp section went with.
V1 Tung-Sol reissue 12AX7
V2 high gain JJ ECC83S
V3 Penta Labs/Shuguang 12AX7C
V4 Unlabled/Shuguang 12AX7C
V5 balanced Sovtek 12AX7LPS
Doug told me to experiment with the order of the tubes but I came back to the order he gave me but one thing I did notice when the JJ was in the V2 socket, R2 just sang. Ever since the change of tubes R2 is the channel I seem to use the most
