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These long plate 12AX7s have very long plates. They advertise as high gain but I looked up gain factors and it seemed Mullard and Tung Sols are higher. Have you tried these things? I am not going for the gold pins. Danke

i have to wonder at what point high gain results in diminishing returns with a 12AX7. i haven't tried the JJs, but i like the neo-Mullards (which actually look more like long-plate Telefunkens!) quite well for new stock tubes.

I don't think there are diminishing returns unless you're buying NOS then fuck it. But based on a survey of tubes it ranks the hi, mid, low and gain and found the Mullards best, followed by Tung, and then JJ 803s. I just thought the long plates would be good for the phase inverter. But after reading that article I am going to try them all along the tubetower.

I have a set of the tung sol 12ax7s in my AC30hw and lurrrrrrrrrrrv them. I might have to try something a little hotter for kicks in the PI, see how it sounds.

devideva wrote:I don't think there are diminishing returns unless you're buying NOS then fuck it.

i could have been more clear...one of my kinks is that i don't really like 12A<value>7 distortion very much compared to power tube distortion. it can get thin and ice-picky really fast, and different tubes give very different results. i seldom use the Drive switch on my Laney, preferring EL84 breakup to 12AX7 breakup by a wide margin. if you're looking for clean with extra headroom that's another thing. i tend to run the preamp volume below 5 and the master volume higher so i can get more guts from the power tubes. this is also one reason i've gotten away from 6L6 amps, preferring 6V6, EL84, and 7591 tubes.

as far as current stock, i found the JJs which were in my Laney when i bought it to be kind of thin. i think people believe they have a balanced sound because they overemphasize the trebles. i like the Mullards and Tung-Sols (Tungsol also makes a nice 5881 for those who want another option to 6L6/6V6s) better. the Mullards are a little better for distortion, the Tung-Sols a bit cleaner. i am not a fan of Sovteks, which are way too loose and lo-fi for me. many rebadged US 12AX7s are Sovteks, but Chinese-made ones are coming in. the Chinese E-H tubes are absolutely awful...if you compare the Chinese ones to Russian tubes the poorer-quality internals of the Chinese tubes are quite apparent. yeah, i know the "Mullards" and "Tung-Sols" are Russian tubes, but they're higher quality than bog-standard Sovteks.

if you want the nicest crunch from 12AX7s, get NOS RCAs.

I love my tung-sols. I have standard though, not high gain.

dubkitty wrote:if you want the nicest crunch from 12AX7s, get NOS RCAs.

Got any?

I want to say (since you're dubkitty. "Got milk?") Sure the NOS RCA long black plates are legend now. I can't find them.

I catch your drift regarding preamp distro, but it's what I have to work with. Though next week with any luck I am getting a Peavey Valve 5 watt thing. Class A - that I can blast without cops.

you can find them at various web retailers who are in the old toobs market. or you can buy used-test-as-new ones off eBay, from which i've had good results...only buy from folks with 100% ratings who post the actual results from the tube tester. the grey-plate RCAs are quite excellent in their own right, and available for reasonable prices if you spent the time to hunt.

It's definately a hunt. Only NOS tubes I have in this city (New Orleans) are Sylvanias, which I like alot.

Sylvanias are a good middle-ground tube. some of them were made at the Philips plant in Canada, some in the USA. all of them are similar to Amperex.