Bright 12ax7 New Production

[nitro]

Looking for a bright open sounding new production 12ax7, your thoughts....

 

[napalmdeath]

Looking for a bright open sounding new production 12ax7, your thoughts....

Mullard Reissue, or an Electro Harmonix.

 

[Kelly]

Ruby Chinese

 

[thunda]

Ruby Chinese

+1

 

[RockStarNick]

Bright glassy, or bright crispy?

 

[nitro]

crispy

 

[rcm78]

crispy = chinese
Glassy = EH
Warm and chimy = Ei long plate (tough to get to work in high gain amps. Great in clean pedal platform amps.)

 

[D-Rock]

Tungsol

 

[Capulin Overdrive]

Tung-sol for V1, chinese in the rest.

Maybe an LPS for PI.

 

[rockify]

Without going NOS I find it hard to get past the gold pin EXH 12ax7

 

[singtall]

i have a couple dozen tubes at home and the Tungsol is always the ONE.

 

[Kapo_Polenton]

another vote for tungsol... i didn't say i liked them, just that they are bright. These days i'm rollin with NOS RFT in V1.

 

[Anonymous]

Looking for a bright open sounding new production 12ax7, your thoughts....

what amp?

RFT are hard to beat.

i would say the chinese are bright, and the EH are crispy! lol.

 

[Anonymous]

So by reading replies, pretty much everything but JJs

 

[Anonymous]

i like jj short plates..especially in combos. you gotta find the cocktail that suits you...but, it can be neverending....

 

[NS10Fan]

I swapped out the stock chinese for JJs in my Vox recently. Chinese are bright, cripsy and thin. JJs are bright, crispy, and slightly less thin with a tiny bit more definition in the low end. I almost like the chinese better? I'm a little crazy I guess. From what I had read, I was expecting something way more profound from the tube swap and definitely didn't hear it.

 

[ericsabbath]

rft's are on the darker side
not opaque like jj's, though
a fat and round grungy distortion
love the weight on single notes, kinda like what winged C el34's do for the power section

as some said, EH are quite bright (but not overly bright)

shuguangs (tad, ruby, pentalabs) are brightish and very gainy
I like them in low/medium gain amps, but sound amazing in lots of high gainers too
some might get noisy, though

I'm not sure I'd say tung sols are bright
they're quite articulate, but balanced
they have a transparent character without sounding tasteless like sovteks
nice clear crunch for high gainers
just make sure you don't put them on cathode followers (usually in the loop buffer and the previous tube position)
they don't hold high voltages well and might fail or cause weird volume swells

 

[university81]

Tung sol for me from what i've tried

 

[rcm78]

Definitely depends on the amp. I bought my bogner XTC used and it had all tung sol pre's and =C= power tubes. I thought the amp lacked bottom end. Something didnt seem right. Plus it had a hum. Brought it to Jimmy Somma at Sommatone. He called bogner and they suggested chinese tubes. Jimmy retubed the amp with Ruby's. Sounds great, no more hum.

My 5150 combo sounds best with EH pre's and =C= power tubes.

I put an Ei pre in V1 of my HR Deville and WOW!!! I've never heard such an improvement from a simple tube swap. The amp went from sounding like a typical Deville to having a lush 3D clean...