Tube brands

Golden Gate ER

Senior Member
There are a lot of different brands of tubes now as compared to 20 years ago. Some are outrageously expensive from new manufacturers. Some are revamp from old manufacturers. Some are new manufactured & using a old name. Plus some are new and dirt cheap. It's foolish to believe that every brand of tube is from a single manufacturer.
A few years ago I have discovered ValveArt. KT88, EL34, 12AU & 300B tubes perform just as good as other brands costing 60℅ more. Therefore making ValveArt my go to.

So the question is; what inexpensive tube brand have you discovered that outperforms a more expensive name brand tube?
 
I had great luck with JJ 7591’s. They were(are) cheap enough that I don’t freak out if/when I have to replace one. It has allowed me to keep my vintage quads in mothball. I felt the same way about the Sovtek 12ax7LPS before the recent batch, which did have some QA issues.
 
I have had good luck with JJ too, and I like my Sovtek 2A3 for price also.
 
It is very true that some modern tubes that sell for peanuts today will become tomorrow’s NOS treasures. The key word there is “some.”

One example is the SED Winged C 6L6GC. When I bought my first 6L6 amp in 2002, I wanted some new tubes to use in place of the mismatched pairs that came with it, so I asked Ned at Triode Electronics for a recommendation. He sold me a quad of the Winged C for $50 or 60 total. I didn’t use them for long because those amps were replaced rather quickly. But in the years since whenever I was testing a new PP circuit I would pull out those Winged C tubes to use as test guinea pigs. After all they were nothing special and if they got damaged by a miswired circuit I wouldn’t be too upset.

Fast forward to 2019 when I had built some new 6L6 amps and I wanted to find out which NOS tubes people recommended. Well, it turns out that some folks including Raven Audio (which makes modern 6L6 amps) consider the SED Winged C to be the very best sounding 6L6GC tube ever made, even better than the classic RCA blackplates and GE gray plates. Who would have guessed? Of course the Winged C is now in the unobtainable category and many of the NOS Winged C on EBay are counterfeits. I should have bought several cases of them instead of just a quad.
 
I can't respond to the "outperforms" part of the question, but did roll several pairs of 6L6 types thru my Cayin amp while I had it.

The Tung-Sol reissue 5881 was my favourite of all. Not expensive.
 
I would generally avoid most JJ tubes like the plague (though the EL84 seems OK). The JJ 7591 is an underperformer in the category. Here's a recent set of measurements off another forum:
7591.png
Jim McShane has written a fair amount about other JJ quality control problems, but the most recent one I had was a JJ 2A3-40 where the filament started peeling apart where it took a turn up at the top of the tube. Its mate still tested NOS and is still in frequent use, but I had to buy a replacement.

This graph also shows that tube different 7591s made in the same factory have some performance differences.

For good budget buys, I would look at well tested Russian military surplus tubes.
 
I had success with the JJ E34L in my Dynaco Stereo 70. I stay away from the others after buying a bunch of preamp tubes, several of which were dead brand new,right out of the box.
 
I had a quad of JJ 6L6GC that were absolutely trouble free. Didn't sound bad and were priced right.
 
It is very true that some modern tubes that sell for peanuts today will become tomorrow’s NOS treasures. The key word there is “some.”

One example is the SED Winged C 6L6GC. When I bought my first 6L6 amp in 2002, I wanted some new tubes to use in place of the mismatched pairs that came with it, so I asked Ned at Triode Electronics for a recommendation. He sold me a quad of the Winged C for $50 or 60 total. I didn’t use them for long because those amps were replaced rather quickly. But in the years since whenever I was testing a new PP circuit I would pull out those Winged C tubes to use as test guinea pigs. After all they were nothing special and if they got damaged by a miswired circuit I wouldn’t be too upset.

Fast forward to 2019 when I had built some new 6L6 amps and I wanted to find out which NOS tubes people recommended. Well, it turns out that some folks including Raven Audio (which makes modern 6L6 amps) consider the SED Winged C to be the very best sounding 6L6GC tube ever made, even better than the classic RCA blackplates and GE gray plates. Who would have guessed? Of course the Winged C is now in the unobtainable category and many of the NOS Winged C on EBay are counterfeits. I should have bought several cases of them instead of just a quad.
Sweet! I just found an NOS pair in my tube stash.
 
It is very true that some modern tubes that sell for peanuts today will become tomorrow’s NOS treasures. The key word there is “some.”

One example is the SED Winged C 6L6GC. When I bought my first 6L6 amp in 2002, I wanted some new tubes to use in place of the mismatched pairs that came with it, so I asked Ned at Triode Electronics for a recommendation. He sold me a quad of the Winged C for $50 or 60 total. I didn’t use them for long because those amps were replaced rather quickly. But in the years since whenever I was testing a new PP circuit I would pull out those Winged C tubes to use as test guinea pigs. After all they were nothing special and if they got damaged by a miswired circuit I wouldn’t be too upset.

