Some "Old Old Stock" tubes to experiment with!

Dave-the-Pub-muso

Hi all! I recently bought a fender champion 600 and had some of the "matta" mods done to it (this makes a huge difference to the sound and is REALLY worth doing). I then wanted to start experimenting with tubes (just the preamp 12ax7), but had no idea where to begin or where to source the tubes from. Then through a wonderful coincidence I was bragging about my new amp to a colleague and it turned out that this guy is a serious audiophile who has a number of tube hi-fi amplifiers at home for his collection of 8000 LPs. He also quite a hoarder of tubes and he offered to have a scratch at home to see if he had any tubes lying around. Turned out that he did and he has just handed me four:

1. Brimar 12AX7
2. Tung-Sol 12AU7WA (which I think might have too little gain for my purposes)
3. Mullard ECC83
4. GEC ECC83

These are all old stock but are used, so not sure of their functionality. Anyway, I'm stoked because I can get an idea of what different manufacturers tubes sound like. I'm gonna start experimenting today and will give a report back asap!

Cheers,
Dave

MikeM

Om nom nom, dam lucky man!

Attila

Dave, Dave, Dave ....why do you want to sukel with nonsense like that

Take my advice put them into a well padded box, mark "FRAGILE" and send to me ASAP ?

check out http://www.guitaramplifierblueprinting.com/12ax7.html to give you an idea of what to expect from the various brands

Attila

AlanRatcliffe

Lucky man! I'm lucky enough to have Telefunken AX7s in my Twin, but have long lusted after either Mullard or Brimar versions (in that order). The GEC is nice too. ?

The quality of these is such that as long as they still work they sound good.

Gearhead

Don't send them to Attila, to me! To me! ?

Vick

Mullard's are awsum,I was luck enuf to have a guy sell me a few for a fraction of what there worth(not that he didn't know any thing, I think it was a sympathy case....)....but i sold the rec tube....actually as it turns out,not the smartest move....... :'(

But so one learns...

I cherish those tubes man....

happy for you man ?

Dave-the-Pub-muso

Attila wrote:
check out http://www.guitaramplifierblueprinting.com/12ax7.html to give you an idea of what to expect from the various brands

Thanks Attila, that's a great link!

Dave-the-Pub-muso

So yesterday I had a first round of "auditions" to decide which tube will ultimately end up in the champ. I'm really not a technically inclined person and I don't have the correct terminology, but I do think I have a good ear, so results are as follows:

I tested all tubes at half volume and just less than full volume on the amp.

Tung-Sol 12AX7WA: As expected, this was very low gain and therefore not very useful for my purposes. I will say that the clean sound that it produces is really good (possibly because I was having to turn the up volume higher). It wasn't noisy. I might consider it if I only wanted clean tones.

GEC: I found this one a little toppy and thin. When driven, the breakup was not smooth ( a lot of players like that kind of sound but not me). It was the noisiest of the lot.

Mullard: This one had more of a mid to low end sound (to my ear). I really liked the clean sound, but again did not love the sound at the breakup (had a lot of bite!). This tube had absolutely no noise.

Brimar: This was my favourite and is the current front runner. It provided very smooth overdrive when pushed and had a broad dynamic range in the clean tones.

Just to be sure, I'm going to have a semi-final between the Mullard and the Brimar. This time I will play for longer and at different levels and will also use my Boss SD-1.

Just FYI, I used a telecaster for the test. Also I am the kind of player that likes smooth overdrive (hence I like SD-1), so all these comments must be seen in that light.

I suppose in the end people like what they like irrespective of it's cost/age/reputation!

Hope this proves interesting/useful to someone!

Cheers