Groove Tube 12ax7c selects?

[moronmountain]

I assume these are relabled Chinese tubes? Would they be the same as the the 12ax7a's, or 12ax7b's?

 

[thickwood]

Yep reflector in russia make the new sencor tubes and saratov runs a GT line over there.
TAD Or Ruby may be sino tubes but sino tubes have a space at the top between 2 mica plates so you can tell.
Plainly you can see the 2 mica plates 3/16" apart and there sino or a very old tube 1960s .

I have a TAD select 7025 and its made in russia and its very good with a good warm gainy vibe pushed.
Some amps dont work with brite tubes, i luv the goldlion B759 12ax7 gold, its about $24.00 +
Every single tube sounds awesome bottom too top.

 

[thickwood]

Oh i see,if its a 12ax7c thats china and a 12ax7r is russia and the russin is better for me .

 

[Ventura]

I assume these are relabled Chinese tubes? Would they be the same as the the 12ax7a's, or 12ax7b's?

Same as Shug/Chinese 12AX7C actually.

 

[moronmountain]

I assume these are relabled Chinese tubes? Would they be the same as the the 12ax7a's, or 12ax7b's?

Same as Shug/Chinese 12AX7C actually.

Are those better than the B's? I've never seen the C's for sale that I can think of.

 

[Ventura]

I assume these are relabled Chinese tubes? Would they be the same as the the 12ax7a's, or 12ax7b's?

Same as Shug/Chinese 12AX7C actually.

Are those better than the B's? I've never seen the C's for sale that I can think of.

I believe so. A's are common, B's are select, C's are high grade. Bit counter intuitive but this is what my knee jerk reaction is.

 

[moronmountain]

I assume these are relabled Chinese tubes? Would they be the same as the the 12ax7a's, or 12ax7b's?

Same as Shug/Chinese 12AX7C actually.

Are those better than the B's? I've never seen the C's for sale that I can think of.

I believe so. A's are common, B's are select, C's are high grade. Bit counter intuitive but this is what my knee jerk reaction is.

So who sells the C's that aren't rebranded by GT?

 

[moronmountain]

So I asked some tube retailers, and basically the C on the Groove Tubes just stands for Chinese, and they are actually more likely the same as the Chinese 12ax7a's. So I'm going to move forward with the belief that the 12ax7b's are the highest gain/low noise Chinese pre's that one can get. At any rate, there doesn't appear to be a non rebranded 12ax7"c", only a's or b's, and the a's are the ones commonly rebranded by GT, Ruby, etc.

 

[Ventura]

Sounds about right. I knew something went weird from B to C, just wasn't sure what it was...

Svetlana make some solid 12AX7 tubes too - low noise, nicely open, no microphonics. About the same price as the Chinese/Shug pres.

 

[moronmountain]

Sounds about right. I knew something went weird from B to C, just wasn't sure what it was...

Svetlana make some solid 12AX7 tubes too - low noise, nicely open, no microphonics. About the same price as the Chinese/Shug pres.

Yeah I've always been a Chinese pre guy due to low noise/high gain. I feel like it's best to have the highest gain, lowest noise tube you can start with, and then just EQ the amp to taste. Having said that, I did replace the Sovtek 12ax7 that comes stock in Ultra Leads with a Tung-Sol 12ax7, and I'm diggin it so far. I need to get a new LPS and swap it out to see how different it really is from the Tung-Sol. The one I took out was pretty old, so that may be alot of what I'm hearing as far as the difference in tone and drive goes, but it could simply be that the Tung-Sol is really more to my liking in the V1 spolt than the LPS. FWIW I know Fryette uses Sovtek 12ax7wb's stock, but my amp came with the LPS, so that's what I always ran up until now.

 

[thickwood]

How the china 12ax7 tubes breakup is what i dont like,fizzy as it gets .
The best gain vs breakup are new sensor tubes and the russion gold lion also,NOS GE are very bright like EH tubes.
I do have 2 NOS mullard 12ax7 that flat out smoke with tone.
The surprize find recently is the EH gold 12ax7, it holds chords together well when pushed into OD and has gain.
EH gold is Good for a high gain OD channel if the tungsol is over saturated when driven.

I could not get any sino tubes to have a decent breakup thats musical IMHO
P.S. the gold EH 12ax7 was not overly bright like the standard EH ?

 

[moronmountain]

How the china 12ax7 tubes breakup is what i dont like,fizzy as it gets .
The best gain vs breakup are new sensor tubes and the russion gold lion also,NOS GE are very bright like EH tubes.
I do have 2 NOS mullard 12ax7 that flat out smoke with tone.
The surprize find recently is the EH gold 12ax7, it holds chords together well when pushed into OD and has gain.
EH gold is Good for a high gain OD channel if the tungsol is over saturated when driven.

I could not get any sino tubes to have a decent breakup thats musical IMHO
P.S. the gold EH 12ax7 was not overly bright like the standard EH ?

They don't sound fizzy in my amps, but my amps were built around them, so ymmv.