NOS preamp tubes - I'm a believer !

[thegame]

Out are the old chinese Groove Tube 12AX7s and in are the 1980's NOS Tungrams installed in my Wizard Modern Classic. Shit, I thought the amp sounded good before, now

In a nutshell:
- Gain on 10 is 100 % usable now. NO extra noise when doing this
- The feel is much more controllable and touch sensitive
- More harmonic detail and sustain

So the old tubes were actually quite old & I'm sure a new set of current production tubes would've improved things but I doubt to this extent.

Anyone else have some vintage 12AX7s wake their amp up ?

 

[steve_k]

I am partial to NOS RFT ECC83's in V1 of any Marshall type circuit. They widen things up a bit and smooth out some of the brittleness of a Chinese tube.

Steve

 

[scottcrud]

Yes, NOS stuff is for real. Old Tesla's, RFT's, Tungrams, GE's, RCA's, Holland Amperex Bugle Boys are all great tubes. The Bugle Boys and Tesla's being my favorite. I still have not tried a Mullard, that's on my list though.

 

[Greazygeo]

In my old amps I like to run a nos Mullard in V1 with chinese in the rest. In newer higain amps chinese 12ax7b's are great.

 

[daveg62]

It's very amp specific. In my Mark III I like raytheon blackplate in V1, RFT in V3, mostly nos Sylvania or RCA in the other slots. Oh, and a nos 12at7 in the PI slot. MY Fryette doesn't seem to mind the newer chinese tubes. I just run a Raytheon in v1 on that. I really love that tube!

 

[Buckeyedog]

I also find them very amp specific. Love them in my older plexi type stuff. Newer amps do fine with them too, but I don't notice near the difference. Chinese work well overall. I do love a Siemens, Bugle Boy in V1 of my plexi though. Really nice.

 

[OBGYNkanobi]

Raytheon blackplates and CBS Hytrons get overlooked but those are some killer vintage 12ax7s; much cheaper then the Mullards, Amperexes and Telefunkens. The Hytron blackplates have a lot of gain for a vintage 12ax7...mazda gray plates are cool too if you're look for a vintage tube with a good bit of gain.

 

[Shark Diver]

I use them in everything. The problem for me is that I need to just buy a lot and try them because I don't want to get a degree in Tubeology just to figure out which brands and years are the ones to get.

 

[JTyson]

I've got some Amperex, GE and RCA stuff, it did make a difference
I had an older German fella I did some work for who owned a tv repair shop for years, he retired 2 weeks before I was there and told me he had a truck coming to take all his crap in the repair shop out, and if I saw anything I wanted to take it
I asked him if there were any tubes in there.. he smiled and said "lots of them" I went in there and thought I'd hit the mother load
Lots of them was an understatement, but a lot of them were tv only tubes. I still landed some killer 12 ax7's, and some output tubes, but had close to 200 of them I could not use in guitar amps
Was glad to get what I did though