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Re: a thread about preamp tubes...
Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2014 11:49 pm
by The Mad Titan
misterstomach wrote:i'm curious about what anyone has to share about good places to look for NOS or ANOS tubes. i know a couple of dealers, but it'd be cool to know where other people like.
also curious about what folks favorite new production tubes are. like has anyone tried those expensive fancy pants northern electric? at $50/tube for a 12ax7 you'd hope it sounded as good as NOS. i'd never even heard of them recently.
i don't like jj's. they seem harsh to me. and i've had a bad preamp tube in two different retube orders in a row.
i used to have an amp that had some kind of chinese tubes that actually sounded pretty awesome in the amp they were in. i think they may have been a type from the 90's that isn't made anymore, but they were good. after i changed them i never got that amp to sound as good again.
i've had the usual sovteks and ehx and mesa (which were probably all the same thing) and not noticed much outstanding about them. i once played a vtm 120 that had just been retubed with all mesa branded russian tubes and it was the best sounding vtm 120 i've played to this day, and i've played a few.
i'm pretty sold on buying old tubes for the preamp at this point, but i'm curious what people's thoughts are on new tubes.
I've heard more than a few people say the latter generation Shuguang tubes they had were very good high gain/low noise tubes with good tone.
As I said above I've been impressed with Tungsol's 12ax7's, also love their 6550's.
I've had good luck with original Svetlana and later =C= EL34's.
Sovtek LPS are all right.
Oh, and quite a few people said the Vostok 12ax7's are awesome, but again no experience here.
Re: a thread about preamp tubes...
Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 12:18 am
by AxAxSxS
I'm lucky in that when I first got into tubes, I bought a bunch of jinky old amps and never threw away any of the tubes. All the pre tubes I use are old made in usa. Biggest difference was in My peavey Butcher. took a lot of the unpleasant spiky sound out of it without loosing the edge.
no need to balance pre tubes so plug and play away I say. I've had some decent luck on ebay, buying batches of tubes, but it's very buyer beware there and some of the tubes were duds.
Re: a thread about preamp tubes...
Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 9:25 am
by rustywire
misterstomach wrote:i'm curious about what anyone has to share about good places to look for NOS or ANOS tubes. i know a couple of dealers, but it'd be cool to know where other people like.
also curious about what folks favorite new production tubes are. like has anyone tried those expensive fancy pants northern electric? at $50/tube for a 12ax7 you'd hope it sounded as good as NOS. i'd never even heard of them recently.
i don't like jj's. they seem harsh to me. and i've had a bad preamp tube in two different retube orders in a row.
i used to have an amp that had some kind of chinese tubes that actually sounded pretty awesome in the amp they were in. i think they may have been a type from the 90's that isn't made anymore, but they were good. after i changed them i never got that amp to sound as good again.
i've had the usual sovteks and ehx and mesa (which were probably all the same thing) and not noticed much outstanding about them. i once played a vtm 120 that had just been retubed with all mesa branded russian tubes and it was the best sounding vtm 120 i've played to this day, and i've played a few.
i'm pretty sold on buying old tubes for the preamp at this point, but i'm curious what people's thoughts are on new tubes.
Haven't tried or heard any new Northern Electric tubes that I know of. I've come across some 50s or 60s tubes branded Northern Electric, that were likely made by Marconi or GE Canada. Structurally/sound similar to known examples from the aforementioned companies.
I've had a few Chinese-made Ruby tubes that sounded right for Mesa amps, just they tend to run noisy...especially in v1. Same with Sovteks...similar to your own experience. They're hot tubes in general and shine in distortion circuits (like the multistage clipping of Mesa's *business* channel). JJs are probably my least favorite, they sound...stiff. Rigid. Brittle. For tubes...
That's just on the sound side of things. New production tubes don't last nearly as long as the older ones...and there's also a higher fail-rate/bad-tube from right out the box, by comparison.
Re: a thread about preamp tubes...
Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2014 6:58 pm
by misterstomach
The Mad Titan wrote:
I've heard more than a few people say the latter generation Shuguang tubes they had were very good high gain/low noise tubes with good tone.
As I said above I've been impressed with Tungsol's 12ax7's, also love their 6550's.
I've had good luck with original Svetlana and later =C= EL34's.
Sovtek LPS are all right.
Oh, and quite a few people said the Vostok 12ax7's are awesome, but again no experience here.
I've never tried tung sol pre's, but I use their 6550's in my amp and I like them. I think it's worth the extra dollars. I've heard good things about new winged c power tubes too, specifically el34's and 6l6's. Never tried them, but I probably will whenever I end up with an amp that takes those again. As I said before, I really don't have the money to justify the expense of NOS power tubes.
Re: a thread about preamp tubes...
Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2014 9:39 am
by rfurtkamp
Depends a ton on the amp and what you're getting out of it.
I want a stupid high headroom absolutely clean (hate power tube distortion) 6L6 in a Fender-type circuit. Tungsols work just fine, may not last as long as the old RCAs, but I can buy a dozen of them for the price of one of them.
Preamp tubes for new or old production it's a case of just swapping through until you're happy, and they sure as hell don't die very often.
When NOS tubes were the only game in town other than GT or Ruby in the early 90s, did a ton of shootouts with stuff because you could find tubes at thrift stores still occasionally. I was happier with the Ruby stuff versus anything but the occasionally magical blackplate (and I suspect that was just the one out of a case that was somehow perfect for what I put it in).
Newer Tungsols are stupid good for the $$ or otherwise though.
Re: a thread about preamp tubes...
Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2014 3:46 pm
by sears
Putting NOS in my Peavey Classic 20 actually made a big difference.
This thread is making me wonder if I should get a NOS for my Markbass Compressore pedal. I think the tube is what does the compression, as opposed to a gain stage, so would NOS make a difference?
Re: a thread about preamp tubes...
Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2014 6:09 pm
by Iommic Pope
rfurtkamp wrote:
Newer Tungsols are stupid good for the $$ or otherwise though.
Yeap.
Re: a thread about preamp tubes...
Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2014 7:33 pm
by rfurtkamp
I have never heard a pedal where the tube made a difference.
It's usually just *used* as a gain stage.
But if it uses a common tube, and you have a burning desire to change it out, have fun storming the castle (worst case, you'll have a tube backup for something)
Re: a thread about preamp tubes...
Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2014 10:01 pm
by The Mad Titan
Whoops. I said Vostok above but meant Voskhod 12ax7