PM tubes?

[ER]

Anybody have any experience with Peter Watson's PM tubes? Look interesting, was thinking of picking some up to check 'em out. I've heard good things about them, but no firsthand experience as they mostly sell in the UK.

[M Fowler]

I didn't know anything about Peter but I do now thanks for posting.

http://thetoneking.com/the-king-of-tube ... us-shores/

[Leo_Gnardo]

Warning: LG sez "show me, I'm from Missouri." *

The puff piece Mr Fowler links to is five years old. If this outfit was all that and a bag of chips, how come we haven't heard more about it? Should we find a link to Diamond distributing I'm sure there's more flowery prose to support their products, much as we see from Mercury Magnetics. Reminds me also of that outfit in Connecticut that cryo-treats JJ tubes, and calls them Telefunkens. Rawther cheeky, I should say. Too many times we buy into the hype, get bruised, our pockets picked. I'd advise, stick to whatever trustworthy distributors you have found until something better comes along. And I mean really better, not a bunch of salesman talk.

If you feel like trying some out ER, don't let me slow you down. Let us know how it goes. Who knows, maybe they really are super terrific. Someone will have to be brave enough to experiment.

* Thank my 8 & 9th grade algebra teacher Mr Corolla for that useful quote. Time was, in order to get credit for your answers, you had to prove your conclusions. Properly so.

[ER]

Thanks, LG, good advice. Upon further digging it looks like they are out of the Shuguang factory and tested and rebranded by PM and are an offshoot of their "Golden Gragon" hi-fi offerings. Shuguangs have been sold as Groove Tubes, TAD, Penta, Fender, Mesa, Ruby, etc. If they sound any good there's probably a more direct source to look into than the various re-branders. Testing is useful, but not everything. Some of the best sounding tubes I have were dumpster dive Mesa/Soveteks that tested as "bad" and ended up in the dumpster.

I'm buying a lot of tubes off craigslist,
3x JJ 6550's
2x matched pairs of PM EL34's
8x PM 12ax7's
2x JJ 12at7
1x JJ 12ax7
All for $60, thought it was worth a shot to give 'em a try and see if they live up to the hype since that's less than a pair of the power tubes would run to check out. Still looking for a decent new tube to put in stuff, still need to hear the EH stuff.
The guy pulled the PM's from his brand new Orange amps because he likes to run JJ's and Rubys in everything.
Seems a lot of the folks in the UK like them. I'll give 'em the run down and see how they sound and hold up.

[Reeltarded]

I hate the EH premap tubes and love the outputs.

The EH output tubes act like what they are copies of, so far. The EH 12ax7s sound like someone setting a record on a high level of Angry Birds.

ps: The EH 12ax tubes work GREAT in Fender trem systems. Very strong. Fairly consistent from side to side.

[ER]

Good to know, next amp I'm working on is 7591's and the JJs don't look like the real thing, gonna go with the EH. For about 100 years my ancestors lived not to far from Saratov where the EH factory is, thank God they got out of there or I'd probably be in Siberia now.

[Reeltarded]

I swear JJs aren't bad but they take anything that would not blow something up and call it the most popular name. The JJs that scare me most are the 6v6s. Dood, seriously. That is a 6L6..

I'd be Australian if they didn't let people out of prison.

"Nice livestock you got there.. "

[M Fowler]

I prefer JJ tubes in most anything but I do agree the failure rate is on rise so like most here I have been trying out other brands in both preamp, power and rectifying.

Mark

[ER]

Agreed. One thing for JJ, at least they have what I guess you could call a "data sheet" for their tubes. I wish the other companies would get on board with that. I don't trust a marketing department to tell me how a tube sounds, that's a roll of the dice, but at least show me how it should measure and how I can expect it to perform.

PM has for 12ax7, an HG "high gain", a LM "low microphony", a "trustworthy", and a "classic. Was thinking, oh an LM might make a good 7025 type deal for a bass pre, then I heard somewhere that they're all the same tube, they just go into different groups depending on how they test out, but then on their website it say they add extra screening to the LM version. Does this mean spiral filaments etc. or some type of internal noise reducing screen in the tube, or just "S" type designation screening/testing, I don't know.

[TUBEDUDE]

The more i hear of current tube drama the happier i am to have used only U.S. made NOS tubes for the last fourty years. Just say no to commie tubes!