Fast forward to 2019 when I had built some new 6L6 amps and I wanted to find out which NOS tubes people recommended. Well, it turns out that some folks including Raven Audio (which makes modern 6L6 amps) consider the SED Winged C to be the very best sounding 6L6GC tube ever made, even better than the classic RCA blackplates and GE gray plates. Who would have guessed? Of course the Winged C is now in the unobtainable category and many of the NOS Winged C on EBay are counterfeits. I should have bought several cases of them instead of just a quad.
The first quad of 6550s I bought for my TAD 60 in 2007ish were SED winged C's, and I loved them. Wish I'd bought a bunch just like you. How can one ever know? I still have them, but they were a little tired when I replaced them with Tung-Sol reissues from Upscale. I like these a lot, too. But not as much as the winged C's.
 
I’ve had good luck with the TAD 6L6WGC. Short bottle GE style envelope for reasonable money. $100 a matched quad.
None of the new production tubes I’ve tried so far last anywhere near as long as the old stock stuff. I can get a couple of years out of new power tubes. I have RCA, GE and Sylvania tubes that are older than me that still run strong, sound good and test almost new, and they were used tubes when I got them!
 
The first quad of 6550s I bought for my TAD 60 in 2007ish were SED winged C's, and I loved them. Wish I'd bought a bunch just like you. How can one ever know? I still have them, but they were a little tired when I replaced them with Tung-Sol reissues from Upscale. I like these a lot, too. But not as much as the winged C's.
Now you’ve opened a can... I just found a 2nd matched pair of the Winged C 6L6GC in my tube stash. Brand new. I was going to list a pair for sale in the Emporium, but now that I have a quad I just had to put them in the MC240.
The ears want what the ears want : )
And of course, they are more seductive than the TAD 6L6WGC short bottles ( which I like very much). Thanks. Thanks a lot.🤩
 
Now you’ve opened a can... I just found a 2nd matched pair of the Winged C 6L6GC in my tube stash. Brand new. I was going to list a pair for sale in the Emporium, but now that I have a quad I just had to put them in the MC240.
The ears want what the ears want : )
And of course, they are more seductive than the TAD 6L6WGC short bottles ( which I like very much). Thanks. Thanks a lot.🤩

Let us know what you think of them when you try them in your Mac. It's been a while since I tried mine but when I last took a listen it was more a case of respecting the Winged C than liking them. Of the four sets of 6L6GC I have, the SEDs have the cleanest, most detailed sound but are a little lean in the bass. I prefer more warmth and richness in the lower midrange and upper bass. Other folks might call that a coloration but that's why we have different tubes.
 
Let us know what you think of them when you try them in your Mac. It's been a while since I tried mine but when I last took a listen it was more a case of respecting the Winged C than liking them. Of the four sets of 6L6GC I have, the SEDs have the cleanest, most detailed sound but are a little lean in the bass. I prefer more warmth and richness in the lower midrange and upper bass. Other folks might call that a coloration but that's why we have different tubes.
I don’t want to derail the thread further by talking about tubes that aren’t currently available, but I like the Winged C in the MC240. I can see how they might be considered a little lean in the bass. Mids and highs are fantastic- soundstage is extremely good (a priority for me) as I consider it an indicator of coherent reproduction of the input signal.
 
Back to the main topic, I will admit to being surprised that a set of Electro Harmonix 12ax7’s sounded better than the Golden Dragon 12ax7 in an inexpensive tube preamp I was auditioning. Basically 1/2 the price and smoother sounding in that application. Surprising, in that generally I’ve found the EH power tubes to be dynamic, but a touch crispy up top for hi-fi use. So I kind of expected the voicing to follow the “House sound”
I like the EH power tubes in guitar amps, generally speaking.
 
I would generally avoid most JJ tubes like the plague (though the EL84 seems OK). The JJ 7591 is an underperformer in the category. Here's a recent set of measurements off another forum:
View attachment 20661
Jim McShane has written a fair amount about other JJ quality control problems, but the most recent one I had was a JJ 2A3-40 where the filament started peeling apart where it took a turn up at the top of the tube. Its mate still tested NOS and is still in frequent use, but I had to buy a replacement.

This graph also shows that tube different 7591s made in the same factory have some performance differences.

For good budget buys, I would look at well tested Russian military surplus tubes.

FWIW, I bought a pair of the JJ 2A3-40 from Euro Tubes in Oregon. They only sell JJ tubes, and they fully test & match them at their shop.
 
I'd love to hear from someone who has run JJ 2A3-40s daily for more than 2-3 years.
 
I've had a number of JJs fail right out of the box. E34L and small signal tubes specifically.
 
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