Yumm...... I spent 2 hours at a vintage place with my tester hand selecting the best of their best. Went through a hundred or more tubes to get these 19. I measured with my Maxi Preamp tester. The blue tape has their TV7 ratings. (not always accurate)
3 Mullard Long Plates, 1 Foil Getter Holland Long Plate, a gaggle of I61 and I63 Blackburns, a flock of the strongest Heerlen Hollands I have ever tested, and a few desireable US made long plates that tested as good as it gets.
The longplates are the grail of grail in these amps btw. IMHO. If strong. Rarer than leprachaun gold (ouch did I just say that?)
Which longplates are you referring to as being rare? The Mullard ones right? Only reason I ask is I have more RCA longplates than you can shake a stick at but only one Mullard, which is an IEC labeled short plate. Those Mullards sure are hard to find over here..
I always love finding Bugle Boys, even if they are pulls (mine always are). They last for freaking ever and sound amazing in whatever you put them in.
Yeah, the 17MM Mullard or Philips factory stuff (like Holland) from the 50s. Not the JAN Philips crappy gainy US longplates. The ones I refer to look similar to the Mullards and usually have a foil getter. mc2 or similar etched in them. Siemens also had Munich production of the long plates.
Hands down the best tones. Love them!
Cliff Schecht wrote:
Which longplates are you referring to as being rare? The Mullard ones right? Only reason I ask is I have more RCA longplates than you can shake a stick at but only one Mullard, which is an IEC labeled short plate. Those Mullards sure are hard to find over here..
I always love finding Bugle Boys, even if they are pulls (mine always are). They last for freaking ever and sound amazing in whatever you put them in.
I hate to admit this but some of my favorite sounding tubes are some old Mesa reject 12ax7s from a dumpster diving expedition 15 or so years ago. A kid at work said "hey you want these, we took them out of the dumpster at Mesa boogie" since they didn't even know what they were but knew I played tube amps. Not sure why they didn't test good enough to end up rejected.
I also like Bugle Boys, Tungsrams, and Matsushitas. Those where dumpster dove also. I was driving by the old hi-fi repair place in town that had been chained and boarded up for over a year and some mexican guys were chucking everything into a dumpster, I pulled over and not too long afterwards the building owner came by and said take whatever you want, the guy skipped town over a year ago and I need to rent the place! I sold all the telefunkens and boxes of NOS Sprague cans to help pay for college and buy a new washer and dryer for my wife so we could do cloth diapers for our new baby! Still have a nice little stash from that score. I liked the fisher (stereo) branded 12ax7's that were also telefunkens, lots of life left in those most of the time. I'll never know what was in the first load they took away before I showed up, I hauled *ss down to the dumps to try and find the pile but it was a transfer station so probably on a truck already, couldn't find anything.
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