What is your opinion on new vs. Nos tubes?

[eyeprod]

I could personally give a shit and have no problem with new. I hear some peoplecla im that nos is better but I find that to be a bit of a cork sniffer statement. What are your opinions on the matter?

[RAGER]

I've never bought NOS before.  I have some old, read vintage, tubes.  Not many though.  I have some RCA grey plate 6550's from '70 that I've used for some recording in my 2000S.  I've got them in the amp now because I am not currently playing out so they don't get much wear.  I've had in the past some Mullard 12ax7's that I may have noticed a tad bit of difference.  I've got some RCA back plate 6l6's in my Sup[er Twin right now.  I honesty can't say that I notice a huge difference in sound.  I think probably where the big difference lies is in longevity and build quality making the amps perceived to be more reliable.  Most people back in the day used tube amps and didn't seem to be obsessed with "bias".  I think even some amps were made without grid resistors.  The mass production of today from what I understand render tubes to be more failure prone but maybe not any different in sound.  These are just my thoughts and things I've gleaned over the years.  Evs.

[jibberish]

i think NOS, in unto itself is no big deal. There were many brands and production runs of tubes. I'm sure there were crappy ones and good ones in the day , just like now.
At some point it was pretty much NOS or GTFO. Then some shit tube plants started up and any NOS was probably better than those. But now, tubes are worth money again, so competition will clean the game up to better than NOS ever was due to advanced technology. There are already tube sets out there that are really tight spec. big dollar too.

regarding specific sound, i have zero experience so i cant comment with authority.
i suppose some unique old tubes are going to have a unique sound. what bugs me is that NOS is not infinite. i would rather not mess with it due to that aspect.


does anyone know if china has started up any germanium transistor plants?  with today's process abilities, i would like to see them made again. i bet the tolerances would be way more under control than in the dark ages. i googled around and it seems like there are precious few and expensive as hell.

[Danny G]

My JCM800 has never sounded as good as when it was running NOS Mullard pre's



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[liquidsmoke]

The shop I go to puts JJs in pretty much everything and I think they sound fine. Considering all the distortion I use I doubt my ears could differentiate between them and the best tubes ever made.

[Jake]

I'm thinking that some amps are more respondent to NOS tubes than others. But that said, I think the difference in tone is much more incremental than the difference in price versus new tubes.


Added: it seems like there a huge psychosomatic "improvement" with things like NOS tubes. See also: very expensive vs off the shelf guitar cables, tone wood vs tone wood, '58–61 PAFs vs every other pickup, and other musings of minutia.

[eyeprod]

And that is my opinion... It's basically a clever marketing scheme designed to dupe people into believing that they need it.  I tend to assume that tho se gullible types are more or less blues lawyers and bedroom dreamers but not so much working class musicians. I don't doubt the possibility that some nice old tube can make some sort of difference but yeah, not worth the money to me personally. No matter what the difference

[mutantcolors]

I don't remember the exact words, but one of my favorite quotes about gear is from Robert Fripp, saying that gear makes no difference, it's all in the player. Of course that's not 100% true but it's a solid fucking principle, especially when it gets down to this level of nitpickery.

[Danny G]

I'd go back to NOS Mullard pre's in a heartbeat if I could afford more of them.

Added a smoothness and richness to the amps tone, which already sounded good.

But I will survive using whatever is in there now (don't remember). Still sounds good.



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[Mr. Foxen]

NOS is kinda a bullshit term. If you plug the valve into it, its not new, if you buy it, its not stock. You can't have NOS valves in your amp, you just have old valves in your amp, All old valves were new and stock once. i'll take tested good old valves any day, dead right from the box happened even in the day. I find old Mullards are stuff are microphonic much more rarely than new production, but in standard amp circuits, tend to have a darker sound than the Chinese valves military valves I use. That is good for Marshalls to lose some of the horrible top end, but I kinda prefer amps that sound good to start with rather than using expensive valves to compensate.

[jibberish]

can you still get Hammond(organ company) tubes? those seemed like very high quality spec by them in the day.
the ones in these 2 amps I have are labeled with Hammond, so someone OEM'd tubes for them.

