Another tube quality complaint thread

  • Thread starter Thread starter MadAsAHatter
  • Start date Start date
NowYou'rePlayingWithPower said:
What's a bummer for the OP statement is that Mesa boasts about some tube tester that they had developed with an aerospace company and that it is so good that it can predict the life of a tube...

So, given that statement apparently they knew ahead of time that they wouldn't last :ROFLMAO: ...?
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I blame Gibson because it never used to be like that :dunno:
 
7704A said:
Tan pants? Gibson!
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I should have clarified that Gibson is my cat.

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AFAIK current production Mesa 12ax7 should be JJs?
Try to find some old Mesa 12ax7 from the 90ies early 2000. They are the old Chinese 8th gen. which are among the most reliable.
 
BesaMoogie said:
AFAIK current production Mesa 12ax7 should be JJs?
Try to find some old Mesa 12ax7 from the 90ies early 2000. They are the old Chinese 8th gen. which are among the most reliable.
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This.

They are killer indeed. The Chinese Bs you can get now from china, are the same design as the 8th/9th gen. I did just see that the military version, 6N4, are still available and usually vintage since the military doesn't use tubes anymore. 17 bucks per tube. This is on Aliexpress, I can't get the site to populate pics on my laptop for some reason. But they have the military star on the tube, and sound killer. Takes a month to get here if you order them.
 
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Racerxrated said:
This.

They are killer indeed. The Chinese Bs you can get now from china, are the same design as the 8th/9th gen. I did just see that the military version, 6N4, are still available and usually vintage since the military doesn't use tubes anymore. 17 bucks per tube. This is on Aliexpress, I can't get the site to populate pics on my laptop for some reason. But they have the military star on the tube, and sound killer. Takes a month to get here if you order them.
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Good info guys. Yeah 8th/9th gen was what I was thinking of. Doug(stubes dot com) sent me one once so I have 1 of them.
 
Racerxrated said:
You guys are fortunate. JJ is a No-J for me.
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I haven’t kept count, but I’ve had TONS of amps with JJ’s of the now almost 150 amps I owned over the years (not my choice to put them in lol). At least 31 of those amps that I’m aware of had JJ powertubes. It seems like lots of boutique amps come with them (Gjika, Wizard, Homestead, Schroeder, Alessandro DAZZ as some examples) . As far as non-vintage tubes go they seem to me better than others and what my tech uses. The ones he says are unreliable in his experience are TADS and recent Sovtek’s and I found those sound worse as well IME. Not that I’m a fan of any of these, but for non-vintage tubes if I had to pick would probably be Gold Lion, Tung-sol and then maybe JJ. I’ve had lots of EHX pre’s fail me fast and they sound brittle also
 
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braintheory said:
I haven’t kept count, but I’ve had TONS of amps with JJ’s of the now almost 150 amps I owned over the years (not my choice to put them in lol). At least 31 of those amps that I’m aware of had JJ powertubes. It seems like lots of boutique amps come with them (Gjika, Wizard, Homestead, Schroeder, Alessandro DAZZ as some examples) . As far as non-vintage tubes go they seem to me better than others and what my tech uses. The ones he says are unreliable in his experience are TADS and recent Sovtek’s and I found those sound worse as well IME. Not that I’m a fan of any of these, but for non-vintage tubes if I had to pick would probably be Gold Lion, Tung-sol and then maybe JJ. I’ve had lots of EHX pre’s fail me fast and they sound brittle also
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Well, I will say that most of the used Marshalls I've bought over the years came with them, and they were fine. But, I'd quickly change them out for Winged C or Siemens. Then, if/when I sold it JJs would of course go back in. But, every one of my new EVHs I bought had JJs, and each of them had 1 that failed, be it power or pre. MT 100, the TAD 6L6 failed. The Naylor SD60 was the only new amp that didn't have a tube failure, those were all Sovtek 5881s and Sovtek pre.
New tubes suck, period. And, if they don't fail, they sound like ass compared to what I have in my stash. Thankfully I have enough tubes to last the rest of my days.
 
Racerxrated said:
Well, I will say that most of the used Marshalls I've bought over the years came with them, and they were fine. But, I'd quickly change them out for Winged C or Siemens. Then, if/when I sold it JJs would of course go back in. But, every one of my new EVHs I bought had JJs, and each of them had 1 that failed, be it power or pre. MT 100, the TAD 6L6 failed. The Naylor SD60 was the only new amp that didn't have a tube failure, those were all Sovtek 5881s and Sovtek pre.
New tubes suck, period. And, if they don't fail, they sound like ass compared to what I have in my stash. Thankfully I have enough tubes to last the rest of my days.
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Yeah there’s no doubt the older tubes sound better. I don’t have anywhere near the sample size of what techs go through, but luckily it’s iirc just been EHX pre-tubes that have failed me for new stuff. They suck
 
Funny that I have no interest in New Sensor Tubes.. Just don't.. I bought a few Tung Sol pres from Doug to try and they were meh.. The 3 that I have still work, but can't speak about company's quality as a whole.

JJ's were always solid. Power Tubes, solid, Pres are solid and work great in bright amps with a ton of gain stages..

I usually use JJ Power Tubes and Chinese as the filler Pres with a few Long Plates in key spots like V1 and PI. An RCA 6201 is a bullet proof 12AT7.. Badass
 
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