[Pissy]

All I know is that the old Garnet labeled Mullard 12ax7's that I have, when I replace the JJ in v1 with one of those, it makes a world of difference.  Is that because it's an old Mullard, or just because it's a different tube?  not sure, but the difference is noticeable, real and favors the old tube.

[lordfinesse]

it seems like there a huge psychosomatic "improvement" with things like NOS tubes. See also: very expensive vs off the shelf guitar cables, tone wood vs tone wood, '58–61 PAFs vs every other pickup, and other musings of minutia.

And let's not forget power cables. Everything sounds better with high performance IEC cables. You can really tell a difference! 

[Danny G]

A tech years ago tried to put a Mesa 12ax7 in my Marshall.

Name brand aside, it still stands as the worst sounding 12ax7 I have ever had the misfortune of using.

I think I eventually threw it away it was that bad.

New or used, old Mullards are some of the best sounding tubes ever made.  And that is my own experience and my own ears, rather than cork-sniffing BS.

I've tried as many tubes as I've been able to get my hands on. That is also how I stumbled across by accident the old Marshall tech trick of using a 12at7 for V3.



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[eyeprod]

I've tried a few random 12ax7s in my v4 but never really noticed much difference. I think that Jake may be rightab out some amps being more sensitive to changes like that.

[dogfood]

groove tube EL34s in traynor1 = shit tone
JJ 6550s in traynor2 =  what an amp ought to sound like.

New, old, only one way to find out is to buy them all and test'm.  too much money for my blood.  I guess we have to ask our amp dudes who have access to all the different amps and tubes to give us the low down.

[Pissy]

groove tube EL34s in traynor1 = shit tone
JJ 6550s in traynor2 =  what an amp ought to sound like.

New, old, only one way to find out is to buy them all and test'm.  too much money for my blood.  I guess we have to ask our amp dudes who have access to all the different amps and tubes to give us the low down.

We here actually have a decent line of communication to Splawn amps, who goes through quite a few tubes.  JJ's for a time were not so great in terms of out of the box functionality, and then got better. New Mullards went in the other direction it seems. Hearing about this ebb and flow is nice.

[dunwichamps]

I buy 0 stock in NOS sounding better without some good single or double blinded A/B tests.

Now there are a few places like an Ampeg V4(b) where modern production will just get eaten in terms of reliability. The problem really is excessive screen voltage but the NOS 7027s can handle it where as the repros just cannot handle that kind of beating.

[fallen]

It's interesting, or maybe there is a really good reason, that no amp builder has built an amp with two V1 sockets with a switch on the front to allow an A/B between them.

You could run two different brands, or you could run a lower gain tube in one socket and a high gain in the other for access to different sounds...

Probably just as easy to swap tubes.

[dunwichamps]

it would take a 6PDT switch to effectively swap tubes plus it would make a huge noise when switching if the amp was on.

[dogfood]

Dunwich, do you build with a single brand of tube?  And, if so is it due to price, sound, longevity?

[AgentofOblivion]

I remember when I was younger people said the Fender guitars from the 70s were fucking junk.  You couldn't give them away.  Now they're vintage and going for over $2000 in some cases.  I suppose it's a mix of supply/demand and nostalgia?  Or maybe someone could claim things have gotten junkier as time has gone on so junk then is still better than even junkier now.  I don't buy that though and think 95% of it is hogwash. 

After all, a tube is just some metal plates and a filament.  Physics hasn't changed in the last 50 years, but quality control certainly has.  Much like the vinyl/CD discussion in the General forum, it could be that some of the charm of the NOS stuff came from imperfections that sometimes colored the sound in a way that some listeners prefer (i.e. poorer bass response = warmer sound).  Experiences may vary, but I agree it's splitting hairs.  In my opinion, if you have to listen that closely to convince yourself there's a difference then it's a waste of money.

[dunwichamps]

Dunwich, do you build with a single brand of tube?  And, if so is it due to price, sound, longevity?

Generally I use JJ because I get good prices but I dont think any modern production tube is that much better than any other modern production tube to be honest.

Also if a customer wanted a specific brand of tubes to be in the amp, I would not have a problem putting them into the amp instead of the norm.